words and phrases that need to be expunged from the English language...

... for meaning the opposite of themselves:

• Sanction
• Dig
• Inflammable

... for being overused and/or silly

• without further ado
• much ink has been spilled

the value of your social network

It's no longer prospective employers and online daters checking you out on Facebook.

social sciencese

Social scientists have their own language, which occasionally can confuse English speakers who are unfamiliar with the secret meanings normal everyday words take on in Social Sciencese - and which at other times obstinately insists on using dense indecipherable phrases instead of common words that mean the exact darn same thing.

This is a holding page for examples of such offenses.

Words social scientists use in other ways from you and me:

• To moderate

Phrases for which normal everyday English just won't do:

• Intimate extradyadic behavior = having an affair

recent research

From Kevin Lewis' April picks:

• Want to be more effective on the soapbox? Be abstract with your followers and concrete with those who may be more skeptical. (Michella Menegatti and friend)
• For DC interns, polarized workplaces breeds polarization. (David Jones)
• It takes more than just homophily (hanging out with people like ourselves) to breed partisanship: we need a dose of confirmation bias too. (Pranav Dandekar and friends)
• Twittering ourselves into political silos. (Itai Himmelboim and friends)
• The extreme partisanship in Congress is said to not reflect the public's views - but it may reflect the part of the public that pays attention to Congress. (Benjamin Lauderdale)
• People prefer doing meaningful work - even on mTurk. (Dana Chandler and friend)
• Online social mobilization's limits explored. (Alex Rutherford and friends)
• The Wikipedia magic formula for crowdsourcing may be losing its magic. (Aaron Halfaker and friends)
• A mini experiment showing what we all kinda know: playing as part of a team makes us generally more cooperative with our teammates. (Tobias Greitemeyer and friend)
• You are what you like. (Mickal Kosinski and friends)
• The great experiment in grading NYC kitchen cleanliness - comes up short. (Daniel Ho)

recent research

A selection of Kevin Lewis' March picks:

• Chimps' sense of fairness. (Darby Proctor and friends)
• One reason we act morally: it gets us trustworthiness points. (Brent Simpson and friends)
• Our GPA's are affected by our friends. (Deanna Blansky and friends)
• Sharing a similar sense of humor makes us want to share more. (Oliver Curry and friend)
• Revealing our names and photos makes us more open on blogs. (Erin Hollenbaugh and friend)
• Cool. Figuring out how we may make sense of info flowing through social networks - using agent based modeling. (Mark Laidre and friends)
• Facebook, profile photos and influencing sexual norms. (Sean D. Young and friend)
• Incivility online polarize perceptions - even on topics like technology. (Ashley Anderson and friends)
• We're all proselytizers of our lifestyle choices. (Krisin Laurin and friends)

recent research

From Kevin Lewis' February picks:

• Our ballots may be secret, but most Americans either don't believe it or don't care. (Alan Gerber and friends)
• A new explanation for variations in political participation: electrodermal responsiveness. (Michael Gruszczynski and friends)
• The fundraising and frontrunner feedback loop - caught by economists. (James Feigenbaum and friend)
• An argument for not getting rid of the electoral college - it's pretty fair. (AC Thomas and friends)
• Education is correlated with higher political participation, but that may just be because education is a proxy for social status. (Mikael Persson)
• If you're a politician it doesn't matter whether you get falsely vilified or credited; either way, when the truth comes out, you're worse off. (Michael Cobb and friends)
• Forget Intrade and Nate Silver - just ask 19,000 people who will win the next election to get the best prediction. (Michael K. Miller and friends)
• All that money spent on presidential campaign advertising is apparently well spent. (Brett R. Gordon and friend)
• Hmm... we misjudge candidates in part because of the "false memories" we make about them. (Jason Coronel and friends)
• How best to "counter-frame." (Chong and Druckman)
• Social pressure to vote works on women and minorities too. (Costas Panagopoulus)
• Voting technology and mail-in-voting mean fewer bum ballots. (R. Michael Alvarez and friends)
• Evidence that surveys may not represent reality. (Christian Vossler and friend)
• Candidates have a role in inspiring confidence in the voting process. (Greg Vannahme and friend)
• Maybe conservatives are just more sensitive. (Samantha Joel and friends)
• Re-affirming the ego on Facebook. (Catalina Toma and friends)
• Charting out the link between values and political attitudes. (Diana Boer and friend)
• Legislators may not be all about getting re-elected - or at least not flip-flopping on policies just to gain votes. (James Lo)
• An odd argument for why hyper-partisanship exists - because legislators can emphasize their position preferences (rather than their ability to bring home the pork). (Justin Grimmer)
• Gerrymandering is supposed to help incumbents - except it doesn't. (Stephen Ansolobehere and friend)
• Evidence that politicians have something to do with how their constituents think. (Tetsuya Matsubayashi)
• Direct democracy - at least in the form of California ballot initiatives - may not be so good for democracy. (Ly Lac and friends)
• A different view of representation - it's not about reflecting your constituent beliefs, but listening to them. (Rebekah Herrick)
• One reason Americans aren't fond of Congress - when it's out of sync with popular opinion. (Mark Ramirez)
• Voters punish corrupt politicians - but only when economic times are tough. (Elizabeth Zechmeister and friend)
• Voters are rationally irrational - except when they're not. (Michael D. Thomas and friend)
• People get a kick out of giving - all across the globe. (Lara Aknin and friends)...
• ... possibly more so when they're feeling like a superhero as demonstrated in this wicked cool experiment. (Robin Rosenberg and friends)
• ... but not so much if they're feeling superior or inferior to others as demonstrated in this somewhat less cool experiment. (Jonathan Yip and friend)
• Peer pressure makes us bigger - but less happy - givers. (Diane Reyniers and friends)
• Love it. Humans are not the only species that behave altruistically toward strangers. (Jingzhi Tan and friend)
• ... and one of the reasons they may give to strangers is that it's a good way to make friends, just like with humans. (Sebastian Fehrler and friend)
• Power makes us better long-term planners. (Priyanka Joshi and friend)
• ... but more prone to dehumanize others. (Jason Gwinn and friends)
• We're all a little bit honest and a little bit liars. (Rajna Gibson and friends)

recent research

Kevin Lewis picks from January 2012:

• Remembering political events that never happened... especially if they fit your political predispositions. (Steven Frenda and friends)
• And conservatives and liberals are just as likely to shape facts to fit their preconceptions. (Dan Kahan) 
• Ideologues tend to exaggerate the moral extremity of their counter-ideologues. (Jesse Graham and friends)
• How it is partisans can agree on many issues but still hate each other. (Lilliana Mason)
• News on the internet is thought to divide partisans even further - but social media could push the other direction. (Solomon Messing and friend)
• Compromise is for sissies. (Michael R. Wolf)
• More evidence that growing partisanship may be a matter of sorting. (Gary C. Jacobson)
• ... leaving out those whose social and economic views don't align with either party. (Edward Carmines and friends)
• Finding the factors - and functions - of human intelligence. (Adam Hampshire and friends)
• Working with teams makes us smarter - even after we leave the team. (Boris Maciojovsky and friends)
• Any "prosocial" behavior humans have is not necessarily consciously prosocial. (Maxwell Burton-Chellew)
• We're more cooperative when we've had a chance to talk to others - even in our imaginations. (Rose Meleady and friends)
• This article says something about the relationship between money in politics and perceptions of corruption - though I can't tell what. (Daron Shaw and friends)
• It may be obvious to Hill watchers - but academics are still trying to demonstrate that earmarks and campaign donations are connected. (Michael Rocca and friend)
• Our overconfidence may be about projecting overconfidence. (Stephen Burks and friends)
• We have a prodigious memory for FB posts (though it's not clear why). (Laura Mickes and friends)

recent research

The Kevin Lewis trawl continues:

• Social exclusion "hurts" - but when the pain of exclusion is dulled (with a little electrical impulse) people don't mind so much being left out. (Paolo Riva and friends)
• When we're gentle with our criticism chances are we're not protecting the object of the critique, we're protecting ourselves. (Carla Jeffries and friend)
• The network structures that promote "contagions:" it's the close knit groups, not the popular hubs, that matter. (Nicholas Harrigan and friends)
• We treat our thoughts like things. (Pablo Brinol and friends)
• A couple experiments showing that emotions affect our political thinking. (Cengiz Erisen and friends)
• We're not only immediate gratifiers for ourselves - but also for our close relatives. (Fenja Ziegler and friend)
• Good idea generators tend to becomes less good once you acknowledge their ideas. (Barry Bayus)
• Research has shown that we do our best thinking when we let our minds wander - but that only may be true for women. (Mark Niuwenstein and friend)
• Deliberation may have positive outcomes - even among the deeply divided. (James Fishkin and friends)
• Cultural sharing differences on Facebook and RenRen. (Lin Qiu and friends)

recent research

Another batch of Kevin Lewis picks:

• Voters are short-sighted, not because they're impatient but because they're uncertain about the future. (Alan M. Jacobs and friend)
• ... and they are more impressed by the number of pork projects their reps bring home to the district than by the total price-tag of those projects. (Justin Grimmer and friends)
• Citizens value public discourse but, paradoxically, don't like their elected officials on the soap box (as it feels like electioneering rather than leading). (Michael S. Evans)
• Money in politics may not be making citizens cynical - and could be informative. (Michael W. Sances)
• Self-affirmation makes us more open to seeing our mistakes. (Lisa Legault and friends)
• Money doesn't actually buy votes - as evidenced by self-financed candidates. (Adam R. Brown)
• Richard Lau tests his and Redlawsk's "correct voting" model.
• Social pressure is one of the best techniques to win over voters - but using it may also have a backlash effect. (Richard Matland and friend)
• More evidence that robotic calls are a waste of time. (Daron Shaw and friends)
• More participatory citizens are not necessarily more extreme. (Eitan Hersch)
• When party cues lead voters astray. (Logan Dancey and friend)
• Comfort with risk and candidate choice. (Cindy Kam and friend)
• Voting by mail boosts voter turnout - until the novelty wears off. (Paul Gronke)
• ... while social capital may not boost turnout at all - and could even decrease it. (Matthew Atkinson and friend)
• Candidates tainted by the groups associated with them. (Nathaniel Swigger)
• Habitual voting. (Elias Dinas)
• Evidence that voters do pick up information in campaigns - when candidates are moderate. (Dona-Gene Mitchell)
• Asking someone to not "cheat" or not "be a cheater" can make all the difference. (Christopher Bryan and friends)
• When it comes to evaluating influential people, liberals and conservatives may not differ so much. (Jeremy Frimer and friends)
• Dishonesty is contagious. (Robert Innes and friend)
• Evidence from 5 year olds and chimpanzees that humans are uniquely keen to "manage their impression." (Jan Engelmann and friends) ... dittoed in Kristin Leimgruber and friends' work
• A two step theory of the rise of cooperation in humans. (Michael Tomasello and friends)
• Coalition and cooperation games with Nash.
• More evidence that social pressure beats financial incentives in getting behaviors to stick. (Rob Nelissen and friend)
• A model on the evolution of trust. (Michael Manapat and friends)...
• ... and some neuroimaging suggesting we have at least two neural networks for deciding when to cooperate. (Carolyn Ceclerck and friends)
• As evidenced by different ultimatum-type games, not all pro-social behaviors are necessarily the same. (Toshio Yamagishi and friends)
• Using "cognitive reappraisal" to get deliberators to have an open mind. (Eran Halperin)

Recent research

Still catching up with a year of Kevin Lewis posts:

• Researchers spend time in an Athens subway station and observe who punishes "norm violators." (Loukas Balafoutas and friend)
• The good and bad news: consuming media increases perceived risk of terrorism. (Ashley Nellis and friend)
• In social sciences to show "statistical significance" the norm is to get a p-value of 0.05 or less. Unsurprisingly a disproportionate number of published studies just nick the 0.05 mark. (EJ Masicampo and friend)...
• ... which may be one reason most studies are refuted after publication. (Francois Gonon and friends)...
• ... or maybe it's because researchers design studies to get the results they want. (Brent Strickland and friend)
• When politicians we like behave badly, instead of admonishing or forgiving them we may just "decouple" their performance from their morality. (Amit Bhattacharjee and friends)
• We're natural cheaters, unless we have time to reflect and no available justifications for cheating. (Shaul Shalvi and friend)
• We're also natural cooperators, unless we have time to reflect. (David Rand and friends)
• Do we do good for goodness sake or for recognition? This study kinda sorta tries to answer that question. (Liane Young and friends)
• Americans may not be getting more polarized in their beliefs - but that doesn't stop them from increasingly disliking the opposing party. (Iyengar and friends)
• Examining the personality-ideology connection... and not finding much. (Chris Sibley and friends)
• Without realizing it, we so easily can be duped into arguing against our own opinions. (Lars Hall and friends)
• Getting more poor people to the polls doesn't mean their elected officials will pay more attention to them. (Patrick Flavin)
• I think this guy is saying we're more likely to go to the polls when we feel informed - but stay home when we see others are really informed, which is one way to explain why we may never see near 100% voter participation. (Joseph C. McMurray)
• One strategy to getting re-elected: make sure your home team has a good season. (Michael K. Miller)
• Self-censoring to avoid offending ad-buyers is not just an American media phenomenon. (Fabrizio Germano)
• Busting the self-control - glucose theory. (Daniel C. Molden and friends, and Martin Hagger and friends)
• Woah. Researchers experimentally model the evolution of cooperation - in yeast. (Adam James Waite and friend)
• More evidence that we just want our lives to be meaningful. (Peggy Thoits)
• The next economic shift isn't from goods to services, but from goods to service-goods. (James Tien)
• Our feelings about risk in the economic realm... don't apply to the social. (Tim Johnson and friends)
• Emotional intelligence can be primed. (Nicola Schutte)
• When thinking socially we shut down our mechanical-engineering brain and vice versa. (Anthony I. Jack and friends)
• When judging incumbents, we tend to forget the distant past. (Greg Huber and friends)
• When we lose a sense of personal control we gladly give control to others. (Bob Fennis and friend)...
• ... but we're always susceptible to influence from others when deciding moral dilemmas. (Payel Kundu and friend)
• Mere exposure effect at work again - this time in the Eurovision Song Contest. (Diarmuid Verrier and friend)
• Macaque monkeys are also susceptible to the representative bias. (Jerald Kralik and friends)
• Evidence that taking on another's perspective makes us less attached to our earlier beliefs. (Erin Beatty and friend)...
• ... as does suspending those beliefs. (Ilan Yaniv and friend)
• The internet may not be dividing us after all. (Kelly Garrett and friends)
• More attempts to classify ideologues: using a variation on Haidt's moral foundations (Christopher Weber and friend); and using social and economic dimensions (Edward Carmines and friends).
• Etzioni asks if American democracy is delivering the policies its people wants, why is everyone so unhappy?
• How married couples increase partisanship. (Casey Klofstad and friends)
• Listening to the opposition can be stressful. (Hart Blanton and friends)
• Seeing the economy through partisan lenses. (Peter Enns and friend)
• The pointlessness of trying to be a bipartisan president. (George C. Edwards)
• Ugh. Another personality and ideology study - but this time from Yale bigwigs. (Alan Gerber and friends)
• Comparing the US political blogosphere to the UK's and Germany's. (Ki Deuk Hyun)
• Trust and partisanship. (Ryan Carlin)
• Partisanship only affects policy attitudes for unfamiliar policies. (Daniel E. Bergen)
• Yup. The media prefers conflict to moderation. (Michael McCluskey)

recent research

Catching up on a year of Kevin Lewis picks (first year of grad school was a bit of a distraction):

• Humans don't always act the way economists and game theorists think they should - unless they're acting as a group. (Gary Charness and Mattias Sutter)
• Bosses matter. (Edward P. Lazear and friends)
• An evolutionary psychology + game theoretic approach to why we don't like bullies. (Sergey Gavrilets)
• Laughter: grooming for species with large group sizes (aka humans). (Guillaume Dezecache)
• Extraverts make good early impressions, but neurotics may gain more respect in the long haul. (Corinne Bendersky and friend)
• Crowdsourcing predictive algorithms. Woah. (Josh C. Bongard and friends)
• Division of roles is generally considered to be good for goups, but humans often take on life-long roles that can be inflexible. Heather J. Goldsby and friends explain why evolution may have made us that way.
• Josiah Ober argues for democracy's third "core value": dignity.
• One reason why humans butcher each other so much less today than in most of recorded history: technology removed the need to fight over scarce life-sustaining resources. (Nils Petter-Lagerlof)
• Why a little self-righteousness is good for humans. (Duenez-Guzman and friend)
• We're uncomfortable acting selfishly - unless we've been told we have to be. (Jonathan Berman and friend)
• When confronted with chaos, lower-classes get more communal while the rich get more attached to their money. (Paul Piff and friends)...
• ... but that doesn't mean those in low-income areas are always more altruistic. (Jo Holland and friends)
• More evidence that trust is on the decline in the US. (April K. Clark and friends)...
• ... that may have something to do with rising inequality. (Christian Bjornskov)...
• ... but the again, we may become less trust-worthy when we feel like we've been screwed. (Daniel House and friends)
• Competition may be good for society, but that doesn't mean it feels good along the way. (Christopher K. Hsee)
• Time to think may make us less - not more - generous. (Jonathan Schulz and friends)
• Even the communitarian among us prefer only to commune with those who share their values. (Kenneth D. Locke and friends)
• Oxytocin may make us more generous and trusting - but doesn't make us more fair. (Sina Radke and friend)
• Working on a knotty puzzle? Let your mind wander. (Benjamin Baird and friends)...
• ... but maybe only after you've put in a moderate amount of deliberative thought. (Haiyang Yand and friends)
• Moral and political intolerance may be replacing their racial and ethnic versions. (Linda Skitka and friends)
• One way to cut down on confirmation bias: make new information difficult to read. (Ivan Hernandez and friend)...
• ... or maybe by disrupting the "inferior frontal gyrus"? (Tali Sharot and friends)...
• ... or maybe an increased belief in free-will? (Jessica Alquist and friends)
• Evidence that when our behavior changes our preferences (ie "cognitive dissonance"), it's long-lasting. (Tali Sharot and friends, again)
• What's going on in the brain when we accept or reject new info. (Anja Achtziger and friends)
• Roland Benabou explores the mechanisms of groupthink.

recent research

Posting a "this week's picks" from Kevin Lewis' blog - which is actually from a week in September 2012:

• Groups behave more like Homo Economicus than do individual humans. (Gary Charness)
• A theory to explain why humans are so egalitarian: it paid our ancestors to band together against bullies. (Sergey Gavrilets)
• Laughter brings people together - and may be the reason why humans could form larger groups (than our primate relatives). (Guillaume Dezecache)
• Extroverts may impress initially, but Neurotics end up surpassing expectations. (Corinne Bendersky)
• Not entirely sure what's going on here - but it looks like researchers are crowdsourcing research. (Josh Bongard)
• Humans just might be the only species that punish free-riders. (Katrin Riedl)
• Observing cultural traits build - in the laboratory. (Christina Matthews)
• Also in the lab - individuals get a buzz from "group" success, even if they get no actual payoff themselves. (Maxwell Burton-Chellew)
• Direct voting and deliberation help to legitimize decisions - at least with high school kids. (Mikael Persson)
• Feeling out of control can make one clingy and cliquey. (Immo Fritsche) And prefer autocrats. (David Rast)
• We're all trying to convince others (and ourselves) - until others understand us. (Nadira Faulmuller)
• We play nice - as long we know others can drop us in games. (Jing Wang)

the paradoxes of empathy

Is expanding our capacity for empathy the key to human progress? Or does empathy get in the way of solving our most intractable problems?

Paul Bloom discusses (and concludes) in a good read in the New Yorker:

Such are the paradoxes of empathy. The power of this faculty has something to do with its ability to bring our moral concern into a laser pointer of focussed attention. If a planet of billions is to survive, however, we’ll need to take into consideration the welfare of people not yet harmed—and, even more, of people not yet born. They have no names, faces, or stories to grip our conscience or stir our fellow-feeling. Their prospects call, rather, for deliberation and calculation. Our hearts will always go out to the baby in the well; it’s a measure of our humanity. But empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future.

meta-idea on ideas

A founding principle of liberalism (classically speaking) is that freedom of speech is good because in ensures a "marketplace of ideas", where citizens can learn from each other and where, assuming our ability to suss out good ideas from bad, the best ideas will eventually rise to the top.

But can we really assume that we have an "ability to suss out good ideas from bad"? 

I know it goes against the grain of most academics and every humanist to say it - but maybe we just have to give up the idea that we humans are able to reasonably reason at all. The overwhelming evidence of Social Psychology is that rational thought plays a piddling role in the cultivation of our beliefs. More determinant are self-interest and social pressures. What we think are our "reasons" may be exclusively post-hoc rationalizations of beliefs we already hold (because we need, after all, to keep the illusion that our thoughts are both logical and our own). History also gives us plenty of examples of fairly open societies where the ideas that "rose to the top" were not so brilliant, if not disastrously genocidal.

Does that mean a "marketplace of ideas" is a false ideal? Perhaps not. But maybe it gets its power not by virtue of individuals battling out opposing ideas through their mental powers. Maybe the battleground is outside the realm of minds and words - but happens in the world of reality, that is, all the tangible stuff that comes with "good" ideas. 

As many have noted, this can happen on a global scale - as when "capitalism" beat out the idea of "communism" once it became clear that those in capitalist countries had a lot more goodies. It can also happen at the local or national level - as when it becomes clear (in large cities in particular) that holding on to that anti-Semitism or homophobia really isn't going to help your business out much.

Just like every other human, I too like to imagine that my beliefs are the result of reason and enlightenment - but who am I fooling? Transport my brain to 1917 St. Petersburg, 1933 Berlin or 2013 Orange County - who knows, I could have some pretty zany notions about right or wrong. Maybe I have my beliefs today merely because those are the beliefs that have tended to get groups and individuals some nice material benefits. I know they work for me.

lest we get nostalgic for more enlightened days of democracy

"Open-minded voters who make a sincere attempt to weigh the issues and the candidates dispassionately for the good of the country as a whole - exist mainly in the deferential campaign propaganda, in textbooks on civics, in the movies, and in the minds of some political idealists."

- Paul Lazarsfeld, 1944

question for the day

If social scientists are able to make accurate predictions by crunching big data numbers, but there's no theory or understanding behind those predictions - are they doing social science?

Science, knowledge and understanding are fundamentally useful to the degree that they make predictions. Some say human intelligence, at its core, is nothing more than the ability to have a handle on the future (what valley you're most likely to find ripe fruit, what gal is most likely to make a good wife - and agree to ever marry you, what stocks to invest in, etc.). 

In the past, in order to be a good predictor you had to have good theories (or at least a few rules of thumb), because there was no way a human brain could calculate all the factors affecting future events. A good theory therefore, was touted as one that could explain a lot with as little input as possible.

But today, super computers are getting better and better at making predictions with no "understanding" whatsoever. Merely by scanning for past patterns and relations, Watsons can churn out questions to Jeopardy answers and Nate Silvers can predict presidential election results. (Nate's not actually a super computer, but his algorithms are pattern hunters that are more interested in predicting how people will vote rather than why they vote the way they do.)

Here's another prediction: as computers churn ever larger seas of data,  "theory" will one day become as quaint a notion as "philosophy" or "god."

a reminder not to trust our memory

A friend just "reminded" me of a brilliant study run by Slate a couple years back inspired by the work of Elizabeth Loftus - when their readers saw a picture of President Obama shaking Ahmadinejad's hand and 30% reported "remembering" that event. Except Obama never met Ahmadinejad. The photo had been doctored.

A good reminder of the very tenuous relationship we all have with reality.

breaking down the "public" and "opinion" in "Public Opinion"

Yesterday was the first meeting of my "Public Opinion" seminar, a highly anticipated event. I'm a first year graduate student in Political Science who is interested in, among other things, how public opinion is formed and to what degree (if any) it has an effect on how our guys and gals on Capitol Hill make their decisions. So you can imagine I was eager to dig in, first by figuring out what exactly "Public Opinion" is.

That, fortunately, was the first question on our seminar's agenda. Unfortunately, there was no clear definition to be had.

There's one aspect of Public Opinion where there is broad consensus: the "public" is generally understood to mean at least all citizens (I won't complicate things with whether to include residents, visitors, etc), who - in the math of calculating aggregate opinion - each get one vote. This might seem obvious, but it was not always so. Early theorists of Public Opinion - Herbert Blumer in particular - thought researchers should be concerned with "functional" or "effective" Public Opinion. While it might be all nice and democratic to think we each get an equal voice in setting Public Opinion, according to Blumer, we all know that some voices (those with megaphones or hefty wallets) have greater weight in influencing lawmakers. Blumer recommended tracing back from decisions in Congress to see whose opinions held greater sway - and then creating a weighted formula to get a more accurate measure of Public Opinion. A neat idea, it had its faults (chiefly the risk of tautology in defining public opinion as any opinion that results in congressional action) - and ultimately the more democratic notion of "public" won out.

The far hazier half of Public Opinion is the "opinion" part. We're all pretty comfortable using this term, but it of course can mean lots of things: your position on specific policies (eg. what kinds of semi-automatic guns should be legal for sale); your broad preferences (whether safety should trump the 2nd amendment when considering gun laws); or your deepest values (eg the US is founded on liberty). When we talk about Public Opinion it's not always clear what level we have in mind. Earliest notions of Public Opinion - going back to Rousseau who kind of invented the term - had the sense that Public Opinion was of a profound, unified nature - an organic force to be reckoned with. If you didn't pay heed to it you might end up at the guillotine.

Getting specific about what kind of "opinions" we're talking about is not of idle interest. In the background of discussing Public Opinion is - I believe - the accepted notion that Public Opinion matters somehow. Most of us democratic minded folk imagine that lawmakers should pay attention to Public Opinion - but perhaps only the opinions that matter - that is, those we deeply hold. Some call these deeper opinions values, social norms or public culture. Ironically, much of the opinions asked about in Public Opinion polls are of the policy detail sort - the kinds that we probably hold least dearly. There's another paradox when we discuss Public Opinion; the ones publicly debated are those where there is not broad consensus - or, at least where there is a vocal passionate minority. But some of our Public Opinions are not publicly debated - precisely because those opinions are so broadly held (like "democracy is good"). Should we count those widely held views part of "Public Opinion" - or should they be set aside as their own category? Hopefully by the end of the semester I'll have a clue...