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...

a refreshingly candid politician...

... being honest about his dishonesty:

“We all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we have done it.” 

- Jean Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg (speaking of the Euro Crisis, but really could be speaking about any policy anywhere).

"dark" social

Ever get the feeling Facebook has taken over our online lives?

Alex Madrigal at the Atlantic thinks "social networks" only account for less than a quarter of the social web - at least when it comes to link-sharing. The rest comes from emails, chats, texts - what Madrigal calls "dark social" (because you can't track exactly where those links come from).

Social traffic to the Atlantic. For the rest of the web the percentage of "dark social" is more than 3/4ths.

recent research

Picks from Kevin Lewis' picks:

• When faced with a moral dilemma, your heart beats faster. Or is it when your heart beats faster you're faced with a moral dilemma? (Jun Gu)
• We judge others not so much for the bad things they do - but how easily they do them. (Clayton Critcher)
• One way to get humans to act humanistically: remind them they're animals. (Matt Motyl)
• One theory about xenophobia is that it's related to fear of disease. Now you can map that theory on to our national values. (Florian van Leeuwen)
• Power improves your golf swing. (Pascal Burgmer)
• "Hard" republicans and "soft" democrats: not just descriptive metaphors. (Michael Slepian)
• All those political comments you post on Facebook? They actually have an - incremental - effect, at least when it comes to getting your friends to the polls. (Robert M. Bond)
• The reason why campaigns run TV ads: they kinda work. (Michael D. Jones)
• Tightly knit social networks make us politically stupid. (Elif Erisen)
• Making it more convenient to vote actually means more people vote. (Robert M. Stein)
• Citizens might not be such incompetent voters as we sometimes think, especially when it comes to local elections. (Lee Shaker)

what to not forget

Yesterday was September 11th, and try as hard as I could not to look at my Facebook page (okay, not very hard) I couldn't help avoiding all the reminders to "Never Forget."

Yesterday was also the second meeting in my intro to Social Psych seminar, where we get to read all the oldies but goodies in psych research. This week's discussion was Milgram's 1960's Yale study. You've almost certainly heard of it: New Haven residents innocently came in to participate in a study about "learning" and within an hour found themselves obediently administering electric shocks, starting at 15 volts and moving up to 450, to another "participant" (actually a "confederate" in on the game). Almost all participants started to be concerned when the confederated began hollering in pain and begging to be released, but most - over 60% - continued to flip the shock switch all the way up to 450, even after the screams from the confederate suddenly stopped, leading them to wonder if they had killed the guy. What's unsettling about the study is not just that so many people easily follow orders to harm another, it's that these participants look - and act - like such nice people. They're intensely concerned about the welfare of the person they're zapping, visible writhing in metaphysical pain themselves, yet they zap away.

In light of the Milgram study, I couldn't help wonder what it was I was supposed to be not forgetting on September 11th. When we hear the words "Never Forget" in reference to the Holocaust, the lesson is pretty clear; at least according to the tour guide in Israel's Holocaust museum, we're never to forget that humans, even when they appear to be at the height of civilization, are capable of horrendous acts. And, by humans, we're talking about me and you. It's the same message Milgram hoped to get across (along with Hannah Arendt and many others): it doesn't take much to turn us all (or a good 90%+ of us) into willing executioners.

But I'm pretty sure that is not what all those images of the twin towers with the words "Never Forget" were trying to tell me. I know some were saying we should never forget to honor the many innocent lives that were lost in the tragedy. But perhaps just as many don't want to forget that "bad people did something really bad to us."

I agree a noble society always remembers those who were sacrificed in its name (AQ was taking aim at all of us, and just happened to hit those 3000). But I don't understand what we gain out of remembering that some people once tried to hurt us. There's not much to learn beyond anger and paranoia. 

We're much better off remembering Milgram and, instead of hoping we can eradicate all the bad guys from the earth, being very vigilant that one day we don't become the bad guys ourselves.

recent research

Just a few picks this week from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• Awe: it can make you less impatient, more generous with your time and more satisfied with life - all by making you feel richer in time. (Melanie Rudd)
• More evidence that dwelling on what you're grateful for can make you happier. (Steven Toepfer)
• Increase hope - and so increase your chances of reaching your goals - in 90 minutes or less. (David Feldman)

religious inconsistencies

If there is a definitive example of humans' ability to explain away factual inconsistencies in order not to disturb their belief system, it's got to be religion - as this image reminded me this morning:

You don't need to take a course in biblical exegesis (even though I did years ago - and I highly recommend you do too) to admire the creative rationalizations of Judeo-Christians (and, I'm sure, other religious believers) to justify why, for example, it makes perfect sense that we're all descended from Adam and Eve, a couple who only had sons.

But what grates is how many of those same inconsistent believers point to others and demand consistency between their holy book and their religious beliefs - for example, how some Judeo-Christians pick out passages in the Koran and claim that Islam is inherently violent. That is an inconsistency I cannot admire.