In Search of a Useable Past

The "voice of the people," the root meaning of public opinion,is an old idea. Early political thinkers struggled to definethe proper role of public opinion in government. The confluenceof developments in commercial opinion polling and social psychologicalstudies of attitudes in the 1930s gave the concept new meaning.An historical perspective is helpful in understanding how publicopinion research has progressed; it also allows us to identifyonce vital but now neglected issues. A concern with professionalstandards in opinion research links modern researchers withthe moral imperative contained in the earliest idea of publicopinion.     

COHORT TRENDS IN ATTITUDES ABOUT LAW AND ORDER: WHO'S LEADING THE CONSERVATIVE WAVE?

Aging is commonly assumed to be associated with the adoptionof increasingly conservative social and political attitudes.Empirical tests of this assumption have provided little support,but most analyses have focused on attitude domains where publicopinion was shifting in a liberal direction. Using three itemsabout law and order, a domain marked by conservative trends,this paper evaluates the aging-conservatism hypothesis withdata drawn from 18 national surveys covering the period 1959–85.Attitude changes in four cohorts are analyzed with Tay lor'shierarchical goodness-of-fit procedures for evaluating trendsin public opinion. The findings show that each of the cohortshas participated in the shift toward more conservative opinionson law and order issues, and that either constant or zero differencescharacterize the trends in percentage differences between theoldest and the other cohorts. In the absence of differentialrates of change, we conclude that older cohorts are no morelikely than younger cohorts to adopt conservative law and orderattitudes and that period effects are influencing each of thecohorts equally.     

The Structure and Stability of Political Attitudes: Findings from the 1974-76 Dearborn Panel Study

This article examines the structure and stability of publicopinion between the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections. Thedata consist of a four-wave panel study of 800 residents inDearborn, Michigan; interviews were conducted in the springof 1974, 1975, and 1976 and in the fall of 1976 immediatelyafter the presidential election. The paper focuses on the structureof political attitudes, the stability of attitudes, and theimpact of attitudes on the presidential votes. A central thesisis that public opinion can be disaggregated into two clusters—theDisintegration Cluster and the Alignment Cluster—one ofwhich disrupts and one of which reinforces partisan voting.On the basis of correlations between the seven factors makingup the clusters, we anticipate neither a rapid realignment nora disintegration of the party system, but instability, withelection outcomes affected by attitudinal factors salient toa specific campaign. We find signs of increased crystallizationof political attitudes compared to the 1956–1958–1960national panel. Finally, our voting studies indicate that theDisintegration Cluster had a significant effect on the 1972election, but that issues in general had little impact in 1976,once controls were introduced for party identification and candidateimage.     

Public Opinion on Foreign Policy: The Multilateral Public that Perceives Itself as Unilateral

Americans have a strong preference for multilateral foreignpolicies over unilateral foreign policies. But do Americansknow their own preferences? Data from a national survey showwide misperceptions of public opinion on foreign policy. WhileAmericans strongly prefer multilateral policies, they overestimatepublic support for unilateral policies. For example, while only23 percent of respondents agreed that the more important lessonof September 11 is that the United States should work aloneto fight terrorism rather than work with other countries, respondentsestimated that almost 50 percent of Americans endorsed thisview. Moreover, misperceptions of public opinion were relatedto subsequent judgments of specific policies. For example, respondentswho incorrectly perceived the unilateral view as the majorityview were 1.84 times more likely to support a presidential decisionto invade Iraq without the approval of the United Nations (UN)Security Council than respondents who correctly perceived theunilateral view as the minority view. Misperceptions of publicopinion were also associated with the belief that the currentforeign policy reflects the opinions of the American people.This belief in the legitimacy of the foreign policy was as stronga predictor of support for specific unilateral policies as respondents’attitudes.     

SOUTHERN (DIS)COMFORT: SEXUAL PREJUDICE AND CONTACT WITH GAY MEN AND LESBIANS IN THE SOUTH

Recent surveys have found antigay attitudes and behavior to be commonplace. In this article, we use contact theory to explain these prejudicial attitudes. We contribute to the literature on contact and prejudice by expanding contact to include not only whether the heterosexual knows any gay men or lesbians, but also how many, for how long, and in what ways. To these, we add a new and unique measure of contact: a person's contact with the gay community. The data are from a survey of 956 undergraduate students at a large urban university in the southeastern United States. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses find that contact with gay men and lesbians significantly reduces prejudice toward them; although, only as contact with gay friends or the gay community. Contact has stronger effects on women's prejudice than men's prejudice; however, the attitudes of African Americans toward lesbians and gay men are unaffected by gay contact. The results suggest that contact intervenes between prejudice and sex, race, religiosity, and gender attitudes.     

Antiblackness as a Logic for Anti-Immigrant Resentment: Evidence From California

Drawing on data from a novel survey of Californians, this article examines the relationship between anti-immigrant resentment and antiblackness. Over the last decade, there has been a significant increase in research on anti-immigrant resentment, as well as a steady growth in public opinion literature on antiblack bias. Nonetheless, there are almost no studies that examine the relationship between these types of attitudes. Using two different measures of anti-immigrant resentment and three different measures of antiblack bias, we find that antiblackness among those Californians surveyed was significantly and robustly correlated with anti-immigrant resentment. Our findings suggest that even in a state where there is a relatively small black population and where there is little overlap between the categories of “black” and “immigrant,” attitudes toward blacks may be shaping attitudes toward immigrants. The findings suggest a need to move beyond dyadic theories of othering and in doing so, to think more critically about how the racialization of one group can shape the racialization of other groups.     

Invoking Public Opinion: Policy Elites and Social Security

Do policy elites invoke public opinion? When they do, are theirclaims based on evidence from public opinion surveys? To learnabout the claims that policy elites make, we examined statementsthe president and members of Congress, experts, and interestgroup leaders in congressional hearings made about Social Security.To learn about opinion data on Social Security, we conducteda Lexis-Nexis search of the archives of the Roper Center forPublic Opinion Research. Our analyses show that policy elitesdiscussing Social Security did invoke public opinion. Contraryto our expectations, however, few of the elite invocations ofpublic opinion cited specific surveys or concrete facts aboutthe distribution of opinion. Although claims directly contradictingsurvey evidence were relatively rare, only with the rather fewspecific claims by congressional elites did we find much clear-cutsupport in the available polling data. Relatively seldom couldwe find clear-cut support for the elites' general claims. Moreover,some of the most frequent claims about public opinion—couldhave been contested but seldom were. The highly visible andwell-polled case of Social Security suggests that specific,data-based elite invocations of public opinion may be even lesscommon on other, lower-visibility and less-polled issues. Italso suggests that survey research professionals might do wellto intensify their scrutiny of public discourse about publicopinion and to increase their efforts to bring scientific expertiseto bear upon such discourse.     

Palestinian National Authority's public relations policies relating to Israel: Current attitudes among Palestinian officials and media experts

This study investigates attitudes about Palestinian public relations policies during the Palestinian struggle in the Israeli media war and future challenges that will face the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in public relations planning. This study shows that Palestinian groups have mixed attitudes toward PNA's public relations plans and policies. The media experts tend to see the PNA's efforts as reactive, not pro-active. The experts think that PNA's main concern has been to follow up on daily political events, and thus its approach to public relations has been more of a reaction to Israeli practices rather than a strategic pro-active plan.     

IMPLICATIONS OF INTERNET TECHNOLOGY FOR MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

This research examines how parental heterosexism—negative attitudes toward homosexuals and homosexuality—and other family characteristics relate to the development of children's attitudes toward people with HIV/AIDS (PWA). Attention is directed to the overall relationship between parents’ and children's attitudes and to the potential mechanisms through which these linkages are manifested. Based on social learning theories of childhood socialization, a range of mechanisms is considered, focusing on heterosexist attitudes in parents and communication with children about AIDS. Findings indicate that parental attitudes concerning homosexuals influence children's attitudes toward PWA, implying that there can be negative as well as positive consequences of parents’ beliefs on children's attitudes. The possibility of negative parental effects on children's prejudices toward PWA suggests that in-school HIV/AIDS education at younger ages is more important than previously thought.     

The influence of interviewer characteristics on support for democracy and political engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa*

This study investigates how an interviewer’s characteristics affect how respondents answer survey questions about democracy and political engagement. I analyze data from the 2008 Afrobarometer surveys, in which 810 interviewers surveyed 27,713 respondents across 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Using these data, I study how interviewer education, age, and gender affect two outcomes: (1) response distributions to attitudinal and behavioral survey questions and (2) the likelihood of respondents saying ‘don’t know’ to a survey question. The analysis also investigates how the respondent’s perception of who sponsored the survey (NGO, private sector, government) affects attitudes. The results show that these interviewer characteristics affect the quality of survey data on political attitudes and behaviors. In the discussion, I consider the implications for research based on public opinion data about democracy and political engagement.     

Self-Interest and Civilians' Attitudes Toward the Vietnam War

The possible consequences of self-interest on American publicopinion were examined in the context of the United States militaryinvolvement in Vietnam Civilians' personal connections to thewar, in terms of their friends' and relatives' military service,did make them pay more attention to the war, but such connectionsseemed to have only weak effects on the salience of the waras a political issue. Similarly, there was no evidence thatthe self-interested had distinctively self-serving policy attitudestoward the war. Rather, the more important determinants of attitudestoward the war were attitudes toward various political symbolsassociated with the war. Finally, self-interest made very littledifference in enhancing the consistency of partisan attitudesinvolved in the 1968 presidential decision.     

Exploring the Contextual Determinants of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants and Criminal Activity and their Spillover Policy Implications

Immigrants are routinely tied to a range of social problems in the policy making process in the US political system. Little is known however about the extent to which citizens hold attitudes that connect immigrants to particular social problems and whether these attitudes spill over to influence citizens’ preferences toward specific public policy alternatives that might appear to be largely independent of immigrants and immigration. Investigating the nexus between immigration and crime, we ask how Anglo whites’ contextual environments influence their propensity to link immigrants to a salient social pathology like crime. Results show that whites living in states where immigrant populations have increased most dramatically and in states with lower socioeconomic characteristics are more likely to associate immigration with increased criminal activity. Whites’ attitudes toward immigration‐induced crime has important spillover implications to the larger public policy making process as whites who view immigrants as a cause of criminal activity are more likely to support tougher criminal sentencing and the death penalty.     

The profession of medicine and the public: examining Americans' changing confidence in physician authority from the beginning of the 'health care crisis' to the era of health care reform

Recent work on the sociology of the professions, in general, and on the profession of medicine, in particular, target dramatic changes in the organization of social institutions, "boundary work" among professionals, and the implications of both for professional power. However, public attitudes cited in theories as a critical linchpin of professional status remain relatively unexplored in the face of these changes and widespread contentions of public dissatisfaction. Using data from the 1976 National Survey of Access to Care (Aday, Andersen, and Fleming 1980) and the 1998 General Social Survey (Davis, Smith, and Mardsen 1998), we take advantage of a unique opportunity to compare the public's attitudes across a 20-year period. We examine individuals' evaluations of the way physicians do their work and their ability to confront health problems. Three findings support a complex view of public sentiments. First, while public confidence in physicians remains relatively high, we document a crystallization of attitudes reflecting greater negative and fewer positive sentiments. Second, while neither the structure of attitudes nor the role of sociodemographic characteristics in explaining attitudes has significantly shifted over time, in 1998 health status and insurance status are correlated with negative attitudes. Third, using General Social Survey time trend data on the confidence in medicine compared to other professions (science and education), we find support for a general public response to social institutions, with confidence in medicine tracking closely with confidence in science in level, and education in pattern. We end with four possible explanations of our findings, including and a general discussion of the role of the public in the professional status of physicians and its implications for social change in the institution of medicine.     

Toward Women's Political Resociolization:

Using data from a small quasi-experimental panel study of participants in a public leadership education program, the impact of earlier socialization patterns on adult attitudes toward feminism, and the impact of participation in the public leadership program on change in those attitudes, is assessed. Findings from a path analysis of sociolization contexts and attitudes support a concept of resociolization wherein adult sociolization contexts can be seen as the stimuli for a significant enhancement of women's politicization.     

„Aber es gibt keine Antisemiten mehr“: Eine experimentelle Studie zur Kommunikationslatenz antisemitischer Einstellungen

Since the public sanctioning of anti-Semitism after 1945 has mostly prevented the articulation of anti-Semitic attitudes in public they outlast in private. This development was taken into account by the theory of anti-Semitism, in particular by the concept of communication latency, but had almost no impact on the data collection process. For the sensitive character of anti-Semitic attitudes it is uncertain whether they are reported truthfully in surveys. Respondents are assumed to answer in a socially desirable manner. Using an experimental setting, we demonstrate that the cognitive activation of an anti-Semitic primary group norm increases the prevalence of self-reported anti-Semitism. In addition, we show that under statistical control of this communication mechanism the explanatory power of established determinants of anti-Semitic attitudes such as education, political attitudes, and political interest decreases.     

Contact Reduces Transprejudice: A Study on Attitudes towards Transgenderism and Transgender Civil Rights in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the relationship between Hong Kong Chinese people's contact with transgender/transsexual (TG/TS) people and attitudes toward transgenderism and transgender civil rights, based on Allport's Contact Hypothesis. The term transprejudice is introduced to refer to the negative valuing, stereotyping and discriminatory treatment of TG/TS people. Data are presented from a population-based survey with a random sample of 856 Hong Kong Chinese persons aged between 15 and 64, using the Chinese Attitudes towards Transgenderism and Transgender Civil Rights Scale (CATTCRS). Attitudes, assessed on both personal and institutional dimensions, are examined in relation to participants’ gender, age, educational level, religiosity, and previous contact with transpeople. Results suggest that previous contact with transpeople was significantly associated with attitudes reflected in the scale; decreased social distance, decreased social discrimination, and decreased transprejudice, increased awareness of discrimination against transpeople, increased support for equal opportunities, increased support for post-operative transsexual civil rights, and increased support for anti-discrimination legislation. Our findings support the contact hypothesis, that contact has a positive effect on attitudes towards TG/TS persons. We discuss the implications of these findings for public education interventions and public policy, as well as for research.     

Becoming a Movement Society? Patterns in the Public Acceptance of Protest, 1985–2006

ABSTRACT

A social movement society refers to a society in which protest is a standard, institutionalized feature of the political landscape. Is the United States steadily becoming such a society? Whereas other empirical tests of the movement society thesis have focused on political tactics and individual participation in protest, we point to the public’s attitudes as another indicator of the movement society. Using the General Social Survey (GSS) data, we find that the public has grown more accepting of protest with time. In addition, using indicators of social location, social engagement, and political engagement as predictors, we find that while these factors help explain support for the protest, their effects vary depending on the type of protest in question. Age, education, gender, income, employment status, and political interest all affect the acceptance of public meetings and demonstrations; however, the effect of income is reversed when it comes to the acceptance of a nationwide strike. Lastly, an age-period-cohort analysis finds evidence that a period effect is greater than a cohort effect in changing attitudes over time. Taken together, these findings support the claim that broad, societal-level influences have contributed to the public acceptance of protest, which is suggestive of a social movement society. Yet while the United States may constitute a social movement society, it is one with clear boundaries: Individuals do support protest but only to the extent that it does not disrupt the material advantages associated with their social location.     

DETERMINANTS OF PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT AIDS

Findings from analyses presented in this paper, using data froma Roper survey, suggest that the role of attitudes toward homosexualsshould be at the center of future explorations of the relationshipbetween the media coverage of AIDS and public opinion. Whilethe available data are limited, our analyses raise the possibilitythat anti-gay attitudes constrain the ability of the media toeffectively communicate information about risk factors and howthe disease is transmitted. Researchers need to explore thepossibility that anti-gay attitudes stand between media informationand public knowledge and public opinion.     

Fear of the "Alien Other": Cultural Anxiety and Opinions about Japan

American public opinion toward Japan grew more negative coincident with 1980s "Japan-bashing" media messages. Two theories of opinion formation provide explanations for this. Democratic representation theory understands opinions as rational responses to new information. Cultural interpretation theory holds that public opinion is based on one's receptiveness to media discourse. Opinion is neither a rational response to information nor the passive acceptance of elite dictates. People differentially interpret media messages and form opinions in a process that is shaped by media attentiveness and their subjective cultural anxieties. Survey data permit an indirect test of the two theories applied to anti-Japan opinion. OLS regression analysis performed on GSS for four time periods reveals that anti-Japan opinion is rooted less in "rational" responses to personal economic insecurity or fear of increased global competition than in racial attitudes and domestic social-cultural concerns. America's negative opinion toward Japan in the 1990s is better understood as domestic anxieties that are redirected toward a symbolic target that the mass media has highlighted.     

PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD SUICIDE DEMOGRAPHIC AND IDEOLOGICAL CORRELATES

Despite long-standing research interest in the social correlatesof suicide, public attitudes toward suicide have received comparativelylittle attention. Using data from NORC's General Social Survey,this study examines popular support for a person's right tocommit suicide when s/he is tired of living or faced with anincurable disease, bankruptcy, or family dishonor. Survey responsesto these four items conform to a unidimensional Guttman-typescale. Opposition to suicide, as measured by this scale, variesalong a number of sociodemographic lines. Prolife beliefs andcivil libertarianism are strongly related to a person's attitudestoward suicide and explain at least part of every sociodemographicrelationship examined. By contrast, life satisfaction, anomia,and social participation measures show no significant associationswith suicide attitudes.