LECTURE 1-2: NATURE OF PUBLIC OPINION

Question 1

Public

Answer 1

people who share something in common

Question 2

people who share something in common

Answer 2

public

Question 3

Opinion

Answer 3

position people take on an issue, policy, action or leader. they are not facts, express people’s feelings

Question 4

position people take on an issue, policy, action or leader. they are not facts, express people’s feelings

Answer 4

opinion

Question 5

Attitude

Answer 5

persistent general orientation toward people, groups, institutions. They shape opinions

Question 6

persistent general orientation toward people, groups, institutions. They shape opinions

Answer 6

Attitude

Question 7

Public opinion

Answer 7

represents people’s collective preferences on matters related to gov and politics. sum of many individual opinions

Question 8

represents people’s collective preferences on matters related to gov and politics. sum of many individual opinions

Answer 8

Public opinion

Question 9

Majority opinion

Answer 9

obtained when you aggregate opinions equally. PO: opinion most people hold on an issue. In a democracy, the opinions of the majority are the ones that should count the most and should guide decision-making.

Question 10

Elite Opinion

Answer 10

Politicians, pollsters, policy specialists, activists, and journalists assume the position of opinion leaders, those who shape, create, and interpret public opinion. According to this view, people don’t have time to stay informed on all issues and we can’t trust their opinion.
- PO should be managed by specialists who are knowledgeable and capable of promoting the correct policies.
- Rely on second-hand accounts conveyed by elites through mass media.

Question 11

IS the public informed enough

Answer 11

No but heuristics and aggregation

Question 12

heuristics

Answer 12

People do not need to be very informed about everything, as long as they know who to turn to on policy matters.

Question 13

aggregation

Answer 13

summing up individual choices leads to rationality of some sort, no matter how irrational. Principle of collective rationally: extreme positions tend to counterbalance, and the distribution around the correct choice follows a bell-shapes curve (normal distribution).

Question 14

Theory of public opinion Zaller

Answer 14

how individuals convert political info into political opinions

Question 15

consideration

Answer 15

marriage of information and predispositions (prior held beliefs)
- Information allows the public to form a mental picture about a given issue (often lack direct experience)
- Predisposition allows them to motivate some consideration about it

Question 16

RAS model

Answer 16

Receive, Accept, and Sample based on 4 axioms: reception, resistance, accessibility and response. how individuals respond to political info

Question 17

Reception axiom

Answer 17

the more an individual is concerned with an issue, the more she will be exposed to and receive political messages of that type

Question 18

Resistance axiom

Answer 18

people tend to resist arguments that are inconsistent with their political predispositions as long as have the contextual information necessary to understand the link between the message and their predispositions.
Inverse-U relationship between awareness and opinion change.eople who know the most about politics: receive a lot of information about incumbent’s campaign and are better able to evaluate the new info they encounter critically => RESIST MESSAGES, LITTLE AFFECTED BY POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

• People who pay little attention to politics: receive little or no info about incumbent’s campaign => DON’T RECEIVE THESE MESSAGES, LITTLE AFFECTED BY CAMPAIGNS
• People with intermediate levels of political knowledge: MOST AFFECTED BY INFO

Question 19

Accessibility axiom

Answer 19

the more recently a consideration has been made, the easiest it comes to mind

Question 20

response axiom

Answer 20

individuals answer survey questions by averaging across considerations that are immediately salient or accessible to them (they average out the most important considerations that come to mind). Instead of considering relevance, people answer with the things on top of their heads