Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Uniform Nature of Mass Opinion

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

In the United States, preferences for a more liberal or conservative government yield policy shifts in the same direction. The representative consequences of this opinion-policy linkage depend, however, on who contributes to changes in public opinion. This project seeks to identify which segment(s) of the population contribute to aggregate opinion change. The project develops and tests a theory of opinion change that argues that prior research has incorrectly dismissed the ability of the least politically sophisticated to systematically update their political attitudes. The theory posits that the most and least politically sophisticated translate streams of positive and negative messages into impressions about political issues. Time series analysis is used to analyze the causal dynamics of opinion change - for the most and least sophisticated segments of society - for three "hard" issues: defense attitudes, welfare attitudes, and policy mood. The project also uses agent-based modeling to test the individual level assumptions of the theory. This research provides two important theoretical advances to the public opinion literature. First, the theory predicts that government responsiveness to public opinion reflects changing attitudes of all segments of society - not just the politically sophisticated. Second, the theory suggests that positive and negative media frames have a powerful influence on changes in public opinion. Even the most politically sophisticated respond systematically to frames and biases presented by the media. The research impacts the broader community. Understanding whose opinions are heard by government is of paramount importance for representative democracy.