Jaymie TicknorPolitical Science 1050 Sect. 0024 and 6 February 2014Lecture #3Chapter #7 : Public Opinion Public opinion: the collection of citizens’ views, attitudes, and beliefs on issues, situations, and public figures on matters of relevance to governmentCentral component of American democracy; public opinions are important because they influence how government runsFour Basic Traits: salience (importance of issue to a person or the public), stability (how likely is it that public opinion will change? The speed with which the change will occur, and the likelihood that the new opinion will endure), direction (does publicfavor or oppose issue? The tendency for or against some phenomenon), intensity (measures strength of direction)Political Socialization: the process of absorbing knowledge about the political world andadding it to one’s core knowledge; develops with age and maturity; events that socialize can have generational, period, or life-cycle effectsPrimacy: principle that what is learned first is learned best and lodged most firmly in one’s mindPersistence: principle that political lessons, values, and attitudes learned early in life tend to structure political learning later on in lifeIdeology: consistent set of ideas about a given set of issuesSources of Political Socialization: group attachments, peer relationships (more impact on attitudes than family), personal experiences (Great Depression, see government in a more positive view), and education (exposed to civic values)Measuring Public Opinion: Surveys: ask questions of the population on a range of issues,events, and peopleParticipants given range of response options or are able to write out their answersMeasurement Error: the error within a study that prevents the observed attitude or opinion from being a true reflection of attitudes and opinionsLimited response options; lack of information; lack of intensityQuestion wording is very important; can be confusing, leading, or oversimplified; different inferences can be drawn from questionDifferent Types of Polls: Tracking poll: poll conducted periodically to track opinion over time; Exit poll: poll conducted by using personal interviews at polls during election days to determine winner for each state; Push poll: poll that spreads negative information about an opposing candidateSampling: sample (small group of people who are chosen to represent the larger population), population (group of interest), and random sampling (a sample in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected for the sample)Sampling Error: error arising in a public opinion survey due to how the sample is chosen from the population (biased)Margin of Error: a range surrounding a sample’s response within which researchers are confident the larger population’s true response would fall (how far off it is)Non-response bias: error that occurs when people who chose to participate have different attitudes than those that declinedPolitical Knowledge: the public is generally uninformed about politics; consequences of the public’s lack of knowledge about politics include: choose to participate or not,not watch or involved in shows presenting polls or polls in general, make up things which can cause error, do not know what vote means, rely on non-factual informationConsequences of Low Political Knowledge: public may say one thing, but when asked again, may say something else; utilize cues (e.g. candidate’s party, education, etc.); answers to questions may depend upon the context; may go along with whatother people in a party are saying and doing; Opinion Leaders: individuals with high levels of interest and expertise in politics who seek to communicate their political beliefs to others; have a great influence on political attitudesThe Miracle of Aggregation: (collecting everyone’s attitude together; phenomenon that occurs when a group consists of individuals who are largely ignorant of a particular issue, but their collective opinion tends to make sense); collectively, public opinion is relatively stable; uninformed opinions tend to be cancelled out by informed opinions; presumes that informed voters tend to have similar attitudesTextbook: Generational Effect: situation in which younger citizens are influenced by events in such a fashion that their attitudes and beliefs are forever rendered distinct from those of older generationsPeriod Effect: event that influences the attitudes and beliefs of people of all agesLife-Cycle Effect: attitudes or physical characteristics that change as one ages, nomatter the time period or generation; the graying of one’s hair is a life-cycle