Social Psychology
Chapter 22: Public Opinion
Edward Alsworth Ross
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Social irresolution is not the same as individual irresolution
A DISCUSSION that attracts general attention finds its natural issue in a state of public (or social) opinion.[1] The formation of this may best be observed during a discussion that must close at a certain date, i.e., a campaign. A campaign is a social deliberation. This does not necessarily mean general individual irresolution. If nobody had made up his mind, there could be no conflict whatever in the social mind. Says Tarde:[2]
Let us suppose, although it is an hypothesis that could never be realized, that all the members of the nation were simultaneously and indefinitely in a state of indecision. Then war would be at an end, for an ultimatum or a declaration of war presupposes the making of individual decisions by cabinet officers. For war to exist, the clearest type of the logical duel in society, peace must first have been established in the minds of the ministers or rulers who before that hesitated to formulate the thesis and antithesis embodied in the two opposing armies. For the same reason there would be no more election contests.
(347) There would be an end to religious quarrels and to scientific schisms and disputes, because this division of society into separate churches or theories presupposes that some single doctrine has finally prevailed in the previously divided thought or conscience of each of their respective followers. Parliamentary discussions would cease. There would be an end to litigation. . . . There would be an end to the struggles and encroachments of different hinds of law, such as those between the customary law and the Roman law of mediaeval France, for such national perplexity means that individuals have chosen one or the other of the two bodies of law."
A campaign is a struggle between groups of convinced men
All these instances of social struggle imply that over a part of society irresolution has ceased. The effort of each party is to destroy the irresolution still remaining, or to create doubt in the minds of those who have gone with the other side. In a campaign the public is like a more or less inert substance placed between two chambers containing different active acids. The acid that cats into and assimilates this substance the more rapidly is the propaganda of the winning party. Sometimes there is a simple acid acting on a homogeneous substance - the communion cup agitation in a certain church, or the policy of withdrawal from the state militia mooted in a labor organization. Usually, however, the substance is heterogeneous, and each acid has a number of ingredients, - arguments, appeals, proposals, planks, - each of which is presumed to be effective with some section of the public. The acid must be complex when, as in a political campaign, the entire public is being acted upon.
Primary impression
The affinities individuals develop are by no means determined simply by the rational balancing of opposing con-
(348)-siderations. There is first the factor of prepossession and prejudice. Says Bryce:[3] " Every one is, of course, predisposed to see things in some one particular light by his previous education, habits of mind, accepted dogmas, religious or social affinities, notions of his own personal interest. No event, no speech or article ever falls upon a perfectly virgin soil; the reader or listener is always more or less biassed already. When some important event happens, which calls for the formation of a view, these preexisting habits, dogmas, affinities, help to determine the impression which each man experiences, and so are factors in the view he forms."
The hierarchy of authorities
This original impression is soon overlaid by a variety of influences of social origin. Nearly every man looks for guidance to certain quarters, bows to the example of trusted leaders, of persons of influence or authority. Every editor, politician, banker, capitalist, railroad president, employer, clergyman, or judge has a following with whom his opinion has weight. He, in turn, is likely to have his authorities. The anatomy of collective opinion shows it to be organized from centres and subcentres, forming a kind of intellectual feudal system. The average man responds to several such centres of influence, and when they are in accord on a particular question he is almost sure to acquiesce. But when his authorities disagree, there results either confusion or else independence of judgment.
We might compare the individual to a cell in the social brain knit to other cells by afferent and efferent filaments of influence. When he influences more people than have the power to influence him, the efferent filaments pre-
(349) -dominate; but when he is chiefly a recipient of influences, the afferent predominate.
Why, in the course of forming a public opinion, the primary impression, or the element of pure personal conviction arising out of individual thinking, nearly disappears in the process is brought out by Mark Twain:[4]
"There are seventy-five million men and women among us who do not know how to cut out and make a dress suit, and they would not think of trying; yet they all think they can competently think out a political or religious scheme without any apprenticeship to the business, and many of them believe they have actually worked that miracle. But, indeed, the truth is, almost all the men and women of our nation or of any other get their religion and their politics where they get their astronomy - entirely at second hand. Being untrained, they are no more able to intelligently examine a dogma or a policy than they are to calculate an eclipse.
Necessity of relying on the expert
Men are usually competent thinkers along the lines of their specialized training only. Within these limits alone are their opinions and judgments valuable; outside of these limits they grope and are lost - usually without knowing it. In a church assemblage of five hundred persons, there will be a man or two whose trained mind, can seize upon each detail of a great manufacturing scheme and recognize its value or its lack of value promptly; and can pass the details in intelligent review, section by section, and finally as a whole, and then deliver a verdict upon the scheme which cannot be flippantly set aside nor easily answered. And there will be one or two other men there who can do the same thing with a great and com-
(350) -plicated educational project; and one or two others who can do the like with a large scheme for applying electricity in a new and unheard-of way; and one or two others who can do it with a showy scheme for revolutionizing the scientific world's accepted notions regarding geology. And so on, and so on. But the manufacturing experts will not be competent to examine the educational scheme intelligently, and their opinion about it would not be valuable; neither of these two groups will be able to understand and pass upon the electrical scheme; none of these three batches of experts will be able to understand and pass upon the geological revolution; and probably not one man in the entire lot would be competent to examine, capably, the intricacies of a political or religious scheme, new or old, and deliver a judgment upon it which any one need regard as precious. . . . Not ten among the five hundred - let their minds be ever so good and bright - will be competent, by grace of the requisite specialized mental training, to take hold of a complex abstraction of any kind and make head or tail of it.
" The whole five hundred are thinkers, and they are all capable thinkers - but only within the narrow limits of their specialized trainings. Four hundred and ninety of them cannot competently examine either a religious plan or a political one. A scattering few of them do examine both -that is, they think they do. With the results as precious as when I examine the nebular theory and explain it to myself."
Balloting a mode of registering public opinion
The disposition of individual minds to fall gradually into a kind of spiritual organization, in which one may balance ten thousand, explains the importance of the time element in the making of a social decision. The
(351) polling of people on a question when first it comes up brings to light much prejudice, passion, and stupidity. The polling of the same persons after there has been time for free discussion and the maturing of a public opinion, reveals an intelligence and foresight far above that of the average man. It is, therefore, a slander to declare that manhood suffrage equalizes Socrates and Sambo. At its best estate a popular election merely records the outcome of a vast social deliberation in which the philosopher has a million times the influence of the field hand. This collective rumination corrects the ballotbox falsehood that one man is as good as another, and brings it to pass that the decisions of a political democracy may be quite as intelligent as those of an aristocratic society, and at the same time free from the odious class selfishness of the latter.
Class coefficients of value in the formation of public opinion
Although public opinion at its final stage always exhibits the hierarchical structure, this hierarchy of influence need not be identical with the political or social hierarchy, else there could be no popular movements, no peasant revolts, no branching off of humble sects (Dunkers, Doukhobors), no confrontation of classes and masses. A democratic society is characterized by the depreciation of mere social position and the exaltation of the wisdom and competency of the average man. Ultra-democracy presumes the independency of each citizen's opinions, just as ultra-Protestantism assumes that every good Christian will from his prayerful study of the Scriptures have worked out for himself a system of theology. The encouragement of the common man in his own conceit profoundly alters the relation of leaders and led. Contrast the "habitual deference" towards certain classes,
(352) which in England has prevented universal suffrage from working out its normal effects, with the powerlessness of any one class continuously to dominate Australasian or American opinion. Nevertheless, during the decade 1895-1905, a widespread infatuation with the commercial-financial magnates, the so-called "captains of industry," came near to giving this class the control of American public opinion.
Indices of public opinion
An organ of public opinion is at once an expression of existing views and a factor in further moulding the common judgment. Men like to be on the prevailing side - to go with the view that seems likely to win. Hence, the utterance of an organ of public opinion is at once a disclosure of an existing force and a further force in influencing others. This fact multiplies the organs of expression but confuses their utterances, because every voice seeks to represent itself as that of the greater or at least of a growing number. Newspapers are conventionally organs of public opinion, but too many become advocates and thus cease to be indexes or mirrors. On political questions we can follow the drift of opinion in independent or semi-independent journals - the mugwump newspapers, the non-political press, the religious or literary sheets. In general, an advocate is worthless as an index of public opinion on its own hobby, but on related topics it may be valuable. For example, the utterances of the great anti-saloon organ may be significant and representative on everything save "prohibition."
Published letters, interviews, pulpit and platform utterances, the resolutions of mass-meetings, the views of bodies and associations, - all these are straws indicating the set of the current of public opinion. But, again, the
(353) attitude of associations is not significant on questions connected with their main purpose. The attitude of the women of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union on temperance, or of the American Federation of Labor on an eight-hours bill has no revelatory significance. The sphere of competency of such associations is a group of questions whereon they are not committed, but which they are fit to judge. A resolution of a temperance organization on child labor, of a bankers' association on the Torrens system, of a scientific society on rain-making experiments, is at once index and shaper of public opinion.
The merging of public opinion into social tradition
After an overwhelming public opinion has been reached in consequence of adequate discussion, the subject is dismissed from the attention of society and the conclusion, entering the current of tradition, passes quietly down from generation to generation along with other transmitted beliefs and standards. The settled aversion of our own society to gladiatorial combats, polygamy, chattel slavery, the judicial use of torture, the press gang, the use of flogging in the navy, or the official tampering with private correspondence can be traced in every case to a more or less general discussion, that issued in a principle or maxim or canon that, since then, has been accepted without question.
Summary
The formation of a public opinion is best observed during a discussion that must close at a certain date.
The starting point of the process is the primary impression made on individual minds.
The process itself consists in the deepening, modifying or effacing of this primary impression by arguments, appeals, the force of numbers, the influence of authorities, the opinion of specialists, and the example of social superiors.
(354)
An election is a means of registering the predominant types of opinion. In the fashioning of such opinion some individuals have had ten thousand times the influence of others.
Universal suffrage therefore by no means implies the rule of the average man.
After a discussion is completed the resulting public opinion, embodied in structure, law, morals, or policy, is passed down through the generations and social attention turns to other matters.
EXERCISES
1. Why is it that the single-idea party becomes a many-idea party when it approaches success?
2. Why should this be untrue in the case of an association formed for a special and limited purpose and not for general purposes?
3. Show how unlike is the rule of public opinion to the rule of the mob.
4. What are the good and bad points in the guidance of public opinion by the " better classes " ?
5. What are the good and bad points in its guidance by the moral and intellectual élite?
6. What are the good and bad points in its guidance by the experts ?
