Opinion Norms

From a social science perspective, public opinion is much more than an aggregation of polling statistics. While individual survey responses are an instrumental component of understanding public opinion as a social force, the context in which the individual operates (e.g. media environment, typical discussion patterns) is an equally important consideration in obtaining a better understanding of the evolution of public opinion. Recognizing the normative aspects of a public opinion climate allows researchers to understand better how individuals come to possess opinions and how those opinions are shared with others.

Past work on behavioral norms offers insight as to how contextual forces, or “climates of opinion,” can influence the actions and expressions of group members. Such social norms can be classified into two main categories, descriptive and injunctive. Descriptive norms are informational and describe the way things are within a given social setting, whereas injunctive norms possess a sanctioning function and prescribe the way things ought to be. Individuals who violate injunctive norms (i.e. engage in proscribed behavior) run the risk of alienating themselves from those around them.

By making use of interactions with important reference groups and exposure to available media, individuals are able to get a sense of what is socially acceptable when expressing political views and opinions. This iterative process establishes the normative environment surrounding opinion expression—it is within this climate that individuals may feel more or less inclined to express their own view. Respondents' perceptions of congruity between their own opinion and the perceived opinion of a given reference group can either encourage or dissuade opinion expression, much like behavioral norms influence the actions of those within a given social context.

Individual perceptions of this climate are an important and quantifiable aspect of understanding the impact that normative environments can have on individual behavior and expression. Aggregated perceptions of public opinion, such as those generated from survey data, constitute a “social barometer” that quantifies both the extremity and the amount of agreement among actors as related to these prevailing social forces.

Researchers interested in capturing the normative aspects of public opinion should account for the following opinion characteristics: (a) the valence and the strength of individual opinion (e.g. Do you approve or disapprove of X?, and To what degree?); and (b) perceptions of the valence and strength of the group opinion (e.g. key reference groups, such as members of your community, residents of this state). Within a survey context, questionnaires need to be geared toward respondents' perceptions of the climate of opinion and can included questions such as, In your judgment, what would the reaction be if someone expressed strong support for Candidate X during the course of a conversation among people in your neighborhood: Very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative, or very negative? While survey items such as these tap into individual perceptions of the context in which opinions are expressed, they also allow for simple (experimental) manipulations of key [Page 550]variables within the question (e.g. substituting candidates or discussion topics, level of support or opposition, and reference groups named within the question).

...