The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Abstract
In this 1992 book John Zaller develops a comprehensive theory to explain how people acquire political information from elites and the mass media and convert it into political preferences. Using numerous specific examples, Zaller applies this theory to the dynamics of public opinion on a broad range of subjects, including domestic and foreign policy, trust in government, racial equality, and presidential approval, as well as voting behaviour in U.S. House, Senate, and presidential elections. The thoery is constructed from four basic premises. The first is that individuals differ substantially in their attention to politics and therefore in their exposure to elite sources of political information. The second is that people react critically to political communication only to the extent that they are knowledgeable about political affairs. The third is that people rarely have fixed attitudes on specific issues; rather, they construct 'preference statements' on the fly as they confront each issue raised. The fourth is that, in constructing these statements, people make the greatest use of ideas that are, for various reasons, the most immediately salient to them. Zaller emphasizes the role of political elites in establishing the terms of political discourse in the mass media and the powerful effect of this framing of issues on the dynamics of mass opinion on any given issue over time.
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Political surveys such as the ANES may prime people with highly partisan content, biasing how they think about the other party.
“An obvious concern is that political surveys, such as the ANES, prime people with highly partisan content, which then biases how they think about the other party (Zaller, 1992).”
From Measuring affective polarization: Matching concepts to measures (2026) · cites this paper as Zaller, 1992
El efecto perturbador de las redes sociales sobre el establecimiento de la agenda varía según los usuarios que procesan determinada información atrayendo la atención de sus amigos virtuales.
“El efecto perturbador de las redes sociales sobre el establecimiento de la agenda, por lo tanto, varía según los usuarios que procesan determinada información atrayendo la atención de sus amigos virtuales (Aruguete, 2016; Zaller, 1992).”
From #Tarifazo. Medios tradicionales y fusión de agenda en redes sociales (2018) · cites this paper as Zaller, 1992
In the field of political communication, individuals strongly interested in politics process political information more thoroughly than individuals less strongly interested in politics.
“In the field of political communication, individuals strongly interested in politics should therefore process political information more thoroughly than individuals less strongly interested in politics (e.g., Zaller, 1992).”
From The detection of political deepfakes (2022) · cites this paper as Zaller, 1992
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- Authors
- Zaller, J. R.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zaller, John R.
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 1992-08-28
- OpenAlex
- W4300170376
- Cited by
- 7,785
- References
- 0
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- FWCI
- 89.00
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Communication › Media Studies and Communication
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Keywords
- mass opinion, political information acquisition, political elites, mass media, political preferences, public opinion dynamics, political attention, political knowledge, salience, framing effects, political discourse, public trust in government, racial equality, presidential approval, voting behavior, United States elections
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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