The prevalence of the notion of “public opinion” is commonly regarded as the result of the emergence, during the 18th century, of a public sphere “in which political life can be discussed openly in accordance with standards of critical reason” – the development of which was promoted by the bourgeoisie “in opposition to the traditionalist and hierocratic forms of authority of feudalism” (Giddens, 1977, pp. 204-5). Through that process, public opinion “becomes differentiated from mere ‘opinion’, prejudice, or habit”, inasmuch as the former “presupposes a reasoning public” (Idem, p. 205). Consequently, it is often viewed as one of the key socio- political aspects which marked the “division between civil society and the state characteristic of the emerging bourgeois order” – with the formation of a rational public opinion being assumed as an effective strategy to ensure successful mediation between the two dissimilar dimensions (Idem).
With this key socio-political role in mind, the study of public opinion has been a concern for social sciences ever since the development of the modern press, and even more so with the appearance of mass media – which were found not only to convey public opinion, but also to help shape it. Renowned interwar thinkers such as Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann hence made public opinion the centrepiece of their reflections on human nature and communication, and there is, I believe, something to be gained from reconsidering their analysis in light of our contemporary reality. As Alan Chong puts it, “the advantage of reading interwar international theory lies in their eclectic appreciation of the power of public opinion and leadership without undue fixation with realist and idealist labels” (2007, p. 615). For Bernays and Lippman, public opinion – and particularly, its volatile nature – could not be simply understood as a consequence of the “public use of reason”, but
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rather as a direct result of the combination between the nature of the relation that individuals establish with the world around them, and the very specific type of democratic mediatised society that gradually became the norm during the twentieth century.
Adopting an unidealized conception of individual epistemology, Lippman posits that what “each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him” (1956 [1922], p. 25). While we have grown to believe that it is our analytical rationality which allows us to perceive and accurately interpret the world around us, there are actually more complex mechanisms at play. “[F]or the most part”, Lippmann elaborates, “we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see”. Faced with an often incommensurably complex and volatile external reality, “we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture” (Idem, p. 80). Regarding this, Bernays’ own analysis is very much in agreement: the majority of the judgements which constitute the “mental equipment” of the average individual, the main tools one employs in everyday life, come to be “not on the basis of research and logical deduction, but for the most part dogmatic expressions accepted on the authority of his parents, his teachers, his church, and his social, his economic, and other leaders” (1923, p. 62). Stereotypes work at the collective level much in the way in which we, in the preceeding chapter – and following De Sousa (1987) – argued paradigm scenarios to function at the individual one, and the two are therefore necessarily intertwined.
In all likelihood, many of us would be inclined to deny this view – for reasons of intellectual pride, if nothing else. It seems implausible that one could be so blatantly influenced by preconceived notions and passively accept it. Like most truly significant influences to our behaviour, however, the question is that the phenomenon is not so evidently felt or identified by the individual affected by it. As Lippman puts it,
[t]he subtlest and most pervasive of all influences are those which create and maintain the repertory of stereotypes. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception (1956, pp. 89-90).
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Now, if this reliance on pre-established judgements – stereotypes, if you will – is prevalent in the [social] individual’s general cognitive processes, it stands to reason that it should also be so concerning the particular instance of political deliberation. Indeed, both Lippman and Bernays argue that to be the case. “In so far as political habits are alike in a nation”, Lippman states, “the first places to look for an explanation are the nursery, the school, the church” – that is, precisely the places where stereotypes are explicitly or implicitly fomented and perpetuated (Idem, p. 93). Once the latter come into play, political reasoning can no longer be perceived as fundamentally logical and rational exercise, but must instead be regarded as being
motivated by non-rational sources; instead of seeking the relevant information on specific political issues, one is often motivated to seek information that supports one’s pre-existing inclination or preference regarding that issue (Nir, 2011).
Lippmann’s vision is also very much in line with what has been more recently proposed by social sciences researchers such as DeMarzo, Vayanos and Zwiebel, who advanced a model of opinion formation which relies on the notion of “persuasion bias” (2003). This persuasion bias is created via three interconnected phenomena: repetition of information (the amount of times a given idea or political perspective finds itself echoed in the media), social influence (the fact that one’s influence on group opinions depends “not only on accuracy, but also on how well connected one is in the social network according to which communication takes place”), and unidimensional opinions (the tendency for multidimensional individual opinions to be reduced to a narrow “left-right” spectrum) (Idem, pp. 909-10).
As we can surmise, all of the factors – repetition, social influence and unidimensionality of opinions – that underpin the persuasion bias that DeMarzo, Vayanos and Zwiebel identify are predictable effects of the prevalence of certain stereotypes over political thought and public opinion in a given polity. If social thought-processes are determined by a set of stereotypes, there is bound to be a repetition of stereotypical answers to political questions and issues. Furthermore, the more in line one is with the prevailing stereotypical view, the greater the chance of one being well-considered and respected by the social network which is already determined by that view to begin with – and, consequently, the greater one’s potential influence over that network. Finally, the prevalence of a given stereotypical
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view means that any dissenting ideas will necessarily tend to be interpreted in light of that view and subsequently assimilated by it, by translating them into its familiar language – e.g. anyone concerning themselves with environmental issues is necessarily “left-wing”, while any advocate of patriotism is indubitably “right-wing”. We can now recover the idea which we hinted at previously: in a political sphere where the crowd-mind is easily summoned and stereotypical shortcuts made to answer deliberative challenges become commonplace, the involvement of emotions in the decision-making process seems to be unavoidable. But more than merely unavoidable, the involvement of emotions in this process is made necessary by the specific circumstances of contemporary society and the nature of the stereotypes that pervade it. The latter are not essentially rational elements; indeed, if they aim to provide a virtually immediate and efficient answer to questions that may arise in our collective existence, they cannot be of a rational nature. Pure rational deliberation, the exhaustive listing and evaluation of pros and cons leading up to a decision, as it is usually conceived of, is already exceedingly time-consuming at the individual level, let alone multiplied by the multitude of individuals that constitute the public. There is good reason for thinkers such as Kahneman (2011) and Evans (2001) to equate emotional responses to a sort of fast, “quick-and-dirty” modality of thought-processing – even though this perspective often seems implicitly to subscribe to the sort of reason-emotion dichotomy we have been striving to deconstruct.
A cursory glance at contemporary western societies should prove sufficient to reveal a simple truth: there is too much information, simultaneous events and urgent matters, and not enough time for the average – or even the above-average – voter to assimilate and examine them all under the light of “cold reason”. Emotional responses – or rather, rational responses which rely upon certain emotions – are indeed often the most time-effective way to meet a deliberative challenge. It therefore makes sense that the stereotypes mentioned by Lippman must have the ability to beckon that very kind of reasoning – and thus once again evidence the true nature of human rationality as an emotional rationality.
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