Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Uniform Nature of Mass Opinion

在美国，对更自由或更保守的政府的偏好会导致政策朝着同样的方向转变。然而，这种意见-政策联系的代表性后果取决于谁对公众舆论的变化做出了贡献。该项目旨在确定哪部分人(S)对总体意见变化做出了贡献。该项目开发并测试了一种观点改变理论，该理论认为，先前的研究错误地否定了政治上最不成熟的人系统性地更新他们的政治态度的能力。该理论假设，政治上最老练和最不老练的人会将积极和消极的信息流转化为对政治问题的印象。时间序列分析被用来分析观点变化的因果动态--对于社会中最复杂和最不复杂的部分--三个“困难”问题：国防态度、福利态度和政策情绪。该项目还使用基于主体的建模来检验该理论的个体水平假设。本研究为舆情文献提供了两个重要的理论进步。首先，该理论预测，政府对公众意见的回应反映了社会各阶层态度的变化--而不仅仅是政治上的老练。其次，该理论表明，积极和消极的媒体框架对公众舆论的变化具有强大的影响。即使是政治上最老练的人，也会对媒体提出的框框和偏见做出系统的回应。这项研究影响了更广泛的社区。了解政府听取谁的意见对代议制民主至关重要。

In the United States, preferences for a more liberal or conservative government yield policy shifts in the same direction. The representative consequences of this opinion-policy linkage depend, however, on who contributes to changes in public opinion. This project seeks to identify which segment(s) of the population contribute to aggregate opinion change. The project develops and tests a theory of opinion change that argues that prior research has incorrectly dismissed the ability of the least politically sophisticated to systematically update their political attitudes. The theory posits that the most and least politically sophisticated translate streams of positive and negative messages into impressions about political issues. Time series analysis is used to analyze the causal dynamics of opinion change - for the most and least sophisticated segments of society - for three "hard" issues: defense attitudes, welfare attitudes, and policy mood. The project also uses agent-based modeling to test the individual level assumptions of the theory.This research provides two important theoretical advances to the public opinion literature. First, the theory predicts that government responsiveness to public opinion reflects changing attitudes of all segments of society - not just the politically sophisticated. Second, the theory suggests that positive and negative media frames have a powerful influence on changes in public opinion. Even the most politically sophisticated respond systematically to frames and biases presented by the media. The research impacts the broader community. Understanding whose opinions are heard by government is of paramount importance for representative democracy.