Theoretical and empirical study on economic consciousness (attitudes) and social evaluation of economy.

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In our survey using a representative sample of Tokyo in 1997, people showed surprisingly low expectation of economic and political actors, even lower than of favorable natural conditions such as good weather or good results of popular sports teams. And contrary to implicit assumption in small government arguments, people's confidence in competitive mechanism constituted an attitudinal dimension different from the dimension represented by management in factor analysis. Whether this separation of confidence in system mechanism from confidence in salient system actors is unique to Japan, as pointed out concerning political system, or found in other developed countries too, is a theoretically important problem posed by our research. Also Our respondents showed very pessimistic view of future of several aspects of Japanese economy. Our hypothesis is that on the basis of pessimistic public opinion on long term trend of Japanese society, sharp worsening of people's outlook on short term economic cycle made extremely pessimistic their confidence in future of Japanese economy.Respondents' sex, education, income, and occupational prestige had clearly to do with wether they rely on television or newspaper as the main source of economic information. In applying the method of free association to the word "Keizai", which correspond to "economy" in English, we got 286 words of which 206 words were found in television news and newspapers, confirming strong power of the media.In the issue of free competition versus regulation for the interests of the weak, clerical workers and blue collar workers showed opinions seemingly corresponding to their occupational interests respectively. But self employed people did not show clear tendency.Concerning the perception of justice, those people who show pessimistic outlook of economy tend to look greater influence of education on occupational success and more assume education is connected with real ability than those who are more optimistic.