So there is a cultural expectation to find out the "true" majority/public opinion in some "scientific" i.e. unbiased way, and polls fill that demand. Even if the instrument itself is not biased in a conventional sense, the range of available options are necessarily limited (as you pointed out), and any answers to those option are heavily influenced by the interaction between the respondent, the pollster and the broader social/cultural context at the moment. That is, they are transitory, like shapes of clouds in the sky. Yet, when they are published as "opinion poll results," they meet the cultural expectation of providing the "true" public opinion, which has the effect of solidifying these transitory reactions to a poll and turning them into a solid "public opinion" in a normative sense that basically suggests (if not tells) all other people what they should think.
There have been many experiments demonstrating that people's answers to question are heavily influenced by how others answer those questions, even f the answers given by others are obviously wrong. I do not see why publishing poll results does not have the same effect on the general public.
Wojtek
On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
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> On Oct 11, 2010, at 10:50 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
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>> First, polls do not measure public opinion, but manipulate it.
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> Some do, some don't. They can constrain the realm of the possible, and tell people what to think (if not think about), as they say in the pub opin biz, but honest detailed ones can also reveal things about what people think. And what most people think is very contradictory. It's completely unsystematic, based on hearsay and instinct and fantasy.
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> Doug
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