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We report a meta-analysis of survey studies examining the relationship between people's perceptions of support for their opinions and their willingness to express those opinions. Evidence from the analysis indicates the presence of a very small, but statistically significant, relationship between the degree to which a person believes others hold similar opinions and the willingness to express those opinions. Moderator analyses did not reveal significant moderators of this relationship, although the observed correlations were statistically heterogeneous, suggesting at least one undiscovered moderator.Are we more willing to express our beliefs when we perceive support for those beliefs and less willing to disclose them when we think they are not widely shared? More than 20 years ago, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1974) articulated a theory of public opinion expression and formation based on this idea. Her theory rests on the notion that individuals who perceive they are in the minority will feel pressure either to express the majority opinion or to remain silent (Glynn and McLeod 1985;Salmon and Kline 1985). The ''spiral of silence'' theory asserts that, in a society carroll j. glynn is an associate professor of communication and department chair at Cornell University.

i his study examined fftf attribute agenda-setting/i/ncfwtt of the media, which refers to significant correspondence between prominent issue attributes in the media and the agenda of attributes among audiences. An opinion surve}/ on a local issue and a content analysis of a local newspaper revealed that, by covering certain issue aspects more prominently, the media increase the salience of these aspects among audience members. We also found an important outcome of attribute agenda setting, attribute priming effects. Findings indicated that issue attributes salient in the media were functioning as significant dimensions of issue evaluation among audience members. This study concluded that the media, by emphasizing certain attributes of an issue, tell us "how to think about" this issue as well as "what to think about."