Private-Public Opinion Discrepancy

Abstract

In many Western societies there are rising concerns about increasing polarization in public debate. However, statistics on private attitudes paint a different picture: the average attitudes in societies are more moderate and remain rather stable over time. The present paper presents an agent-based model of how such discrepancies between public opinion and private attitudes develop at the scale of micro-societies. Based on social psychological theorizing, the model distinguishes between two types of agents: a) those seeking to gain or maintain a good reputation and status, and b) those seeking to promote group harmony by reaching consensus. We characterized these different types of agents by different decision rules for either voicing their opinion or remaining silent, based on the behavior of their proximal network. Results of the model simulations show that even when the private attitudes of the agents are held constant, publicly expressed opinions can oscillate and (depending on the reputational concerns of individual actors) situations can occur in which minorities as well as majorities are silenced. We conclude that the macro-level consequences of micro-level decisions to either voice an opinion or remain silent provide a foundation for better understanding how public opinions are shaped. Moreover, we discuss the conditions under which public opinion could be considered a good representation of private attitudes in a society.

The experience and emergence of attitudinal consensus in conversations

“…The findings suggest that whereas the content and form of conversations have strong effects on the experience of consensus, they are less likely to affect attitude consensualization. This finding aligns with research demonstrating the stability of attitudes over time, where social norms (in the sense of which attitudes are appropriate to express) may vary heavily over time (Manfredi et al., 2020). This may lead one to question the value of everyday political conversations for reaching consensus.…”

Retracted: Public opinion as a means of managing social processes

“…The developed system of value orientations, developed by collective experience, determines the specifics of the factors of establishment of public opinion. These factors help to reveal the public's access to ideas and views (Bavaresco, 2019; Manfredi et al, 2020).…”

Opinion dynamics: Public and private

“…with multiple types of individuals [26,27], showing coarsening and/or fragmentation of opinions. Indeed, the difference between public and private opinions were also studied in agent based models [28], but with two different groups of individuals, classified according to their attitudes towards expressing public views.…”