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Chapter Four: Political Socialization and Public Opinion
Review
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| This chapter dealt with the role that political socialization and mass opinion play within the American polity. It discussed the enculturation process of political socialization through primary and secondary groups as they transmit the American political culture to the next generation. Furthermore, this chapter dealt with the structure of public opinion as exhibited among informed, interested elites juxtaposed against unknowing and uncaring masses. Public opinion is further distributed by showing distinct differences in issue stances relative to various demographic groups within our society divided along class, race, ethnic, and gender lines. Additionally, we read how public opinion polling/surveying developed from its anecdotal origins to become scientific. Since then, polling has been used in diverse ways with different types of surveys employed for different purposes, including campaigning (tracking polls), analyzing (preference polling), reporting (opinion surveys), and even forecasting (exit polls). Lastly, this chapter provided a basic division of political ideology between liberals, populists, libertarians, and conservatives along dimensions measuring the amount of intervention by the government into the economy and the degree of personal freedoms supported within the society. |
Focus Questions
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1. What does it mean to say that America is the only country in the world based on a creed?
2. Where do individual Americans get their opinions about politics, and what are the forces that shape those opinions?
3. How well informed is public opinion, and how quickly and frequently does it change?
4. Do Americans support or oppose abortion, or is the distribution of opinion more complicated than that?
5. What does it mean to be liberal or conservative, libertarian or populist, to be green in America today?
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