I have to wonder if many of the respondents in the survey didn’t hold any position with much strength in the first place. Our society enforces the belief, not only that everyone is entitled to their opinions, but that everyone should have an opinion on just about any issue. People tend to stand by “opinions” that are really just snap judgments, which may be largely arbitrary.
If the respondents had little basis for determining their responses in the first place, it’s unsurprising if they don’t notice when they’ve been changed, and that it doesn’t affect their ability to argue for them.
“The statements in condition two were picked to represent salient and important current dilemmas from Swedish media and societal debate at the time of the study.”
Even then, people can fail to have strong opinions on issues in current debate; I know my opinions are silent on many issues that are ‘salient and important current dilemmas’ in American society.
I remember an acquaintance of mine in high school (maybe it was 8th grade) replied to a teacher’s question with “I’m Pro-who cares”. He was strongly berated by the teacher for not taking a side, when I honestly believe he had no reason to care either way.
IIRC, the study also asked people to score how strongly they held a particular opinion, and found a substantial (though lower) rate of missed swaps for questions they rated as strongly held.
I would not expect that result were genuine indifference among options the only significant factor, although I suppose it’s possible people just mis-report the strengths of their actual opinions.
Quite. My own answer to most of the questions in the survey is “Yes/No, but with the following qualifications.” It’s not too hard for me to imagine choosing, say, “Yes” to the surveillance question (despite my qualms), then being told I said “No,” and believing it.
You won’t fool these people if you ask them about something salient like abortion.
Abortion is a complex issue. You could propably change someone’s position on one aspect of the abortion debate, such as a hardline pro-lifer “admitting” that it’s OK in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
There is a long tradition in social science research, going back at least to Converse (1964), holding that most people’s political views are relatively incoherent, poorly thought-through, and unstable. They’re just making up responses to survey questions on the spot, in a way that can involve a lot of randomness.
This study demonstrates that plus confabulation, in a way that is particularly compelling because of the short time scale involved and the experimental manipulation of what opinion the person was defending.
I have to wonder if many of the respondents in the survey didn’t hold any position with much strength in the first place. Our society enforces the belief, not only that everyone is entitled to their opinions, but that everyone should have an opinion on just about any issue. People tend to stand by “opinions” that are really just snap judgments, which may be largely arbitrary.
If the respondents had little basis for determining their responses in the first place, it’s unsurprising if they don’t notice when they’ve been changed, and that it doesn’t affect their ability to argue for them.
But the study said:
“The statements in condition two were picked to represent salient and important current dilemmas from Swedish media and societal debate at the time of the study.”
Even then, people can fail to have strong opinions on issues in current debate; I know my opinions are silent on many issues that are ‘salient and important current dilemmas’ in American society.
I remember an acquaintance of mine in high school (maybe it was 8th grade) replied to a teacher’s question with “I’m Pro-who cares”. He was strongly berated by the teacher for not taking a side, when I honestly believe he had no reason to care either way.
IIRC, the study also asked people to score how strongly they held a particular opinion, and found a substantial (though lower) rate of missed swaps for questions they rated as strongly held.
I would not expect that result were genuine indifference among options the only significant factor, although I suppose it’s possible people just mis-report the strengths of their actual opinions.
Quite. My own answer to most of the questions in the survey is “Yes/No, but with the following qualifications.” It’s not too hard for me to imagine choosing, say, “Yes” to the surveillance question (despite my qualms), then being told I said “No,” and believing it.
You won’t fool these people if you ask them about something salient like abortion.
Abortion is a complex issue. You could propably change someone’s position on one aspect of the abortion debate, such as a hardline pro-lifer “admitting” that it’s OK in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
There is a long tradition in social science research, going back at least to Converse (1964), holding that most people’s political views are relatively incoherent, poorly thought-through, and unstable. They’re just making up responses to survey questions on the spot, in a way that can involve a lot of randomness.
This study demonstrates that plus confabulation, in a way that is particularly compelling because of the short time scale involved and the experimental manipulation of what opinion the person was defending.