“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.
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.