public opinion

Jonathan Rauch (Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution) wrote an article for The Atlantic about how Donald Trump is installing “patrimonialism” in his administration. Patrimonialism, a term from German sociologist Max Weber, describes a style of governing in which “rulers claimed to be the symbolic father of the people—the state’s personification and protector.” The antithesis of bureaucratic proceduralism, patrimonialism is based on “individual loyalty and connections, and on rewarding friends and punishing enemies (real or perceived).” Rauch writes that patrimonialist systems tend to suffer from both incompetence and corruption, and can severely damage state capacity.

Jonathan Rauch

Karyn Vilbig (PhD Student in Sociology at New York University) wrote an article for The Conversation exploring how increasing support for social welfare programs connects to shifts in racial attitudes in the United States. While most government aid recipients are White, many people “incorrectly presume that these programs support mostly Black people.” Thus, negative views toward Black people can undermine support for social welfare programs. Vilbig found that “improved attitudes toward Black people between 2012 and 2020, more than any other measure, explained increased support for welfare programs during that same period.”

Karyn Vilbig

The American Sociological Association and the American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit challenging a “Dear Colleague Letter” warning schools that federal funding would be pulled if they consider race in “admissions, hirings, financial aid, scholarships, discipline policy and all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.” ASA President Adia Harvey Wingfield commented: “This memo doesn’t just hinder sociologists from doing our jobs or merely violate our right to free speech— it inflicts a profound disservice upon students who gain from a more comprehensive understanding of the world and upon society as a whole that benefits from our discoveries about human behavior.” This story was covered by The 74 and Democracy Forward.

Adia Harvey Wingfield

Gallup’s latest LGTBQ+ identification survey shows that 9.3% of American adults identify as LGTBQ+ in 2024 (a figure that has nearly doubled since 2020). This change is largely driven by Gen Z; nearly a quarter of individuals ages 18-27 identify as LGBTQ+. Jessie Ford (Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia) commented to The New York Times that young people tend to consider sexuality as a spectrum and discuss wanting to avoid rigid identities.

Jessie Ford

Vox writer Zack Beauchamp, among many other cultural critics and journalists, became “obsessed” with the question of why Kavanaugh supporters appear unfazed by potentially false claims during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Beauchamp’s article on the subject relied extensively upon an American Sociological Review article (and an extensive tweet thread from one of the authors) to explain why this might be the case.

According to research from Oliver Hahl, Minjae Kim, and Ezra Zuckerman-Sivan, voters can recognize that a politician is lying but still consider them authentic. Their study includes analysis of President Trump’s claim during the 2016 campaign that global warming is a hoax developed by China, which most of the participants labeled as “highly false.” The authors found that,

“Trump voters were significantly more likely to justify the lie as a form of symbolic protest…[and they were] much more likely to think the statement ‘was his way of challenging the elite establishment’ than to see the statement as true.”

To test these findings further, Hahl and colleagues conducted an experiment that involved a simulated college election where the main issue was the imposition of a campus alcohol ban (which would threaten campus traditions). Participants who were assigned the traditionalist group and led to believe that the establishment was treating them unfairly supported a candidate who used clearly false data because they viewed the candidate as speaking toward a deeper truth. As demonstrated by the research, the election, and Kavanaugh’s hearings, there must be some sort of legitimacy crisis — either a corrupt establishment or unfair favoring of an upstart group — in order to set up an environment where lies resonate with a sense of truth for an aggrieved group. Beauchamp expands further,

“As with Trump, the deeper truth is that a particular group is treated unfairly by the establishment (recall Kavanaugh’s opening),” Zuckerman-Sivan wrote in a Twitter thread. “So long as the obvious lies can be framed as serving that larger truth, the liar can present himself as the group’s ‘authentic champion.’”

Importantly, Hahl and colleagues find that individuals from all across the political spectrum were susceptible to “the appeal of the lying demagogue” — making lies in search of a larger truth a more common occurrence than just in the last election.

Bill Cosby is a household name, once associated with a long and illustrious career, now with an infamous string of sexual assault allegations dating as far back as 1965. After new rape charges arose in late 2014 and became the subject of pop-culture discussion, TVLand dropped The Cosby Show from its rerun schedule and Netflix postponed a Cosby comedy special. A sitcom he had in development was canned. Notably, Cosby had weathered such accusations for decades without losing the support of networks and business partners. This time has been different.

University of Texas-Austin sociology professor Ari Adut lends his thoughts in a New York Times article. When public knowledge about a scandal is limited rather than widespread, entertainment businesses are less likely to take action. Once an allegation leveled against a public figure and becomes common knowledge, though, businesses are compelled to respond: “[w]hen everyone knows that everyone else knows about the claim (and so on), society can judge people and groups that do not act on that knowledge.” So, though rape and assault accusations had followed Cosby for nearly a half-century, the latest set of allegations have been hotly discussed in the media, and groups like Netflix moved to distance themselves from the performer so as to avoid public perceptions of Inaction.

This sociological explanation for how businesses assess public opinion regarding scandals and act accordingly helps us understand many other occurrences in the entertainment industry. For example, after actor Charlie Sheen had a run-in with the NYPD regarding drugs in 2010, CBS soon dropped the star from Two and a Half Men, despite the fact that Sheen had notoriously faced drug issues before. Once Sheen’s 2010 crime became public knowledge, the axe fell swiftly. For the famous, what the public doesn’t know—or mobilize around—needn’t be a worry. When it hits the front pages, though, anything from “dirty laundry” to felony assault is likely to tarnish a even a star’s brand image (and paychecks).

If you’ve ever taken a survey, you know what it’s like to feel limited in giving an opinion: a simple “agree” or “disagree” doesn’t always capture the complexity of opinions; a few blank lines may leave too much room for you to be clear in your response; or maybe you don’t have an instant opinion when probed about a given subject, but you heard your mom talking about it, you feel forced to pick a side, and you quickly regurgitate her opinion.

These are only a few reasons sociologist Herbert Gans warns that “public opinion polls” can’t live up to the name. As he points out in an article from the Nieman Journalism Lab:

If poll results can be interpreted as opinion, they are pollster-evoked or passive opinions. They are not the active opinions of citizens who feel strongly about, or participate in some way in the debates about forthcoming legislation or a presidential decision.

Gans explains the differences between “answers” and “opinions,” and suggests that the media start informing its audiences on this subject. He also believes that the media should start offering more context around public opinion poll results to illustrate what the public is actually thinking. As it stands, communications to elected officials or involvement in town-hall meetings and demonstrations may be far more representative of a given community’s “opinion” than poll results.