POLS 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Individualism, Group Dynamics, Opinion Leadership

• School: University of Georgia
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 1101
• Professor: Tony Madonna

Document Summary

: the federalist itself was to sway educated public opinion for a specific goal. The origins of public opinion: public opinion is important because of its effect on political behavior, particularly voting. Its political effect as a mass phenomenon, but like the vote, it is a sum of many i(cid:374)di(cid:448)iduals" acts: attitudes, underlying attitudes can form public opinion. Ideologies: elaborately organized sets of political attitudes often take the form of political ideologies. Ideologies work to promote consistency by connecting attitudes to something greater, a more general principle or set of principles. Individualism: support for equal opportunity, moral traditionalism, opposition to big government, people do not like to be inconsistent to their beliefs. Pols 1101: reluctant to pay the cost of acquiring information that has no practical payoff, result: the opinions they expression issues often appear to be uninformed and unstable. Opinion leadership: another reason is found through the use of cues that are generated by opinion leaders.