Polls Apart

PUBLIC OPINION--William Albig--McGraw-Hill ($4).

When experts write about public opinion, they usually sound like Gertrude Stein. When is public opinion public opinion and when is it private opinion publicly expressed? In Public Opinion, Professor Albig offers a simple definition--opinion, he says, is some expression on a controversial point; public opinion is a result of the interactions of persons in any type of group. A typical, professional volume, piling up to 493 pages, including essays on language, propaganda, newspapers, the Gallup Poll and innumerable quotations to plug holes in the argument, Public Opinion is nevertheless more interesting than most such books.

Professor Albig summarizes many experiments in the measurement and control of public opinion. And there have been some darbs. In nine colleges from Stanford to Columbia, students' attitudes toward Japan and China were tested, after which some were given a bombardment of Japanese and some of Chinese propaganda. Each group changed its collective mind. At the University of Iowa, opinion-testers pretended that an Australian ex-Prime Minister Hughes was in Iowa on a lecture tour, planted 15 editorials approving him, 15 opposed, let the favorable editorials be read by one group, the unfavorable by another. Of the group that read favorable editorials, 98% became pro-Hughes, while 86% of those who read anti-Hughes editorials grew biased against the ex-Premier's hypothetical visit. Whether experts gained insight into public opinion, or students just got more confused about foreign affairs, Professor Albig does not say.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.