ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the nature of public opinion, its social-cultural functions, its psychological features, and certain attempts to record and measure it. Public opinion consists of the opinions held by a public at a certain time. The use of public opinion as a phase of democratic government has a history reaching back to the Greeks. Leadership of public opinion is simply a special kind of leadership, and it shows the usual relations of dominance and submission. The general public is often pulled to and fro by the efforts of the special-interest cliques to secure its adherence. Public opinion, then, is formed by verbalized attitudes, by ideas and convictions, on some disputed topic. An opposing view is that man is predominantly irrational and emotional, and that public opinion largely arises in the process by which shrewd and Machiavellian politicians foist their views upon the masses.
