Abstract
Gleaning the opinions of ordinary individuals became the object of an astonishing number of enterprises during the twentieth century: journalists hoping both to pinpoint and expand their readership, corporations to tap into and stoke consumers’ desires, state agencies and political candidates to read and influence the public mood. Focused on the rise of modern public opinion polling, this chapter tracks the creation by self-professed experts in the United States – and, somewhat later, in other Western ‘mass’ societies – of a science of opinion. It also explores the justifications for this development, and particularly the argument that empirically determining the sentiments, tastes, and will of ‘the people’ would lead to a more responsive, transparent or efficient society and body politic.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
J. S. House, F. T. Juster, R. L. Kahn, H. Schuman, and E. Singer, (eds) (2004), A Telescope on Society. Survey Research and Social Science at the University of Michigan and Beyond (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), p. 453.
Y. P. Seng (1951), ‘Historical Survey of the Development of Sampling Theories and Practice’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series A, 114(2), p. 217.
F. F. Stephan (1948), ‘History of the Uses of Modern Sampling Procedures’, Journal of the American Statistical Association 43(241), pp. 12–39.
A. Desrosières (1991), ‘The Part in Relation to the Whole. How to Generalize? The Prehistory of Representative Sampling’, in M. Bulmer, K. Bales, and K. Kish Sklar (eds), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 235.
R. Gillespie (1991), Manufacturing Knowledge. A History of the Hawthorne Experiments (New York: Cambridge University Press).
J. R. Beniger (1986), The Control Revolution. Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 376.
K. S. Buzzard (1990), Chains of Gold, Marketing the Ratings and Rating the Markets (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press), pp. 3–4.
M. Poovey (1998), A History of the Modern Fact. Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
C. E. Robinson Sarah E. Igo 231 (1932), Straw Votes. A Study of Political Prediction (New York: Columbia University Press)
T. Asad (1994), ‘Ethnographic Representation, Statistics, and Modern Power’, Social Research 61(1), pp. 55–88
P. Bourdieu (1990), In Other Words. Essays Toward a Reflexive Sociology, trans. Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 168.
D. Robinson (1999), The Measure of Democracy. Polling, Market Research, and Public Life, 1930–1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
G. Gigerenzer, Z. G. Swijtink, T. M. Porter, L. Daston, J. Beatty, and L. Kruger (1989), The Empire of Chance. How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life (New York: Cambridge University Press)
T. M. Porter (1995), Trust in Numbers. The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
G. C. Bowker and S. L. Star (1999), Sorting Things Out. Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge: MIT Press)
I. Hacking (1995), ‘The Looping Effects of Human Kinds’, in D. Sperber, D. Premack, and A. J. Premack (eds), Causal Cognition. A Multi-disciplinary Debate (New York: Oxford University Press)
B. Anderson (1991), Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised second edition (New York: Verso), pp. 163–85.
P. Converse (1964), ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in D. Apter (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press), pp. 206–61.
J. Habermas (1970), ‘The Scientization of Politics and Public Opinion’, in Toward a Rational Society (Boston, MA: Beacon Press)
J. R. Zaller (1992), The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 28–39
Noelle-Neumann (1993), The Spiral of Silence. Public Opinion – Our Social Skin, second edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
M. R. Frankel and L. R. Frankel (1987), ‘Fifty Years of Survey Sampling in the United States’, Public Opinion Quarterly 51(2)
G. Gallup (1940), ‘Polling Public Opinion’, Current History and Forum 41 (February), p. 23.
L. D. Beers (2006), ‘Whose Opinion?: Changing Attitudes towards Opinion Polling in British Politics, 1937–1964’, Twentieth Century British History 17(2), pp. 177–205.
J. Cowans (2002), ‘Fear and Loathing in Paris. The Reception of Opinion Polling in France, 1938–1977’, Social Science History 26(1), pp. 71–104
M. Goot (2010), ‘“A Worse Importation than Chewing Gum”. American Influences on the Australian Press and their Limits – The Australian Gallup Poll, 1941–1973’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 30(3), pp. 269–302
M. J. Hogan (1997), ‘George Gallup and the Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy’, Communication Monographs 64(2), pp. 161–79.
E. Roper (1944), ‘What People are Thinking’, New York Herald-Tribune (30 November).
R. G. Hubler (1941), ‘George Horace Gallup. Oracle in Tweed’, Forum and Century 103(2) (February), p. 95.
L. Rogers (1941), ‘Do the Gallup Polls Measure Opinion?’, Harper’s (November), p. 623.
P. London (1940), ‘Ringing Doorbells with a Gallup Reporter’, New York Times Magazine (1 September), p. 9.
G. Gallup (1936), ‘Putting Public Opinion to Work’, Scribner’s Magazine (November), p. 39.
E. F. Goldman (1944), ‘Polls on the Polls’, Public Opinion Quarterly 8, pp. 461–7.
M. Parten (1950), Surveys, Polls, and Samples. Practical Procedures (New York: Harper and Brothers), p. 3.
W. C. Price (1953), ‘What Daily News Executives Think of Public Opinion Polls’, Journalism Quarterly 30, p. 287
G. Gallup (1949), ‘The Case for Public Opinion Polls’, New York Times Magazine (27 February), p. 11.
R. M. Eisinger (2003), The Evolution of Presidential Polling (New York: Cambridge University Press)
W. P. Davison (1968), ‘Public Opinion’, in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 13, p. 189.
J. S. Fishkin (1995), The Voice of the People. Public Opinion and Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 80.
M. J. Anderson and S. E. Fienberg (1999), Who Counts? The Politics of Census-Taking in Contemporary America (New York: Russell Sage).
S. Herbst (1993), Numbered Voices. How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. ix, 124, 127.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2012 Sarah E. Igo
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Igo, S.E. (2012). Hearing the Masses: The Modern Science of Opinion in the United States. In: Brückweh, K., Schumann, D., Wetzell, R.F., Ziemann, B. (eds) Engineering Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284501_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284501_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-32680-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-28450-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)