Public Opinion Heterogeneity and Aggregation Dynamics

Peter K. Enns Department of Government Cornell University pe52@cornell.edu Michael B. MacKuen Department of Political Science UNC at Chapel Hill mackuen@unc.edu

Evan Parker-Stephen Department of Political Science Texas A&M University eps@polisci.tamu.edu

James A. Stimson Department of Political Science UNC at Chapel Hill jstimson@email.unc.edu

April 6, 2008

Paper prepared for delivery at the 2008 Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 36, 2008. c the Midwest Political Science Association.

Corresponding Author

Contents
1 Why Computational Modeling? 1.1 Bottom Up Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Heterogeneity and Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 A Look Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Basic Model With Attentiveness 2.1 Response to a Real Signal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Binary Censoring of the News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 A Model of Updating With Mental Dynamics 3.1 The Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Psychology in Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 A Model of Information Updating and Social 4.1 A Random Conversation Model . . . . . . . . 4.2 Social Vetting, and the Spiral of Silence . . . . 4.3 Comparing Notes on the News . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A Model of Talking About Economics 5.1 The Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Model Specics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Model Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Conclusions and Implications . . . . . 6 General Discussion and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3 3 3 4 5 6 8 8 9 13 15 16 18 20 21 23 23 25 27 28

Abstract This study uses computational models to derive the dynamic properties of public opinion from micro theory. Guided by individual-level evidence on opinion formation and change, we assign various information-processing rules to populations of articial agents. After setting the opinion updating models in motion, we report the resultant across-time character of aggregate and subgroup opinion. The studys principal contribution is not theory testing, thus, but a demonstration of the macro consequences of human psychology and the social environmentof ordinary people revising their beliefs and attitudes in the context of personal, political, and social dynamics. Unlike previous attempts to understand the origins of macro opinion change, our approach accommodates the complexity of the social world. This study is preliminary, but we hope it shows the promise of using agent-based models to bridge the micro-macro opinion gap.

If public policy changes in response to changes in public opinion, this is dynamic representation (Stimson, MacKuen and Erikson 1995). But the normative quality of dynamic representation hinges on what and who produce these changes in public sentiment. More than two decades worth of work indicate that the what is straightforward: the publics response to information about real-world events and conditions shapes across-time shifts in opinion (e.g., Stimson 1991; Page and Shapiro 1992; Erikson, MacKuen and Stimson 2002). Ascertaining the who, however, has presented scholars with a conundrum that, understandably in our view, remains unresolved. To see the problem, rst consider that the heterogeneous mechanisms that shape individual opinions have well-established micro (static) properties. Attentiveness to public aairs determines information exposure and thus understanding. Partisan identities prompt politicalinformation distortion, and biased updating results. Social communication networks are persuasive, and so they push group members toward homogeneous attitudes and beliefs. And so on. Now, the rub: In thinking about the properties of collective opinion, such easily understood micro heterogeneity produces no clear-cut macro expectations. After all, microlevel theory is buttressed by statistical signicance tests of discrete relationships, and aggregated dynamics depend on the ow of social processes. One reasonable view says that bridging the gap requires mapping micro theory onto the macro approach. But two staples of macro methodology, aggregation and time, immediately complicate such an eort. The process of aggregation forces scholars to appreciate not only how stable factors like political awareness and partisanship aect opinions, but also how their eects aggregate up. Although several scholars have speculated about aggregations consequences for collective opinion (see Converse 1990; Page and Shapiro 1992; Stimson 2004, Chapter 6), others have convincingly challenged these accounts (e.g., Bartels 1996; Althaus 1998; Duch, Palmer and Anderson 2000; Taber 2003). More to the point, the extent to which the aggregate measures are shaped by information-, partisan-, and peer-based eects remains an open empirical question. Macro scholars focus on opinion across extended time periods is also problematic, as we know little about how micro mechanisms behave under repeated play. Does what scholars have observed about opinion statics hold in a world where space and time are important? At least one study suggests not, because the across-time roles of information and partisan bias appear to change as the political environment changes (see Parker-Stephen 2008). Further doubt arises because, in a dynamic setting, social phenomena take on heightened importance. If people interact with a social milieu that shapes their opinions, then these opinions could look quite dierent from what a reading of static attributes might suggest. In other words, public opinion could display across-time properties that are unanticipated by static theory. In short, the nature of aggregation dynamics makes it dicult to discern the longitudinal 1

properties of public opinion from micro theory. To derive these properties one would need to know: (1) what information signals individuals are exposed to, (2) what processes determine how the information is used, and (3) how psychological and social dynamics condition these processes. Using actual opinion data, estimates of such conditions cannot be made without considerable error. But a burgeoning methodology, computational modeling, allows researchers to create these crucial conditions instead; and thus, one can know them with certainty. In the pages that follow, we explore aggregations consequences using computational agentbased models of opinion formation and change. In these models, individual agents are exposed to and assimilate information about the political world. As we are interested in how heterogeneity matters, we explore the implications of dierent updating rules and increasingly complex information environments. In other words, we alter incrementally the process by which agents interact with information signals and their neighbors and peers. Throughout, we report the aggregate (and subgroup) patterns that result from these dierent scenarios. Although these multiple thought experiments provide no denitive answer to the question about who moves macro opinion, the accumulated evidence does point to properties that emerge when aggregating heterogeneous opinions across time. It is worth emphasizing that the updating rules are molded from established evidence about information processing, aective response, and social-network psychology. Thus, unlike previous attempts to explain macro patterns, our approach appreciates the complexity of the social world. The studys principal contribution is not theory testing, but a demonstration of the macro consequences of human psychology and the social environmentof ordinary people revising their beliefs and attitudes in the context of personal, political, and social dynamics. Although they are preliminary, we view the models and data that result as a useful step forward in our eorts to bridge the micro-macro opinion gap.

Why Computational Modeling?

Agent-based models do not appear with regularity in the political behavior literature. Nor do they lend themselves to the hypothesis-testing methodology that is usually understood as doing empirical social science.1 We begin, therefore, by highlighting a few advantages of this approach to studying opinion dynamics.
Computational models do, however, appear to be gaining support among scholars as a useful, and perhaps necessary, tool for understanding the complexity of the social world (see Miller and Page 2007).
1

1.1

Bottom Up Theory

Explaining the character of macro opinion begins with a story about how the beliefs, attitudes, and preferences of ordinary people get translated to the collective. Less concretely, it requires bottom up theory. But testing dynamic theory from the bottom-up is tricky, and so in practice scholars move up to the level of categorical group types. That is, they construct subgroups that represent the crucial individual-level attributes and then examine these groups across-time opinion dynamics. Our own work, for example, characterizes micro opinions as either orderly or random (Erikson, MacKuen and Stimson 2002, also see Converse 1990; Page and Shapiro 1992); separates people who have low or high levels of sophistication (Stimson 2002; Enns and Kellstedt 2008); and tracks movement between partisan and non-partisan groups (Parker-Stephen 2006). Agent-based modeling, by contrast, permits an explicitly bottom up analysis of opinion. Speaking broadly, Miller and Page note that, the behavior that we observe in the [agentbased] model is generated from the bottom of the system by the direct interactions of the entities that form the basis of the model (Miller and Page 2007, 66). This logic is perfectly suited to an assessment of how individual thinking and action ultimately produce the behavior of the whole.

1.2

Heterogeneity and Interaction

A second advantage follows from agent-based modelings simultaneous allowance for precision and exible creativity. Rules that dene the behavior of atomistic agents are known a priori, and thus one can explore how modifying and diversifying agent behaviorthat is, adding heterogeneityalters behavior at the system level. For the purposes of examining opinion dynamics, this allows us to set rules that describe how agents attitudes are aected by good or bad news, how group interactions alter agents thinking and beliefs, and more. Like any modeling exercise we must simplify reality. But the agent-based approach allows for easy testing of a wide range of relationships believed to impinge on system-level behavior. Once the consequences are observed, we can integrate or discard the animating rules as the evidence dictates.

1.3

A Look Ahead

It should be noted that this studys progression is atypical, in that it lacks the familiar sections that situate our work in the broader literature, develop the theory, and discuss methods and data. All of these things will instead enter the discussion in the context of model development. To preview what is to come, we will begin straightforwardly with atomistic 3

agents updating using information and prior attitudes, and culminate with a model that nds agents interacting with multiple economic information ows and talking to one another about what they have seen and heard.

A Basic Model With Attentiveness

Our beginning model is of atomistic citizen updating of opinions in response to an information signal. We have 1500 citizens updating at 200 time points. Time here is abstract, but we will often think of it as a daily phenomenon. The updating process weighs new information against a previous attitude for a new attitude. We include realistic limitations on that process in that information is perceived with some random error, . Citizens are only partially attentive to new information, often not seeing it at all, in which case no updating on the previous attitude is performed. More formally, the current model says that an agents attitude is determined by new information, signal[t], and a previous attitude, prevatt[a]. Each agent gives updating weights to the two components, where the weight on signal[t] is dened by the variable newinfo[a] and its complement, (1-newinfo[a]), is the weight that agents place on prevatt[a]. The basic model is thus Equation 1:

attitude[a] = (newinfo[a] * (signal[t] + )) + (1 - newinfo[a] * prevatt[a]). (1)

In a rst analysis we systematically vary citizen attentiveness and ask whether new information gets through and how long it takes to work its eect. We let our information signal be extremely simple, a step function that starts out at zerobad newsand then transitions to one. The value for newinfo[a] is determined a priori, and for now we set it at .50 for all agents. In this experiment we test attentiveness levels ranging from .50 at the high endmeaning that fty percent of all news signals are receivedto .10 at the low end. This captures the point that it matters that the probability of political-information exposure varies considerably across the mass public (e.g., MacKuen 1984; Zaller 1991). The lines in Figure 1 represent the signal itself and the aggregated responses of ve subgroups of 300 citizens, each of which vary by attentiveness level. There are two messages to take from Figure 1. One is that information does permeate all levels of our articial society. And second, attentiveness matters in the way we would expect. Those who are paying some attention adjust to changed conditions quite quickly, whereas those who are mainly tuned out also adjust, but take progressively longer to do so. It is interesting to see, however, that the response of a modestly attentive group (.20) is nevertheless orderly, indeed it is quite similar to the most attentive (.50) groups. Our goal here is not theory testing. Rather, we are asking whether a set of rules for individual 4

1.2

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-0.2 1 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111 121 131 141 151 161 171 181 191

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Figure 1: Citizen Response to a Hypothetical Information Series Varying by Attentiveness information processing produces a social outcome that is similar to what we routinely observe, for example in the behavior of public opinion marginals over time. We have no precise standard for matching that aggregate, but this rst analysis is a rough t to the ndings of numerous aggregate opinion analyses, most particularly our own in Erikson, MacKuen and Stimson (2002), that nds macro opinion ows are responsive to the context of political information ows.

2.1

Response to a Real Signal

We now wish to perform essentially the same analysis diering only in that we will track citizen response to a real signal of potential information. Lacking the imagination to specify the properties of hypothetical real information, we have simply adapted a real variable, consumer sentiment over 200 times, to serve as our hypothetical signal. So now we have an economic context to the story. As news about the economy varies in the way it typically does, we ask whether various classes of citizensvarying again by attentivenessreect the signal in their own attitudes. In Figure 2 we observe the same two patterns (under essentially the same conditions) as in Figure 1. The signal, that is, does permeate all classes of our simulated electorate and 5

110

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Figure 2: Citizen Response to a Real Information Series Varying by Attentiveness the speed of adjustment again varies in the expected way. The attitudes of our simulated electorate are fairly well correlated with the signal at .89 overallranging from .94 for the most attentive to .69 for the least.

2.2

Binary Censoring of the News

We have argued elsewhere (Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002 pages 82-85) that, by reference to the theory of on-line processing, it is possible to explain the otherwise inexplicable fact that citizens, quite ignorant of economic fact and theory on average, nonetheless have highly informed expectations of the state of the economy. The argument is that highly specic facts are blended together with economic theories to tell stories of the economy which can then be encapsulated by uninformed and inattentive listeners as good news or bad news about the economy. The on-line theory holds that binary conclusions like this will be stored and remembered even when most of the supporting structure of facts and arguments is not (Lodge, McGraw and Stroh 1989; Lodge, Steenbergen and Brau 1995). Thus the citizen who neither understood the theory nor remembered the facts will grasp and remember the conclusion. Such a citizen will know roughly the balance of good and bad news in the recent period and easily incorporate that balance into expectations of economic performance which track closely with those of the professional experts who were the source of the information 6

in the rst place. Thus we have here a conception of censoring both in the media, which tell us whether the days news was in the good or bad category, and by the listener who remembers only the bottom line conclusion. We attempt to emulate that process here by taking our information signal and censoring it into ones and zeros standing for good and bad news. Values that are above the long-term average of the information series are reduced to ones while those below the average become zeros. We now expose our agent-citizens to only the binary information and ask the question whether they can process it into attitudes that track the original uncensored information. Now even if citizens were perfect perceivers and processers their attitudes would not track the original signal exactly because that signal has been degraded in the censoring process.
110 1.2

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Figure 3: Citizen Response to Information Which Has Been Degraded Into Binary Form We observe the result of realistic (i.e., with errors in perception, inattentiveness, and all the rest) processing of the binary signal in Figure 3. Here we show the aggregated response of a group of citizens across the ve levels of attentiveness we have used before. The gure is dened by the real metric of the signal on the left y-axis and by the response to binary information on the right. Given the very substantial distortion introduced by censoring, we are impressed that the general shape of citizen response fairly closely mirrors (r = .84) the (unobserved) original signal.

Response

We cant know from this exercise whether the binary censoring story is right. What we can know is that it is plausible. Our baseline expectations of atomistic citizen response in place, now we ask what happens when we add complexity. First, we evaluate what happens when people distort information because of their partisan-based motives. Next, we will explore what happens when citizens begin to talk to one another about politics. Finally, we will move closer to empirical political science and ask, by way of an economics example, whether introducing heterogeneous information signals helps to explain known attributes of the aggregate response to the economy.

A Model of Updating With Mental Dynamics

The basic updating model in Equation 1 accounts for variation in the probability of exposure to information, but it does not account for a second known feature of how citizens, especially partisans, use information. These committed citizens often desire not to perceive the actual world, signal[t], as it is, but as they would instead like it to be. One of us has previously labeled these people The Passionate (Stimson 2004), which, in terms of information processing, means that these peoples commitment to a particular world-view motivates them to see and hear a world that is consistent with it (Festinger 1957; Heider 1958; Kunda 1990). We term this world-view the partisan group gs preferred world, prefer[g], which is to say, the world state that benets the party, and explore in this section the dynamic and aggregate consequences of this motivated reasoning.

3.1

The Setup

We modify the updating rules in Equation 1 so that agents integrate information (as before) and also distort their reading of it based on their preferred world, prefer[g]. The setup hinges on the idea that people hold the presidential in-party accountable for current conditions. For presidential in-partisans, then, the preferred world is one that is favorable, or positive. So as in-partisans encounter information signals, they add to the real signal some positive number, +x, that reects their partisan-motivated optimism. The outpartisans party, on the other hand, benets if these same conditions are in an unfavorable, or negative, condition. Thus, out-partisans tack on a negative number, x, reecting their pessimism about current conditions. Table 1 displays how we code in- and out-partisans preferred worlds numerically. The exact values of the xs is subjective, to be sure, and we do not make a case for the particular values we choose. What is important is that the in- and out-partisan worlds are countervailing. The revised model now says that agents attitudes are a function of new information (whose 8

Table 1: Hypothetical Values of Partisans Preferred Worlds Presidential Party Partisan Group Republican Democrat Democrat 1.0 1.0 Independent 0 0 Republican 1.0 1.0 inuence is determined by its respective weight) and the addition of a preferred-world bias (also weighted). What does such partisan updating look like? To begin, consider the xed case where agents place constant weights on new information and their preferred-world belief. (Here we assign group proportions based on the actual distribution of Republicans (in-party), Independents, and Democrats (out-party) in the 2004 American National Election Study.) Figure 4, panel (a), illustrates the patterns that arise when new information is weighted highly (.90) and the preferred world almost not at all (.10).2 Not surprisingly, when 90% of the information gets through to all groups, accuracy-motivated partisans and Independents all track the signal closely. Figure 4s panel (b) demonstrates the opposite. When the preferred world is weighted at .90 and only 10% of actual-world information resonates, partisan-group beliefs separate quickly and remain apart throughout. Moreover, partisans are only minimally responsive to change across the 200 time periods. The patterns are not surprising, but the exercise serves to demonstrate how partisan bias produces separation in subgroup attitude levels, and also mutes the responsiveness to change across time. Are these patterns derived from realistic models of partisan updating and opinion change? In our view, a more realistic model allows the updating parameters to vary over time. This claim for mental dynamics is supported by social-psychological studies that nd dierent motives (toward accuracy versus consistency) can be primed by contextual factors (Kruglanski, Webster and Klem 1996), and by opinion-based evidence that shows partisans balance their roles as accurate updaters and biased reasoners dierently under dierent environmental conditions (Parker-Stephen 2008). We incorporate dynamic motives in updating via the weights placed on new information and the preferred world.

3.2

Psychology in Motion

At time t, agents assess the actual-world accuracy of their attitudes by calculating the distance between their previous attitude, prevatt[a], and the relevant information at that time, signal[t-1]. We assume that people have a deep desire to see the world correctly, and
2 This example is a realistic case in that it allows for errors in understanding, but do note that attentiveness is held constant at .50.

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InParty OutParty Independent Aggregate

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Figure 4: Citizen Response to Information with Fixed Partisan Bias: (a) Low (b) High (Solid Gray Line is Information Signal) the accuracy motive is thus a function how well ones attitude lines up with a given actualworld state: acc[a] = (prevatt[a] - signal[t-1])2 . This computation implies that as accuracy decreasesas the distance between attitude and reality gets largeran agents accuracy motive increases. Thus, as understanding slips away from signal[t], reality bites. A similar logic underlies the computation for the consistency motive. In this study, agents evaluate consistency relative to the average belief of their partisan group, g. For example, a Republican is said to hold a group-consistent perception of the economy if this perception matches what the typical Republican believes about economic conditions. If people develop opinions that are out of sync with that of the typical member of their in-group, then, their desire to restore in-group belief consistency increases. One way to represent this is with the 10

following: con[a] = (prevatt[a] - prevatt[g])2 . acc[a] and con[a] determine the inuence of information and preferred-world bias, respectively. To model their relative inuence, however, one must rst standardize the weights. Toward this end an additive scale is created: goalsum[a] = acc[a]+ con[a], and then Equation 2 and Equation 3 are used to calculate the agents standardized accuracy and consistency motives, which sum to one by denition: acc[a] , goalsum[a] con[a] . goalsum[a]

wacc[a] =

(2)

wcon[a] =

(3)

Let us now put the pieces together. The standardized accuracy motive, wacc[a], determines the contribution of actual-world information, signal[t], and the standardized consistency motive, wcon[a], determines the contribution of the preferred-world state, prefer[g]. Taking this and all that has come before it, then, we get a model of dynamic opinion updating that is Equation 4: attitude[a] = wacc[a] * (signal[t]+ ) + wcon[a] * prefer[g] (4)

Now, we set Equation 4 in motion and plot the resultant subgroup and aggregate series. In Figure 5, in which the probability of encountering information is set at .10, we see the expected separation, largely constant across the time period. Despite introducing motives that prompt individual agents to discount new information, the subgroup series pick up on the general shifts in the information signal. Although particular agents may be highly motivated to update using the preferred-world state, the aggregate consequence of this bias is minimized because other group members, whose perceptions have fallen out of sync with reality, zero in on and integrate new information. In short, the reality constraint means that partisan subgroups adjust to change despite motives to the contrary. These are passionate partisans, of course, and using the low measure of attentiveness probably understates the degree to which partisans are exposed to political and economic information. Figure 6 illustrates the updating patterns when the probability of exposure is .50. Here perturbations have a relatively more pronounced eect. We also see an interesting pattern that was hinted at in Figure 5: under the current updating rules, when an information signal crosses the bound set by a particular partisan groups preferred world, the resultant shock diminishes responsiveness. This pattern is especially visible after a dramatic upswing in the signal occurs at t = 64. News about the economy crosses above 1.0 several times, and the inpartisan average then grows sticky, failing to recognize the downturns and sitting squarely 11

InParty OutParty Independent Aggregate

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Figure 5: Citizen Response to Information with Mental Dynamics, Attentiveness = .10 (Gray Line is Information Signal) instead on the preferred world value of 1.0. Out-partisans attitudes, but contrast, clearly continue to adjust to the short-term swings. The focus on the subgroup patterns should not distract from an important point about the character of the aggregate dynamics. To a great extent, these dynamics match up quite closely with those of the Scorekeepers, that is, the non-partisan Independents who, if they are attentive, factor only information (plus random error) when they update. Although we allow the weights governing new information and the preferred world to vary, this turns out to be of little consequence to the overall aggregate reading. Partisan bias mutes the degree of responsiveness, to be sure, as the aggregate is not the near one-to-one match that we saw in Figure 4 panel (a). And if these groups were unevenly distributed, we would not observe a balanced aggregate signal. But in this experiment, and with opinion change following 12

InParty OutParty Independent Aggregate

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Figure 6: Citizen Response to Information with Mental Dynamics, Attentiveness = .50 (Gray Line is Information Signal) favorable surprises the exception, partisan-group attitude change is a close match to actual changes in the signal.

A Model of Information Updating and Social Processes

We now want to introduce a more explicitly social process that places agents in a social environment. To do so, we return to the basic model in Equation 1 (i.e., we ignore partisan thinking for now) and begin with the idea that when people encounter information they use 13

their friends to validate it. Our intellectual tools will be very simpleold ideas, reallyand our aim is see how simple social processes shape the translation of individual experience into macro outcomes. Introducing sociology as well as psychology to our framework makes easy sense. A centurys scientic study of political communication has made it clear that people are not isolated actors oating in a sterile mass society. Instead, people share their lives, and their political lives, with their family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. And these social networks can and sometimes do make a dierence. (For recent excellent work in a long and distinguished line of research, see Huckfeldt, Sprague and Johnson 2004; Mutz 2006). In particular, we should like to resurrect the core idea that people use a social reality test to validate the news they hear. Our argument stems from William McPhees clever and precocious Formal Theories of Mass Behavior (1963). He suggests a way to get out of the complaint that social inuence stems from phenomena not commonly observed. Standard models posit that people hear the news from their associates or that they take on their associates views. Surely social transmission and interpersonal persuasion occurbut the evidence suggests that these mechanisms do not dominate the real world. Rather, people get their information from many sources, most notably real life experiences and the mass media. McPhee posits a simple twostep mechanism. First, people get their news from the mass media or the exogenous world. Second, needing to understand the meaningfulness of the news, they take that news to their intimate social setting for conrmation or rejection. If conrmed, the news is integrated into the belief system, if not then not. McPhees computer simulations suggest that such a mechanism illuminates the way that people react to dramatic political changes as a function of their relationship to signicant others. (His working example is young peoples reaction to the New Deal as a function of their political relationship with their parents.) The argument that information needs social reinforcement before it becomes important has been long elaborated in the social diusion literature (see Rogers and Shoemaker 1971; Rogers 1983). In many dierent settings, people acquire information easily enough from the print or electronic media. But beyond mere acquisition, it is typically important that people get social reinforcement before they accept that informations import and integrate it into their views or begin to act on it. These arguments, and considerable research on the individual and group level, suggest that the meaningful movement of information through a polity will depend on how that information gets vetted by citizens and their peers. It is natural that we focus on social communication structures as a mechanism for translating individual political behavior into macro political outcomes. In the section below, we introduce a baseline and then three variants on social conrmation. 14

Table 2: Correlations Between Signals and Attitudes by Attentiveness Level Attentiveness Level Condition .50 .40 .30 .20 .10 Without Communication 0.988 0.982 0.975 0.960 0.920 With Communication 0.980 0.973 0.963 0.946 0.898 We begin with an atomistic model and show how social aggregation produces results that look familiarbut also dierent. Then we turn explicitly to social communication. The rst model is an extension of McPhees idea. People seek social conrmation from their associates before accepting new informationand those associates make judgments based on their own beliefs about the world. The second model is dierent in the sense that those associates react to our individuals news in a way that reects not only their beliefs but also their contemporary exposure to the news. And nally, we allow the associates to interact with one another in ways that reect not only sincere expressions of belief but also social expressions of counter-argument. To proceed, we posit a metaphorical Coee Shop at which citizens meet each morning to discuss the weather, local gossip, sports, movies, or the news. We may nd a nancial analyst, a schoolteacher, or a software developer at Starbucks in Burlington, Vermont ... or a barber, storekeeper, or insurance agent at Graces Cafe in Marshall, Minnesota. To be sure, people interact in many dierent settings, some more than others, but for our purposes this coee shop model works well enough.

4.1

A Random Conversation Model

Our rst exploration, not very realistic, is of random conversations within primary groups. We dene primary groups as consisting of ve adjacent citizens. We let each citizen be exposed to the news, as before, and then enter into conversations with primary groups of similar citizens.3 We entertain the possibility that social communication might compensate for inattentiveness, that citizens might learn from one another what they have failed to grasp from public signals. The result is otherwise. We see in Table 2 that the eect of this naive form of communication is actually negative, that citizens do less well when they share views with others like themselves than when they respond atomistically. The drop-o in correlations is modestand nearly all are pretty high
3 Specically the groups are similar in attentiveness levels. So the inattentive talk to others who are also inattentive. But the possibility of useful information ows exists in these conversations since citizens might encounter valuable information that they missed from not paying attention.

15

with or without communicationbut communication quite obviously does not help.

4.2

Social Vetting, and the Spiral of Silence

Now we turn to a more highly structured social network. Here we visit the Coee Shop where our citizens gather each morning to discuss various things including the news. We want to know more about how this sort of social structure aects the spread of news. Our initial story is that the citizen encounters the news (reading the newspaper, surng the net, or watching television), and then come into Graces Cafe the next morning not sure about the signicance of the news story (vaguely recalling the facts but more interested in their implications). The conversation begins: Good news on the Surge. Theyre opening restaurants in Baghdad. Saw that on the boob tube last night. The others around the breakfast counter chime in. Joe, the ag-in-the-lapel barber, responds Youre dangumd right. Once we get tough, those cowards will run away. And as everyone expects, Jill, the liberal insurance agent from Minneapolis, contradicts Joe, No, that doesnt mean much. Whats really important is whether the Iraqis can get alongand theyre still killing one another. In our model, when the citizen brings the information to the table, each of the others reacts in accord with his or her own priors. That is, those whose priors agree with the news support it and those whose priors contradict the news reject it. In essence, the coee shop votes on the information. If a majority conrm its importance, then the citizen updates his priors by our normal Bayesian processhe or she integrates the news into beliefs. If the information fails to get the support of the coee shop, our individual simply ignores the information and his or her beliefs remain unchanged. Importantly, each coee shop, each social group, is socially isolated from the rest: all citizens see the same news but they have separated networks of associates. We initiate the process with 300 5person coee shops, with each individual having a prior about the news that is drawn from a uniform random distribution. We then send out a signal which is initially .30 (i.e., on balance negative) and then later .70. to see if the public responds to the signal. Our citizens receive the news in binary formso that the initial .30 is normally seen as simple bad news (0) and the later .70 is good. Figure 7 shows the clear answer. Each coee shop immediately starts ltering out any news contrary to group majority. (Individuals are given priors, or quickly acquire them, so that any social setting does have a majority and that majority crushes contrary information.) Anyone who encounters news incompatible with the group ignores it. Eventually he or she encounters something consistent with the group, integrates it into a world view, and moves 16

toward the group consensus. Note that no persuasion is involved, but the result is the same.
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Figure 7: Citizen Response in a Social Communication Model Where News is Tested Against the Views of Group Members The public response is swift and decisive. Each group moves to the extreme values and stays there (as in seen in variance declining to a limit set by every group being wholly 0 or 1 attitudes). The macro result is a society deeply divided at the extremes and entirely unresponsive to new information. Note the total absence of response to switching to a positive signal midway through. It is too late for new information to alter attitudes at the Cafe. At this attractor (with everyone stuck at two endpoints), the public is entirely impervious to novel information. Note, too, how quickly this equilibrium is reached. We have a random start, citizens are only half-likely to see the news on any given day, and they update only partially. Nevertheless, we nd that the perverse result is arrived at within two weeks. Even if we change the parameters here, lowering overall attentiveness and the majority needed for conrmation, the pattern is the same. Things move slightly slowerbut we always end up with uniform and impervious groups opposing each other. Now such a result would be more disturbing if it corresponded with empirical reality. The operation is isomorphic with a Spiral of Silence (Noelle-Neuman 1984) in which individuals are unwilling to express views that they suspect are contrary to the social majority. Such a 17

setup, even if people vary in their zeal for disagreement, is likely to lead to such an equilibrium of pure social groups (MacKuen 1990). However, the evidence we have on the spiral of silence indicates that people do not live in completely uniform social settings. When they are asked about their routine conversational partners, they typically report back that their social environment is biased but mixed (see, among others, Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995; Huckfeldt, Sprague and Johnson 2004; Mutz 2006).

4.3

Comparing Notes on the News

The operating mechanism here is critically incomplete. The others in Graces Cafe are surely not entirely ignorant of the news. They, too, may have seen or read the same story about the Surge and their morning conversation must surely reect what they saw. Rather than have each citizen come to the table oneatatime, imagine others have seen the news as well. Not all, of course, because we set the overall levels of attentiveness low enough that only half (or fewer) actually encounter media news in any day. Now when the folks at Graces Cafe respond, they are informed by the news that they themselves saw or, if uninformed, they go with their priors. Thus, we expect that the dynamics may change a bit as everyones contemporary news is simultaneously considered in the coee shop. However, the fact that half of the table merely vote their priors in the discussion brakes any immediate response. We see the result in Figure 8. Look rst at the dark dashed line where attention is 0.50, that is where a citizen has a half a chance of hearing the news. Here the public responds quickly to the initial news (0 in this case). As interesting, when we shift the news upward, at time 51 in the run, the public again reacts quickly and accurately. Our little twist, in which the participants compare notes on the news that they saw, makes a huge dierence. This encourages. When the public sees the news, it can overcome the inertia implicit in the social conrmation model. People bring their new information together and provide mutual supportyes the news matters and yes the public adjusts fairly quickly and accurately. No longer do we have the dismal entropic result of our spiral to silence and universal social insulation from the news. However, this result depends on some level of attentiveness. Figure 8 shows that the amount of news that actually enters the conversation matters a great deal. When the probability of ones getting the news is around 0.50, we see that quick responsiveness of our coee shops. However, when it is merely 0.10 that responsiveness nearly disappears. Most people in the group will have missed the news and thus will give support in proportion to their prior views. That is, in optimistic groups most people will support positive news and in pessimistic shops 18

most will support negative newsalmost without regard to the overall reality. Of course, in the very long run, the real news wins out. But, given the sort of story we are telling here, a full months uniformly good news moves the public only a few percentage points. And even four months good news is not enough to do the trick. This probability of encountering the news proves critical. In real life, the portion of any given social group that pays attention to the news will vary: both within and between groups. For simplicity, here we model groups sharing the same attentiveness. This is, thus, a characteristic of the participants. Equally, however, it might be useful to think of dierent kinds of news attracting distinctly dierent levels of attention. Some events are front page stories for long periods of timeand here we expect that the impact of that news will fairly quickly win out over the groups stasis. The invasion of Iraq and the devastation of Katrina come to mind. However, many other stories attract only limited attention. The stories may have specialized audiences (who will learn while others do not) or the have only sporadic appearances on the news agendawhere relatively few people will bring the news to the coee shop and the group will easily resist its import. These latter characterizations seem especially prevalent during normal times.
1.2

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Figure 8: Citizen Response to a Hypothetical Information Series Varying by Attentiveness

19

4.4

Extensions

These simulations serve as thought experiments. By incorporating systematic statements about the details of social interaction, they trace out the linkages between micro individual level interactions and the possible macro consequences for the spread of information and the development of citizen beliefs. The elements have been kept relatively simple in order to begin a controlled exploration of these micro-macro relationships. Yet, it is clear that these bare-bones core models do not capture the sorts of subtleties that the real world presents. The two, the spiral to silence and the comparing notes alternatives, are largely polar opposites. In the rst, we see that prior social beliefs dominate to the point of eliminating contrary information and eventually eliminating within-group heterogeneity. In the second, the news dominates discussions with the likely outcome that everyone adjusts to the nature of contemporary information. In either case, we end up with a push to consensus within the coee shop, the rst determined by the members priors and the second by the news. As an extension of these little experiments, we have introduced two complicating factors. In the rst, we generate news on a probabilistic basissometimes good and sometimes bad. This distinction matters because it means that people come into Graces Cafe with dierent takes on what is going on in the world. When the news is uniformly good or bad, we may not be surprised to see the conversation moved entirely in one direction or the other. But when the news is decidedly mixed, we observe that each coee shop takes on its own social charactermoving in dierent directions over time depending on the combination of the news mixture, attentiveness, and the nature of peoples priors. In a second extension, we allow people to counter-argue. In political science we are increasingly aware of ordinary peoples ability to see contrary information and, in eect, counterargue that information to the point that they end up reinforcing their original beliefs (for example, see Taber and Lodge 2006). While they may or may not be persuaded, the mere fact of public counter-argument changes the mix of the social environment and the nature of social vetting. In our models of the coee shop, we nd that even a modest amount of such counter-arguing produces self-sustaining social environments that can sustain resistance to the news for considerable periods of time. Neither of these enhancements produce anything so nearly clean cut as the simple core ideas. They produce mixing, dynamics that are uncertain, and a social outcome that looks both messy and intriguing. Graces Cafe looks to be worth the visit.

20

A Model of Talking About Economics

We have thus far focused on the micro heterogeneity that complicates eorts to link micro-tomacro opinion. Our nal experiment considers heterogeneity in the information environment as well. This experiments motivation arises from an interest in results like those presented in Table 3, in which, from 1978 to 2007, the publics monthly evaluations of business conditions responded to changes in multiple economic indicators: unemployment, the stock market, and the index of coincident economic indicators. When the stock market and the index of coincident indicators increase, the percent of the public who believe business conditions are favorable also increases. By contrast, increases in unemployment lead to more pessimistic views about business conditions. The relationship between the objective economy and the publics economic evaluations makes sense. What we do not know, however, is how these various economic signals get translated to aggregate opinion about the economy. Table 3: Monthly Determinants of Business Conditions Evaluations, 1978 to 2007 Business Conditionst1 0.925* (0.016) % Change in Unemployment -0.186* (0.108) % Change in Coincident Indicators 3.237* (0.888) % Change in S&P 500 Stocks 0.431* (0.070) Constant 2.059* (0.662) N 354 2 Adj. R 0.93 Note: Standard errors in parentheses. *=p<0.05, one-tailed tests At least two models could explain the statistical relationship between changes in the economy and changes in the publics assessment of business conditions. One, what we will call aggregation theory, maintains that aggregate opinion change is produced by the systematic opinion movement of a minority of individuals who pay attention to and comprehend real economic change. The majority of respondents do not contribute to aggregate change, this view maintains, because these people report either stable or random opinions (and these balance out in the aggregate) (Converse 1990; Erikson, MacKuen and Stimson 2002; Page and Shapiro 1992). Figure 9 suggests, however, that aggregate opinion is more complicated than aggregation theory suggestsand seemingly produce by more than a few informed individuals residing amidst a sea of noise (Converse 1990, 382). For whether we divide 21

(a) Male and Female

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Figure 9: Monthly Evaluations of Business Conditions by Demographic Groups, 1978 to 2007 respondents by education, income, age, or gender, we see that all subgroups update their business evaluations in unison. Top of the head survey responses (Taylor and Fiske 1978; Zaller 1992) oer a second, more realistic explanation for the results in Table 3. This argument says that individuals respond to surveys according to the most recent or salient information heard. If so, then aggregate public opinion will reect a diverse set of economic signals. The aggregate consequences of top of the head responses are not entirely clear, however, because individuals might encounter distinct pieces of economic information in a haphazard way, in turn producing random noise and no systematic across-time response. Table 4 shows that for the most part the three economic series analyzed in Table 3 move distinctly. A moderate negative correlation exists between unemployment and the index of coincident indicators but neither of these series correlates with the stock market.4 It is unclear whether top of the head responses to weakly correlated series can produce systematic
4 The moderate inverse relationship between unemployment and the index of coincident indicators results because the number of employees on nonagricultural payroll is one of the measures that goes into this index.

22

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patterns of aggregate opinion change. Assessing this possibility is the focus of this section of the paper, and so we now turn to a computational model that reveals what results when agents engage in top of the head response to information. Table 4: Correlations between Percent Change in Objective Economic Indicators, 1978 to 2007 % Unem. % Coin. Ind. 1.00 -0.41 1.00 -0.01 0.07 % S&P 500

% Unemployment % Coincident Indicators % S&P 500 Stocks Monthly Data; N = 356

1.00

5.1

The Setup

The model includes two components: objective economic measures and agents who can encounter and react to this information. Agents encounter economic information directly or indirectly through social networks. Direct contact with economic information represents real-world interactions, such as learning objective economic information from the newspaper, radio, or television news reports. Consistent with most news reporting, as well as our binary signal model, economic information is reported in terms of increases or decreases. Social interactions reect conversations that individuals have about the economy, which could take place in our metaphorical Coee Shop. In these conversations agents report whether they approve or disapprove of the economy. Specics such as the percent unemployed has increased are not directly transmitted through the models social networks; only summary evaluations of the economy (good or bad) get passed on person-to-person. At each time point, individual assessments of current business conditions reect the most recent economic information that the agent encountered. This updating rule represents the top-of-the-head updating we are interested in.

5.2

Model Specics

To initiate the model, 1000 agents are randomly assigned to positions on a square grid. Each agent also receives a random assignment of approve or disapprove of business conditions. Figure 10 shows the (possible) initial position and economic evaluation of each agent. Agents that believe business conditions are better than a year ago are shaded dark gray. Those that believe business condition are worse are shaded light gray.

23

Figure 10: Initial Agent Positions and Evaluations

During the initial setup, agents are also randomly assigned as either information transmitters or information receivers. These designations refer to the role agents play during social interactions. At each time point, agents designation as a transmitter or receiver can change depending on whether the individual encountered objective economic information during that period. This rule captures the well-known role of opinion leaders (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet 1944). Those who actually encounter relevant information are more likely to be the ones who successfully transmit corresponding information to others. During each time point, agents can acquire economic information directly and/or through social networks. Consistent with the data used in Table 3, each time point corresponds (theoretically) with a month. During each month individuals are exposed to up to three objective signals of economic conditions, and up to three economic signals through conversation. Objective and social updating occur sequentially. That is, rst agents can encounter objective economic information and then agents can share this information in social networks. Agents then report their economic evaluation at the end of each time point. Individuals who did not encounter any new information report the evaluation they held at the previous time point. Individuals who encountered information report the most recent signal encountered. Two parameters inuence whether or not individuals encounter and receive objective economic information. The rst parameter corresponds to the probability of encountering objective economic information. The second parameter corresponds with the probability of accepting or resisting this information. These parameters, which can range from 0 to 1, reect the corresponding probabilities of encountering and accepting objective economic information. The percent change in the S&P Stock Index, the percent change in unemployment, and the percent change in the index of coincident indicators reect the three possible economic 24

information ows that people can encounter. If an individual encounters an economic signal, the direction of the change determines whether the individual perceives the information as positive or negative. Thus, increases (or decreases) in stock prices and the index of coincident indicators correspond with positive (or negative) news. The opposite relationship holds for unemployment. After agents update (or not) based on changes in the objective economy, they can engage in social communications according to the following rules. First, each agent moves one step in a random direction. If two agents then occupy adjacent squares, three conditions determine whether economic information is communicated from one individual to the other. First, one of the agents must be an information transmitter and the other must be an information receiver. Second the information transmitter only engages in conversation according to a set probability, which can range from 0 to 1. Finally, a set probability, which can again range from 0 to 1, determines if the information receiver accepts the transmitted information. If these requirements are met, the transmitter agent tells the receiver agent the most recent economic evaluation the transmitter received. At this point, both agents share an economic evaluation based on the most recent economic information encountered by the transmitter. During each time period agents move three times and can thus engage in up to three conversations. The objective economic signals extend from 1978 to 2007 for a total of 356 time points. Thus, the simulated agent behavior and aggregate results correspond to the same number of observations as the data in Table 3.

5.3

Model Results

We present the model results for four population subgroups. The groups correspond to four levels of attentiveness: lowest, low, middle, and high. The corresponding probabilities of encountering a message for each group are .10, .25, .50, and .90. For each group, we hold the probability of accepting a message and the probability of social interaction constant. Figure 11 plots the percent of agents in each group who approved of business conditions next to the percent who actually responded that business conditions were favorable in the corresponding time period. Visually, the High Awareness series corresponds most closely to the actual percent of respondents who viewed business conditions as favorable. The two series correlate at r = 0.32. These similarities are impressive given that the model only includes three objective economic signals. Top of the head updating (with some social interactions) can indeed produce the aggregate opinion dynamics we observe in actual data. Figure 11 also shows that as the probability of encountering economic signals decreases, 25

Figure 11: Simulated Business Conditions Assessments with Varying Levels of Contact with Economic Information

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variation in the percent approving of business conditions decreases. The correlations reported in Table 5 help to identify the relationships between series. First, it is interesting to note that despite the visual dierences between simulated series in Figure 11, the correlation between each of these series and actual business evaluations is roughly consistent across groups. Second, the strong correlations between the Low, Middle, and High Awareness groups are consistent with the synchronous opinion change depicted in Figure 9. It is not until the probability of encountering a message drops to .1 that the correlation between series drops below .80. Thus, top of the head survey responses can produce greater similarities between dierent aware levels than aggregation theory would predict. Table 5: Correlations between Simulated Business Condition Series Actual .9 .5 .25 .1 N = 356 Actual 1.00 0.32 0.30 0.22 0.32 .9 .5 .25 .1

1.00 0.95 1.00 0.80 0.91 1.00 0.50 0.62 0.81 1.00

Table 6 reports the results of a series of regressions using our derived data. For comparison, the rst column reports the results from Table 3, which, recall, uses actual data on public business expectations. The subsequent columns report the regression results as the probability of encountering information decreases. The relationships between the economic indicators and simulated business evaluations are in the expected direction for all subgroups. Furthermore, for each series the relationships are statistically dierent from 0. Yet, the magnitude of the expected eects dier across equations. All coecients for High Awareness and Low Awareness are statistically dierent. It is also interesting to note that although in a visual sense the High Awareness series shares the most in common with actual business evaluations, the coecients for the Middle and Low Awareness series appear closest to the coecients for the actual business conditions regression.

5.4

Conclusions and Implications

The evidence that aggregate public opinion responds to multiple signals is undeniable. Little is known, however, about how these distinct signals become part of aggregate public opinion. The previous model simulated aggregate dynamics of opinion updating based on individual agents encounters with and responses to objective economic information. Despite allowing for direct contact with economic information and contact through social networks, the model would benet from allowing further complexities. First, additional economic signals could be added (such as change in price of specic goods or the index of leading indicators) and the 27

Table 6: Monthly Determinants of Business Conditions Evaluations (Real and Simulated) Real .9 .5 Business Conditionst1 0.925* 0.885* 0.949* (0.016) (0.022) (0.016) % Change in Unemployment -0.186* -0.592* -0.288* (0.108) (.159) (0.095) % Change in Coincident Indicators 3.237* 4.500* 3.511* (0.888) (1.27) (0.752) % Change in S&P 500 Stocks 0.431* 0.647* 0.353* (0.070) (0.106) (0.063) Constant 2.059* 5.759* 2.233* (0.662) (1.430) (1.007) Adj. R2 0.93 0.84 0.92 Note: N = 354 for all columns. Standard errors in parentheses *=p<0.05, one-tailed tests .25 0.977* (0.010) -0.126* (0.050) 1.807* (0.399) 0.155* (0.033) 0.967 (0.677) 0.96 .1 0.981* (0.008) -0.097* (0.027) 0.637* (0.212) 0.081* (0.018) 0.969* (0.468) 0.98

probability of encountering these signals could be varied across individuals. For example, all individuals may be expected to notice changes in the price of gas, while only a small percent of individuals should be expected to notice changes in the index of leading indicators. Furthermore, the probability of accepting received information and the probability of engaging in social interactions can be varied to more accurately depict the heterogenous nature of the public. While incorporating these additional complexities will hopefully provide a more realistic model, the current results suggest that it is indeed plausible that top of the head survey responses lead to a public that updates its opinions systematically. This result is somewhat surprising given that top of the head responses have been used to explain the seemingly random nature of most individual survey responses over time (Converse 1964). These results suggest that what appears to be individual-level randomness aggregates into systematic opinion change. Of course, observing that a certain set of updating rules can produce certain patterns of opinion change does not mean these are the processes which produce opinion change.

General Discussion and Conclusions

Indeed, this point applies generally. That we can set up rules that produce patterns observed in real data does not mean that we have captured these patterns origins in fact. We have not tested theory in the standard sort of way, after all, but explored instead how various 28

congurations of micro theory matter for public opinion dynamics in the aggregate. The evidence has not always been surprising, but the several experiments do consistently produce patterns that mirror actual public opinion dynamics. At the very least, then, we have in hand a sound foundation on which to build in additional agent- and contextual-level complexity. In our rst experiment, we showed that the probability of information exposure has clear macro consequences. The more people meet with information, the more precise their response to it. This does not surprise, of course, but it is interesting to see what happens when people are exposed to only 10% of the available news. Here, relative to the highly attentive, attitude change is neither as rapid nor as tightly connected to reality over the long term, but it does respond in the correct way nonetheless. It stands to reason, then, that even the least attentive citizens contribute (correctly) to the opinion dynamics of the whole. When agents update attitudes on-line, perhaps a more realistic view of citizens interacting with information, such bounded rationality also produces aggregated attitudes that closely track real directional movement. A second set of experiments asked how committed partisans aect aggregate response. The concern here centers on the idea that partisan-based information distortion is systematic, and thus, will not merely wash out via the ltering properties of statistical aggregation. The experimental data assuages such a concern, for as long as partisans balance their desire to see and hear what they want to see and hear against a desire to see the world as it is, they in large measure appreciate change. Partisan-motivated reasoning does dampen the amplitude of the adjustment, however, and the stickiness that arises when the actual- and preferred-worlds are the same must be investigated further. In our nal series of experiments, we examined what happens when agents interact with one another and with multiple sources of information. In Graces Cafe, our rst behavioral scenario rapidly produced the spiral of silence. But once we allowed people to contrast what they hear against their own understanding and then counter-argue, the response was immediately more appealing. Looking at how agents react when exposed to multiple economicinformation ows produced evidence that mirrors what has been found using real-world data. Perhaps this should not be surprising: political information is both widely available and complex, and so this articial arrangement may in fact be a close representation to what transpires in everyday social reality. To summarize, we have a method that allows us to map micro theory directly onto macro opinion dynamics. At this point we have merely asked whether, using particular rules about micro mechanisms, we can produce adjustments that mirror the actual publics adjustments to politics and economics. The projects next phase will push these ideas harder. We want to integrate the micro mechanisms so that each agent takes on multiple important attributes being more or less attentive and strongly partisan, for example. We also want to apply the modeling exercise to a variety of information ows (one- versus two-sided ows, probabilistic signals, clear versus opaque news, and so on), and allow for crucial environmental changes 29

brought on by political campaigns. All told, what we have seen thus far is encouraging. After several decades in the dark, the prospect of shedding light on the origins of collective opinion change grows real.

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