LAWS OF PUBLIC OPINION

WHY IS IT CRITICAL TO PR

WORK? The heart of public PR work lies in attempting to influence the public opinion process.

Most PR programs are designed to: Persuade people to change their opinion. Crystallize uninformed or undeveloped opinions. Reinforce existing opinions.

PUBLIC OPINION: WHAT

IS IT?

Public opinion is:

-an elusive and fragile commodity.

-like shifting sands……subject to change.

Our textbook says……

“Public opinion is the aggregate of many individual opinions on a particular issue that affects a group of people.”

Hadley Cantril some years ago worked out some laws of Public

Opinion on the basis of intensive study of the trends, as recorded by

the polls, support these generalizations:

1) Opinion is highly sensitive to important events.

2) Events of unusual magnitude are likely to swing public opinion

temporarily from one extreme to another. Opinion does not become stabilized until the implications of

events are seen with some perspective.

3) Opinion is generally determined more by events than by words-unless those words are themselves interpreted as

“events”.

4) Verbal statements and outlines of course of action have maximum

importance when opinion is unstructured, when people are

suggestible and seek some interpretation from a reliable source.

5) By and large public opinion does not anticipate emergencies; it only

reacts to them.

6)Psychologically, opinion is basically determined by self interest. Even its words, or any other stimuli, affect

opinion only in so far as their relationship to self-interest is

apparent.

7) Opinion does not remain aroused for any long period of time unless

people feel their self-interest is actually involved or unless opinion-aroused by words-is sustained by

events.

8) Once self-interest is involved, opinions are not easily changed.

9) When self-interest is involved, public opinion in a democracy is likely to be

ahead of official policy.

10) When an opinion is held by a slight majority or when opinion is not solidly structured, an accomplished fact tends

to shift opinion in the direction of acceptance.

11) At critical times, people become more sensitive to the adequacy of

their leadership- if they have confidence in it, they are willing to

assign more than usual responsibility to it; if they lack confidence in it, they

are less tolerant than usual.

12) People are less reluctant to have critical divisions made by their

leaders if they feel that somehow they, the people, are taking some

part in the decision.

13) People have more opinions and are able to form opinions more easily with respect to

goals than with respect to methods necessary to reach these goals.

14) Public opinion, like individual opinion, is colored by desires. And when opinion is

based chiefly on desire rather than information, it is likely to show sharp shifts

with events.

15) By and large people in democracy are provided educational opportunities and

ready access to information. Public opinion reveals a hard–headed commonsense. The

more enlightened people are to the implications of events and proposals for

there own self-interest, the more likely they are to agree with the more objective

opinions of realistic experts.

COUNSELOR EARL NEWSOM HAS COMPRESSED THE RELATIVELY LITTLE KNOWN ABOUT PUBLIC

OPINION INTO THESE PRINCIPLES:

1) Identification Principle: People will ignore an idea, an opinion, a point of view unless they see clearly that it effects there personal fears or desires, hopes or aspirations- your message must be stated in terms of the interest of your audience.

2) Action principle: People do not buy ideas separated from action-either action taken or about to be taken by the sponsor of the ideas or action which people themselves can conveniently take to prove the merit of the idea. Unless a means of action is provided , people tend to shrug off appeals to do things .

3) Principles of familiarity and trust: We the people buy ideas from those we

trust , we are influenced by , or adopt only those opinions or points of view put

forward by individuals or corporations or institutions in whom we have confidence. Unless the listener has confidence in the speaker he has not likely to listen or to

believe.

4)Clarity principle: The situation must be clear to us, not confusing. The thing we

observe , read, see, or hear, the thing which produces our impressions, must be

clear not subject to several interpretations. To communicate you must employ words, symbols, or stereo-types that the receiver

understands and comprehends.