EUROPEAN PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF SCIENCE

In this paper we explore the relationships between public interestin, knowledge of, and attitudes towards science and technologyand the level of industrialization in 12 countries of the EuropeanCommunity. Using the 1989 Eurobarometer survey no 31 (N=11,678),we constructed four scales measuring interest, knowledge, generalattitudes to science, and support for EC funded science foreach of the 12 EC countries. We found that overall factual scientificknowledge correlates moderately positively with interest andattitudes to science. For example the Netherlands and GreatBritain have relatively high levels of knowledge, interest,and support for science in general. Spain and Greece have relativelylow levels of knowledge, interest, and support for science ingeneral. However, the simple correlation hides more complexrelationships. First, the variance within and across countriesof knowledge, attitudes and interest increases with nationallevels of knowledge. This indicates greater degrees of polarizationof both support and interest. Second, the data indicates a post-industrialismeffect: knowledge, interest in, and attitudes to science showa curvilinear relationship with levels of industrialization.The decline of interest in science and the less positive attitudesin highly developed countries requires further exploration.Third, we found, that the consistency of the knowledge and theattitude measures declines as the national level of knowledgeincreases. We suggest that this reflects a knowledge-ignoranceparadox and knowledge specialization among informed populations.Support for EC level science follows a different pattern. Wefound that France, Italy, and Spain show high levels of supportfor EC level science. This is not the case in Great Britainand Germany. The pattern suggests that attitudes towards ECscience are formed on the basis of national level scientificstrength: if the national science base is strong, EC scienceinitiatives find less support and vice versa. These findingsrepresent a first step towards a comparative assessment of publicunderstanding of science in EC countries.     

外交档案记录的中苏建交铁事

轶事之一：毛泽东主席激动地与机要秘书握手 新中国的建立震动了世界,立即引起各方面的反响：作为支持过中国革命的苏维埃社会主义共和国联盟是最快作出反应的国家,开国大典后仅两个小时,苏联政府承认中华人民共和国的照会就发到了中南海。当毛泽东看过机要秘书送来的莫斯科照会之后,     

PUBLIC OPINION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SOVIET UNION

This article examines the relationship between public opinionand the transformation of the Soviet Union. Results of an August1990 survey showed that the majority of adults supported democraticreform, but lacked confidence in the Soviet regime. Young andmiddle-aged people, urban residents, and those with higher educationtended to be more supportive of democratic reform and more alienatedfrom the regime. The nationalities differed widely in supportfor democratic reform and confidence in the regime. In the partlydemocratized political system, Boris Yeltsin acquired a broadfollowing by appealing to the electorate and advocating radicalchange. A February 1991 poll showed that his support was greatestamong Russians who backed the Russian parliament and stronglyendorsed democratic reform and private enterprise. With suchbacking, Yeltsin won the June 1991 Russian presidential electionand then mobilized popular opposition to the August coup attempt.The coup's failure dealt a fatal blow to Communist rule, Gorbachev'sleadership, and the Soviet Union itself.     

CHANGING PATTERNS OF ACCESS TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE

No abstract available for this article.     

THE CHANGING TENOR OF QUESTIONING OVER TIME

This paper uses a single question form—the negative interrogative—as a window into the increasing aggressiveness of American journalists and hence the increasingly adversarial relationship between press and state in the United States. The negative interrogative in English is a type of yes/no interrogative (e.g., “Isn't it …”, “Don't you …”) often understood as asserting rather than merely seeking information. Its frequency in the construction of yes/no questions is an index of the propensity for journalists to depart from a formally neutral posture and express a point of view on the subject of inquiry. Previous quantitative research documented their growing use in US presidential news conferences since the 1950s, with the Nixon Administration as an historical turning point. Here we incorporate a more nuanced qualitative analysis of single cases in use. Beyond their growing frequency, negative interrogatives were increasingly mobilized to raise substantively adversarial matters, increasingly prefaced by adversarial assertions, and increasingly likely to treat such prefaces as presuppositionally given. Together these trends indicate journalists' growing willingness to highlight administration problems and failings and to hold Presidents to account, with Presidents since Nixon facing a harsher climate of journalistic questioning than did their predecessors.     

PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF TELEVISION INFLUENCE AND OPINIONS ABOUT CENSORSHIP IN SINGAPORE

It is a common assumption that in many countries mass mediacensorship is imposed by an authoritarian government on an unwillingpublic. This study examines public opinion about televisioncensorship in the island nation of Singapore. More specifically,we tested the third-person effect hypothesis, which suggeststhat people expect media content to have more negative influenceon others than on themselves, and that some support for censorshipis based on that perceptual bias. Data for the study came from face-to-face interviews with 506randomly selected Singaporeans who evaluated ten categoriesof ‘sensitive’ television content. Results revealed(1) a substantial perceptual bias in all content categories;(2) generally strong opinion favoring censorship of televisioncontent; and (3) a significant relationship between these twofactors, suggesting that people may support censorship of mediain part because of a tendency to overestimate its negative influence.     

新中国首批海军军官赴苏留学忆往

担任留苏学员队队长1951年5月的北京,和风拂面,春风正浓,前门外大栅栏内"庆太和"旅馆来了53位年轻的海军军官,小的只有17岁,大的30来岁,进行政审、体检,每人分配一套毛哔叽便装,一件呢大衣和一只帆布箱子,一片繁忙景象。他们是中国人民解放军海军第一批派往苏联学习的学员,在此做出国前的准备工作。     

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONAL ETHOS: A POLL OF POLLSTERS

A mail survey of 129 contact persons for polling organizationrevealed that 62 per cent of the firms from which responseswere received do not go back before 1980. Many respondents werethemselves newcomers, who had found their way into polling viapolitics and showed less commitment to the professional ethosthat meant so much to the pioneer pollsters. Newcomers, on theaverage, had fewer academic credentials and less training thaneither of two generations of more seasoned pollsters; more ofthem worked directly for politicians. The three generationsalso differed in the satisfactions sought from polling and onprofessional membership. Are we encountering a "new breed" ofpollsters?     

THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION: PERCEPTIONS OF OBSTACLES TO FREE SPEECH IN THREE CULTURES

As part of a comparative study of attitudes toward freedom ofexpression, Americans, Israeli Jews, and Israeli Arabs wereasked about the social contexts in which they feel unfree tospeak and about the reasons that inhibit them. Home was theleast inhibiting locus in all three cultures and, for the U.S.respondents, the workplace was most inhibiting. Responding toa battery of 33 reasons for not speaking out, all three culturesgave highest ratings to items related to the fear of hurtingothers. Questions measuring fear of being disapproved or hurtby others—including fear of isolation from the majorityand fear of legal restraint—were ranked lower. An overallindex of inhibition items proved highly reliable cross-culturally.Americans claimed least inhibition and Israeli Arabs most. Malesand those with higher education levels and incomes were alsoless inhibited across the three cultures. Expression inhibitionwas negatively, through weakly, related to support for expressiverights among both Israeli groups and American whites but notAmerican blacks, where the relation was positive. Expressioninhibition was negatively related to political activity amongAmericans and Israeli Jews but not among Arabs.     

THE INFLUENCE OF PERCEPTIONS OF MEDIA INFLUENCE: THIRD PERSON EFFECTS AND THE PUBLIC EXPRESSION OF OPINIONS

This paper explores the role of perceptions of the opinionsof others as they relate to the formation of public opinion.Two interrelated theories involving such perceptions, the thirdperson effect and the spiral of silence, are tested in the contextof public opinion regarding divestment of financial interestsin South Africa. As hypothesized by the third person effect, perceptions of theinfluence of media reports on others were found to be consistentlygreater than perceptions of influence on self. Findings werestrongly supportive of this component of the ‘third personeffect’ hypothesis. Perceptions of the opinions of otherswere also explored in relation to respondents' willingness toexpress their opinions publicly. As suggested by the spiralof silence theory, respondents were found to be more willingto express their opinions publicly when they perceived a trendin support of their viewpoint, or when there was a greater perceivedlikelihood of achieving success for their issue position. The size of the effect produced from joining these two processesis moderated by the role of issue salience. People perceivingdivestment as a highly important issue are more likely to ascribegreater media influence to others than to themselves, but theirwillingness to express their opinions publicly is least likelyto be influenced by perceptions of the climate of opinion.     

THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL DESIRABILITY ON PERCEIVED MEDIA IMPACT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THIRD-PERSON PERCEPTIONS

This study examines variations in perceptions of media influencebased on the locus of impact (self vs. other) and the valenceof the message (pro-social vs. anti-social). After reading oneof four versions of rap lyrics either advocating or condemningviolence or misogyny, 406 undergraduates filled out a surveymeasuring the perceived impact of songs with that type of lyricson themselves and on other students. Results replicated previousfindings of a third-person perception for the anti-social messages.Based on an ego-enhancement motivational explanation, it waspredicted that there would be a reverse third-person perceptionfor the pro-social messages. The findings did not support thishypothesis, and for the pro-social message regarding the treatmentof women, a Lraditional third-person perception was found. However,consistent with the ego-defensive motivational explanation,the size of the third-person perception differential was significantlygreater for anti-social than for pro-social messages. Implicationsof these findings for explanations of the third-person perceptionwere discussed.     

MENTAL MAPS OF SCIENCE: KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES AMONG CANADIAN ADULTS

This study addresses the question of the relationship betweenscientific knowledge and public attitudes toward science andtechnology. General work on cognitive schemas suggest that theseknowledge maps may have significant links to affect. A telephonesurvey of 2,000 Canadian adults was conducted and included abattery of knowledge items to test scientific cognition on basicscience concepts, to examine understanding of science processes,and to tap technological literacy. The survey also examinedattitudes toward science and scientists. Factor analysis of the attitude items resulted in two dimensions:trust in science and feelings of efficacy on science issues.A structural equation model was applied to certain demographicantecedent variables (education, exposure to science courses,age), the scientific literacy score, and to the attitude dimensionsof trust and efficacy. Findings demonstrated that scientificliteracy was positively correlated with attitudes of trust andfeelings of efficacy. These results were explained in termsof potential positive exposure to science in general in formalscience training (in schools) as well as to informal informationsources such as the media.     

THE RISE OF POSTMATERIALIST VALUES AND CHANGING RELIGIOUS ORIENTATIONS, GENDER ROLES AND SEXUAL NORMS

This article investigates the relationship between Materialistand Postmaterialist values, and attitudes towards religiousand social norms as well as behavioral indicators in industrialsocieties. It focusses on the question whether Postmaterialistvalues—indicated through a greater emphasis on such goalsas self-expression, quality of life and belonging—arerelated to a decline of traditional orientations. The empiricalpart is based on the data of a unique cross-national dataset,the World Values Survey 1981–1982, which compares religiousand moral beliefs of populations of sixteen countries with variouspolitical, cultural and ethnic characteristics. It also takesinto account behavioral indicators related to these norms, e.g.birth and divorce rates in these countries. According to theresults, Post-materialist values are closely related to a declineof traditional values. There also exist strong linkages betweenindividual-level values and the actual behavior of the peoplesin the given societies. But besides their detachment from traditionalreligion, Postmaterialists are significantly more likely thanMaterialists to spend time thinking about the meaning of lifeand, thus, may even have more potential interest in religion.