Spiral of silence - one against all

Are people ready to express their thoughts while in the minority? How does the media influence people's opinions, and how does people's behavior change when they fear being isolated?

The answers to these questions I found in the book of the German political scientist, sociologist, and journalist Elizabeth Noel-Neumann "Public opinion: the opening of a spiral of silence." Let's see what leads to unspoken opinions.

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Every day millions of people see the results of public opinion polls and analyze visible statistics. But they do not suspect that the figures quoted in the media are not relevant to reality. And it's not just a deliberate juggling of facts, but also a "spiral of silence" - a specific phenomenon that was discovered in the 1960s. XX century.

At that time, a group of sociologists led by Elizabeth Noel-Neumann stated that because of fear of being isolated, people are not inclined to express their opinion. She argued that if people feel that they are in a minority they are afraid to talk. In addition, some of them publicly go over to the side of the majority, without changing their views, while others simply do not enter into discussions and do not state their point of view in any way. The launching and development of the "spiral of silence" leads to the fact that it is impossible to find out what most people really think about.

Noel-Neumann remembers the elections that took place in Germany in the 60s. Then, part of the population preferred to publicly demonstrate their commitment to the LNG party (badges, stickers on cars, posters on the windows). And the other part of the population, giving preference to the CDU party, did not show much activity. Interestingly, initially the number of speakers behind the CDU was much higher than the LNG fans. However, in the pre-election period, it appeared visually that the party that is leading is lagging behind its competitors. Because of this, many adherents of the leading CDU publicly changed their political predilections or simply refused to talk about them, fearing to be in public isolation.

Thanks to such effects, the political leaders of any state openly use the "spiral of silence". Russian political scientist Ekaterina Shulman explains:

"From the TV screen or from the newspaper, the authoritative speaker declares to you:" All people think the same way, everyone agrees with what I'm saying right now. " And those who do not agree, are said: "You are a minority, you are outcasts". In these conditions, social surveys do not talk about anything, because people repeat what they heard on TV. "

It is interesting that no one wants to recognize himself as a participant in the "spiral of silence", because he does not want to seem driven and conformal. The author of the concept notes that "the propensity of people to imitate does not correspond to the humanistic ideal". Nevertheless, the social nature of man is such that the fear of being alone often forces him to ignore his views not only in the public arena, but also in the family circle.

It would seem that today, tens years after the official opening of the "spiral of silence" everything has changed. Everyone is talking about the need to be yourself and the importance of individualism. But this is not so!

This is confirmed by well-known experiments conducted by the American psychologist Solomon Ash. Their essence was that people in the room were offered to look at several drawn lines and choose the longest one from them. It would seem that the participants in the experiment had an easy task. But the actors in the room intentionally started to "vote" for the obviously wrong version. As a result, the absolute majority of subjects stopped believing their eyes, blindly following the "public opinion".

Ekaterina Shulman explains why this works:

"The spiral of silence is joining the majority. I answer as I think, other people answer. Those who follow me respond like I do, because I increased the imagined majority by myself alone. "

It is obvious that the "spiral of silence" affects our entire life: the large-scale concealment of our views changes not only the political and social situation, making us a target for manipulation. Studies of the phenomenon show - staying in a "spiral", we will be in a reality that not only did not choose, but did not want.

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