Annals of the International Communication Association

ISSN: 2380-8985 (Print) 2380-8977 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rica20

Silent Majorities and Loud Minorities

Serge Moscovici

To cite this article: Serge Moscovici (1991) Silent Majorities and Loud Minorities, Annals of the
International Communication Association, 14:1, 298-308, DOI: 10.1080/23808985.1991.11678792

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23808985.1991.11678792

Published online: 18 May 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 3

View related articles

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rica20

Download by: [Florida State University] Date: 29 October 2017, At: 07:01
 Commentary on Noelle-Neumann

Silent Majorities
and Loud Minorities

SERGE MOSCOVICI
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

Ecole des Haute Etudes ell Sciences Sociales

T
HE spiral of silence - what a powerful metaphor! It strikes us by a kind
of intuitive truth and also by the heuristic image it suggests. People
usually consider public opinion as a trademark of democracy, a stock
exchange of ideas resulting from thousands of debates and dialogues in which
numerous individuals participate. We could easily apply to it what Tocqueville
(1957) wrote about liberty: "At all times what so strongly attached the hearts of
some men to it are its very charms, its own spell independent of its benefits; it is
the pleasure of being able to speak, act and breathe without any constraint under
the sole government of God and the laws" (p. 26).
Indeed, is public opinion possible where there is no liberty? In the same spirit,
Tarde (1910), who coined the notion in social psychology, strongly affirmed the
connection between public opinion on one hand and the liveliness of speech - the
variety of public exchanges and talk in society at large - on the other. It was
obvious for him that progress and changes in opinion spell the progress and
intensity of conversation in public places. On the contrary, silence, what he called
"universal mutism," was the sign of stagnation and even absence of public opinion.
He thus joined a trend of Western thought for which, as Pascal wrote, "silence is
the greatest of prosecutions; never did the saints keep silent."
Now Professor Noe11e-Neumann reverses this vision of things by making
silence the incentive of public opinion, the determinant of its evolution in a certain
direction. Not those who speak but those who do not make consensus possible and
set the pace of public opinion. The paradox is attenuated when you bring her theory
in connection with a viewpoint widely supported in political science. It states that,
in order to function well, a democracy depends not on the participation but on the
ignorance and indifference of a large number of voters. These, limiting the
influence and expression of some layers of society, ensure the stability and

Correspondence and requests for reprints: Serge Moscovici, Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences
Sociales, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale, 44 Rue de la Tour, 75116 Paris, France.

Communication Yearbook 14, pp. 298-308

298
 Commentary on Noelle-Neumann 299

cohesion of political life. Like the spiral of silence, the spiral of apathy thus allows
the ruling elites to rule legitimately. As brief as these introductory remarks are, they
might still be sufficient to explain the hold this idea has upon us and conjure up a
set of notions that are at the basis of the theory and give it a wide scope.

A NOTION IN CRISIS

When I first read Noelle-Neumann's (1980) book, a number of things about the
nature of publ ic opinion became clear to me. Straightforward, synthetic concep-
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

tions like hers are too scarce not to please, especially when they put a new
perspective on facts previously taken for granted. Her chapter in this volume
presents novel aspects, answers some criticisms, and achieves a level of precision
that we missed earl ier. I do not intend to comment on the whole, nor do I pretend
to remain neutral, since, in the course of my scientific career, I have sought other
solutions to the problems she raises.
Above all, the crisis of the concept of public opinion lies at the heart of this
chapter. She describes the crisis in the right terms: Two outcomes are possible-
either give up the concern with the concept and substitute another for it or try to
solve the difficulties so as to keep what is essential. I, for one, am sure that the
concept of public opinion belongs to the past. It corresponds to a time marked by
the birth of public space in the last century (Habermas, 1987), of representative
democracy, and of the written press - in short, the birth of the Enlightenment in
the classic sense, trying to give a reasonable expression to the diversity of individ-
ual interests and beliefs, while providing for their participation in common action
(see Allport, 1937; Stoetzel, 1943).
Yet the blossoming of social movements, the emergence of means of communi-
cation, and the formation of great bureaucracies and mass organizations with the
ideologies capable of mobilizing them have changed our societies from top to
bottom. If you want to elucidate social reality and collective action, you have to
take into account the meanings human groups share from inside as the condition
of their living together. Understanding the relationships between people and
groups through their system of meanings becomes part and parcel of social reality,
its essential part in fact. This is because such meanings help people to experience
society as more than a commodity, something actually made by themselves.
The more generally the system is shared, the greater part it plays in people's
siding for or against something, in communication and behavior. So, when assess-
ing opinions and attitudes, people do not start from scratch; they necessarily draw
from the rich corpus of notions, symbols, and images underlying their reflections
and binding them to others. These permanently created and shared systems that
impart meaning to our reality and action I have named social representations. They
offer a possibility of going down to the root of opinions and attitudes, grasping, in
Verba's (1970) words, "the relationship between mass attitudes and behavior and
significant outcomes" from both cognitive and practical viewpoints. A long time
 300 PUBLIC OPINION AND PUBLIC INFLUENCE

ago, I proposed that the concept of social representation replaces those of opinion
and attitude (Moscovici, 1963). The latter lead to procedures that force us to treat
"society as if society were only an aggregation of disparate individuals" (Blumer,
1948, p. 545), and they appear too static and limited to account for contemporary
reality. And despite some reservations that were to be expected, the reasons we
advanced in this direction appeared plausible and in keeping with the evolution of
societal psychology (Farr, 1990; Jaspar & Fraser, 1984; McGuire, 1986).
These preliminaries may not account for the peculiar situation of the concept of
public opinion in science, but they suffice for our immediate purpose. They lead
to a provisional conclusion, the consequences of which will presently appear more
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

~lear1y. When a research worker examines fluctuations in response to a survey

about nuclear energy, for example, he or she can deduce from them that they reflect
the degree to which some people advocate it wh ile others abstain from censuring
it. Is this just a change in trend, an increase of the pros and a decrease of the cons
or vice versa, or is it also something else? Might it be the index of change affecting
the social representations people have of nuclear energy, how they learn about it,
conceive their relation to their environment, and consider their daily life in
general? In the course of the process of change, some symbols and images are
dropped because fewer and fewer people use them, while others are created and
then diffused. In parallel, a new language replaces the old one and determines the
meaning of the words in everyone's mouth or in the media. Consequently, what is
also registered through the fluctuations of pros and cons in the survey is often the
change of the modes of thinking, feeling, speaking - in short, the representations
of society at large. People become more or less favorably disposed to nuclear
energy - to revert to the example - but the meaning of nuclear energy is no longer
the same. It is unavoidable that this complicated situation becomes a source of
confusion. Especially, it gives birth to the idea that the manifest opinion and
attitudes of social reality are independent of the shared background of beliefs,
mental representations, and values. In this case, the symptom is mistaken for the
phenomenon.

MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES

In order to solve the crisis that preoccupies her, Noelle-Neumann thinks that a
more thorough theory of the formation of public opinion ought to be proposed,
without, however, interfering with the concept itself and the place it holds in the
social sciences. She contends that the social analogy between control and confor-
mity could serve as a scaffolding for building a conception of public opinion as a
force binding the "social individuals" - the phrase is hers - to society at large. In
order to define the inner nature of this force, she associates the social phenomenon
of deviance with the individual action of silence. As in the laboratory experiments
(Schachter, 1951), the deviant is talked to but does not reply. This is an important
step in her analysis, and interesting for several reasons.
 Commentary on Noelle-Neumann 301

First, the very association could be taken as symptomatic of the necessity for an
individual's action to serve as a unit in research work on public opinion, which
many deny. Then the analogy indicates that a single principle can be found and
isolated to explain a number of apparently complex and unstable facts. By the way,
notice the function of the sociological analysis in this context. It does not serve to
identify some social institution (government, media, or the like) that would be
privileged to exert influence or control. Rather, we can surmise that the pressure
tov;ard consensus resulting in opinion common to all originates in any member of
society.
In this sense, I endorse the steps and propositions included in NoeHe-Neumann's
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

chapter. So I shall abstain from discussing her interpretation in detail, chiefly

because her arguments are convincing. My agreement, however, is given within
limits, insofar as my own work in this area questions the bias toward conformity
in the human sciences and has resulted in a theory of social influence (Moscovici,
1976) different from that which inspires those classic works. In that effort, I have
endeavored to explain the innovation phenomenon: why opinions and attitudes can
be changed by a deviant minority, not why they are preserved and diffused by a
majority, to show that both minorities and majorities exert reciprocal influences.
Thus silence can influence as well as speech, though not in the same way. This
conclusion brings us to envisage conformity in a different light.
Owing to this fact, my comments on Noelle-Neumann's chapter may appear
colored by a viewpoint very remote from hers about what represents our common
interest. So as to diminish this divergence, I shall neither treat the inner structure
of the spiral of silence theory nor examine whether it fits the data well. My main
concern in what follows will be its generality and the conditions in which it can be
taken as valid. To this end, I shall carefully analyze only its basic premise so as to
specify its consequences.

QUASI-STATISTICS

Noelle-Neumann defines public opinion as the result of a consensus proper to

maintain social cohesion. What enables us to discover the direction of this consen-
sus is that fact that people have a "quasi-statistical" sense. Individuals are supposed
to be capable of discovering what they have in common and anticipating the
tendency that dominates among them. Discovering it influences their disposition
to speak out or keep silent as they side with the majority or minority. Here is a
capital passage of the chapter on this point:

When people feel they are in the minority, they become cautious and silent, thus
further reinforcing the impression in public of their side's weakness, until the appar-
ently weaker side disappears completely except for a small hard core that clings to
values from the past, or until the opinion becomes taboo. (p. 259)
 302 PUBLIC OPINION AND PUBLIC INFLUENCE

The popular idea that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" appears as a
psychic postulate: Majorities get more and more in the majority and minorities
dwindle out of sight. No wonder the theory explains the flux of public opinion and
the reflux of individual, let alone deviant, opinion. But can it be accepted without
serious reservations? My first remark is self-evident. If you observe most demo-
cratic countries in the last decades, you can see that public opinion is generally
divided on most issues and the differences between majorities and minorities are
very small. To be sure, in France, Germany, or Italy there is a government of such
and such a tendency, but which party has really won or lost an election has often
become a matter of interpretation. Is the majority in the United States Republican
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

or Democrat? For that matter, the surveys made before the elections have been
mistaken more than once about the differences between the votes each party would
get. It follows that the "quasi-statistical sense" by which people anticipate who the
consensus will favor ought to be very subtle, subtler in any case than that of the
measuring instruments of specialized agencies.
At least one study has suggested that our common statistical sense, if it does
exist, is not subtle at all (Higgins & Barg, 1987). Rather, it would tend to make us
overlook the base rate of a population, overrate the importance of unique cases,
and build up illusory correlations. Here lies the dilemma. In a sense, Noe11e-Neu-
mann has good reasons to contend that people anticipate which way the wind of
opinion will blow and try to let themselves be carried by it. On the other hand,
social psychology prevents us from thinking that they achieve it through a "quasi-
statistical" flair reflected in the surveys. In the present state of our knowledge, the
manner in which people foresee coming events and the directions they will take
remains a riddle. And it would be premature to lean upon our knowledge to solve
an even greater riddle, the influence that the quasi-statistical knowledge people
possess exerts on their behavior.
However, let us suppose for a moment that this sense exists and people are
capable of anticipating the trend of opinion. Assuredly, Noelle-Neumann's chapter
has a theoretical character and I will not burden it with particular considerations.
Nevertheless, one is important. For a party to contend that opinion is favorable to
it and show itself assured of being in the majority can entail two unwanted, even
dangerous, consequences. On one hand, the fact demobilizes its supporters, who,
sure to carry the day, express their preferences less and less to adversaries or the
indifferent. Thinking that the public agrees with them encourages party members
to keep silent. On the other hand, in order to prevent the majority from getting too
strong or the minority too weak, part of the opinion goes to rescue the underdog
and speak in its favor, thereby restoring a certain amount of fairness, for, if there
is no merit in helping the victor, there is a great deal of it in succoring the one who
risks being defeated. Causa victrix diss placuit sed victa Catoni.
Whatever the reality of the phenomenon and its causes, we observe that the
relation between the anticipation of being in the majority or minority and speaking
or remaining silent is neither exclusive nor univocal. There are thresholds above
which a behavior can turn into its reverse, the majority getting silent and the
 Commentary on Noelle-Neumann 303

minority loud, or the reverse. Small inversions of this kind have large effects. We
can often watch a mere 1-2% shift in the votes change victory into defeat. These
particular considerations are not new, but they ought to be better understood. If
they were, then we would understand better why the majority seldom reaches
unanimity and the minority seldom dwindles to the point of disappearing altogether.

THE FEAR OF ISOLATION

Let us now view the premise from the affective side. Three out of the five
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

hypotheses of NoeJle-Neumann's theory conjure up the threat and fear of isolation.

Both emotions make public opinion appear as a veil hiding private opinions, just
as mass psychology hides and absorbs individual psychology (Moscovici, 1985).
No need to demonstrate that the members of the group expressing a viewpoint
opposite to the one the majority agrees upon are isolated and excommunicated by
legal measures, political institutions, and deep-rooted customs. A scholarly survey
of the charges brought against subversive thought would show them to have
outlawed just the works and social movements that have shaped our culture.
Simultaneously, the men who fell victims to the threat, from Socrates to Christ,
from Luther to Freud and Marx, to name just a few, are precisely those held up as
examples to generations trained in obedience and submission to authority. The
main drift of the threat is clear enough, pointing to the supreme arrogance of
believing that one individual alone can face his or her fellow citizens' opinions,
people's religions, and ancestors' traditions. Asking the questions one should not
ask, breaking the connivance owing to which some things can be said and others
forbidden, are seen as a sign of childish pride and narcissism persisting in adult
life. As Nietzsche put it: "To be an exception passes for a guilty deed." He is echoed
by Ibsen in his Enemy ofthe People, when the title hero is warned by a friend: "The
particular must at all costs be subordinate to the general or, better, to the authorities."
Obviously, insubordination or deviance can be perceived as aggression breaking
the consensus. Hence the reaction of ostracism, which is to sanction or prevent this
risk. Beyond its social and psychic reasons, some would ascribe it a genetic basis.
Masters (1984) writes:

The phenomenon of ostracism is a class of customs and practices that involves

exclusion from normal social interaction with all (or virtually all) of a group's other
members. Ostracism can therefore be defined as a rupture of the prior pattern of social
integration.... Indeed it seems reasonable to hypothesize that some form of ostracism
may well be universal in human societies. (p. 877)

No matter how you look at it, this side of the theory seems unquestionable. In
support of her theory, Noelle-Neumann uses the fear of embarrassment as an index
of the fear of ostracism. The findings accumulated in her cross-cultural studies are
impressive and convincing. No doubt you may think that when a person behaves
 304 PUBLIC OPINION AND PUBLIC INFLUENCE

in an unexpected manner publicly, utters a discordant or odd opinion, he or she

feels immediately judged by others. Disturbing the routine of things, making
oneself conspicuous, disturbs the person per se. Here silence restores the order of
things, ensures the return to the familiar, on the condition that the cost of self-love
is not too great. In any case, this premise of the theory is not subject to discussion
and requires no further evidence. Its consequences can be admitted easily: The
consensus of public opinion is made possible by the reflux of those who, fearing
ostracism, draw back from collective dialogue and abstain from uttering aloud a
conviction whose decline they anticipate. They thus yield to the rising flux of those
who, feel ing less and less isolated, propagate in numerous ways (badges, posters,
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

conversations) a conviction that is on the rise. Though this hypothesis has to be

limited to the approximative facts demonstrating it (like every hypothesis, for that
matter), it is the dynamic center of the new theory of public opinion. It sinks a
wedge into the ideas according to which this opinion represents the distribution of
the choices made by individuals following, in fusen's words, their "own path."

DISSENT

Curiously enough, the chapter includes the account of a series of surveys on the
reactions to nuclear energy plants, which obliges us to consider the theory from a
different angle - I would even say, to question its generality in the area assigned
to it. In fact, we see that mass media and opinion surveys register like fine
barometers the evolution of an atmosphere that is more and more hostile to nuclear
energy plants. How to explain it, if not by introducing the factor that, however
omnipresent, is so seldom mentioned? I mean social movements, active minorities
that have been leading a vast, sometimes violent campaign of civil disobedience
against the official policies and dominant views of society. Numerous books have
been written on the subject, and I need not go back over it. When thinking over
many recent events, including dissident movements in Eastern Europe, you may
think it is true that the individual, as a rule, is afraid of being isolated, blamed by
friends, excommunicated by coreligionaries - in short, afraid of everything resem-
bling ostracism. This suffices to discourage any inconsiderate gesture or thought.
But is not there more to it? We can ~uppose that such an individual complies for
lack of genuine persuasion, a profound involvement in belief. One who is deeply
convinced and sticks to a belief can overcome the fear of the isolation that publicly
adopting a definite position might entail. In other words, not only other people's
reactions but also one's own strength determines speaking out or not.
Good sense and the observation of individuals who opposed nuclear energy
plants from the start inspire my remarks about why they have overcome the fear of
expressing what seems to them the truth and disregarded the potential insults,
disparagements, and excommunications of the majority - all the more quixotically
as they try to break isolation itself and convert their opponents into supporters. We
 Commentary on Noelle-Neumann 305

deal here with dissidents who turn into the members of an active minority desirous
to spread their opinions or beliefs. As I have explained elsewhere, we have
distinguished deviance from dissidence, the anomie of a subgroup defining itself
with regard to the majority from the antinomy of a subgroup opposing its own
goals and values to those of the majority (Moscovici, 1976). The former keeps
silent to escape censure, while the latter is all the louder as it wants to make itself
known and the truth manifest, whatever the consequences.
As Carlyle (1842) has noted: "Every new opinion, as its starting, is precisely a
minority of one. ... On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can" (p. 95).
Not as it can: A thing follows regular social and psychic processes. We have been
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

studying ideas for about 20 years (Moscovici, 1988; Mugny, 1980), and have been
able to show that an idea propagates itself on the condition that it is consistent and
influences a number of people without their realizing it. The hidden impact of
minorities accounts for the apparently sudden evolutions and veerings on public
opinion and also for the pluralistic ignorance alluded to by Noelle-Neumann.
Indeed, many people find out one day that they have new beliefs or behaviors,
having been converted from within (Maass & Clark, 1983), without realizing that
the same thing has happened to their children, relatives, or neighbors. Hence we
may wonder whether the threat of ostracism can be considered as an independent
factor, the mainspring of public opinion. All the more, as overcoming the fear of
isolation does not seem to require heroic motivations, as stated by Havel, the
former dissident and now president of the Czech republ ic:

They were not highly motivated members of the opposition with political ambitions,
nor were they former politicians expelled from the power structures. They had been
given every opportunity to adapt to the status quo, to accept the principles of living
within a lie and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities. Yet they decided on
a different course. (Havel et aI., 1985, p. 46)

It thus appears that, according to whether we deal with a silent majority or an active
minority, the threat of ostracism can induce quite opposite behavior. As Noelle-
Neumann remarks, "The hard-core minority is, in fact, often especially willing to
speak out" (p. 274). Thus she points to the horizon beyond of her own theory.
Let me here open a parenthesis. Dissident individuals and movements are the
carriers of a social representation that underlies their conviction or mode of life in
the most various fields, such as trying to change people's reactions toward their
environment, everyday democracy, military service, or scientific and technologi-
cal progress. Transfers from one area of opinion to another can be foreseen, owing
to the representation that has been diffused by the so-called new social movements,
and to proceedings that are very similar. Kepplinger and Hachenberg (1980) aptly
show that not the "hesitant silence of those who refused military service" but "the
provocative activity of their defenders" started the publicizing process, and add
that "the activity of a claiming minority inside and outside the press has influenced
 306 PUBLIC OPINION AND PUBLIC INFLUENCE

the opinions in the population for a long time to come." And they clearly distin-
guish between "an initial phase with the active involvement as the cause of change
and a phase of conflict, caused by the passive fear of isolation" (p. 519).
Much could be added to these remarks, yet I shall close the parenthesis I opened
to show that sometimes, to understand reality better, we have to take into account
first and foremost the representations shared by thc members of the group. The
parenthesis gave us the opportunity to observe that we can no longer limit
ourselves to a social psychology of conformity to the majority, as soon as we have
asked the question, What are the sources of change in public opinion? The spiral
of silence theory appears in this chapter too much tilted in, that direction. Taken
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

together, Noelle-Neumann's remarks and empirical data make us realize the fact,
as if she wanted to bring into relief the excesses that the reader is more liable to
commit than the author. She reminds us how fast these evolutions are in a time
when change is not only frequent but, in addition, a value. Furthermore, we share
a culture that considers the existence of dissensus as normal as the search for
consensus. In other words, the emergence of active minorities obeying a single
impulse in the midst of a more or less amorphous majority has become an essential
factor of life in common. Speaking of "hard cores," "sects," and "young people,"
Noelle-Neumann does not seem to do justice to their importance, when we see how
many significant fractions of each social class are involved in them.
As a matter of fact, the social and psychic makeup of these groups that stand
apart ought to be scrutinized more closely and taken into consideration if we want
to explain the ups and downs of public opinion. It is not enough to mention them;
one has to bring them into account as much as the mass media, if not more, in order
to grasp how a new trend of beliefs, of representations, breaks into society, or why
an existing trend is subject to such a strong reversal in so few years, as the trend
about nuclear energy plants. As Park remarks: "It is in the mind of the marginal
man - where the changes and fusions of culture are going on - that we can best
study the process of civilization and progrcss" (cited in eoser, 1971, p. 366). Even
more, people have agreed for a long time that particular attention must be given to
(hese marginals, so as to ensure a spirit of dialogue and liberty. In a famous essay,
John Stuart Mill (1859) declares:

If either of two opinions has a better claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated,
but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which happens at the particular
time and place to be in minority. That is the opinion which, for the time being,
represents the neglected interests, the side of human well-being which is in danger of
obtaining less than its share. (p. 186)

Examining things from this angle - that of the necessary expression of minori-
ties in public opinion - Noelle-Neumann 's analyses are hesitant about the meaning
to be given to the data presented. With a slight change in the terms, one could come
to a conception of the flux and reflux of those opinions that aims now at confor-
mity, now at innovation. To achieve this it would be enough to give greater
 Commentary on Noelle-Neumann 307

attention to the social psychology peculiar to active minorities as well as to that of

the majorities ready to comply. The former are too much disregarded and the latter
are given too much weight with regard to what happens in reality. This is a basic
counterposition to the point of view that has now become classic. Let us recognize
that this chapter refers to it and that facts are treated in it that, to a certain extent,
might upset the presuppositions of the spiral of silence theory.

CONCLUSION
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

Unfortunately, I am not conversant with all the literature dedicated to the theory.
I suppose that imperative reasons have compelled the author to close her chapter
with the myth of Protagoras. According to it, the gods made society possible by
distributing among humans the sense ofjustice and the sense of shame that enabled
them to live together. No doubt persons had also been given a common represen-
tation of what shame and justice are, so that they could recognize shameful or
unjust deeds, and distinguish them from deeds that, however similar, have no moral
significance. In short, they had been given a religion, the religion of their city.
Logically, the spiral of silence depends on the sense of shame we experience when
we think, behave, or speak in a manner that does not conform to the rules - a sense
kept awake by other people's blame. This feeling would ensure the cohesion and
integration of society by giving a rational meaning to the threat and fear of
isolation. But, in the latter half of the century, we have learned that cohesion and
integration are not a good per se. They can lead to the most dreadful evils, the
self-destruction of societies (Moscovici, 1988). This is why, in their wisdom, the
gods of the Greek philosopher have added the sense of justice that obliges us to
disobey and speak out, to do our duty, even if we incur the risk of being ostracized.
Plato, who wrote the dialogue about the myth, also wrote of the man who, alone in
front of his fellow citizens accusing him of serious offenses, defended justice. In
this myth, public opinion joins the sense of shame to the sense of justice, for lack
of which the citizen's obedience would be everything and his virtue nothing.
It is difficult to assess the worth of comments in general. These have a limited
scope with regard to the possible fields of application. Above all, they aim at
starting a dialogue, seeking to displace the prevailing viewpoint by orienting it
toward the phenomena of evolution and innovation that hold too modest a place in
our social sciences. These are not a discovery; they are a truth and ought to
penetrate better into the theories that, like Noelle-Neumann's, have the power to
explain one of the most essential aspects of life in common.

REFERENCES

Allport, F. H. (1937). Towards a science of public opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly, 1, 7-23.
Blumer, H. (1948). The mass, the public and public opinion. In A. M. Lee (EeL), New outline of the
principles ofsociology (pp. 85-93). New York: Rinehart.
 308 PUBLIC OPINION AND PUBLIC INFLUENCE

Carlyle, T. (1842). On heroes, hero-worship and the heroic in history. London: Chapman & Hall.
Coser, L. (1971). Masters ofsociological thought. New York: Harcourt Brace lovanovich.
Farr, R. M. (1990). Waxing and waning of interest in societal psychology: A historical perspective. In
H. T. Himmelweit & G. Gaskell (Eds.), Societal psychology (pp. 46-65). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Habermas, J. (1987). Theorie de l'agir communicationnel. Paris: Fayard.
Havel, V., et a1. (1985). The power of the powerless. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Higgins, T. E., & Barg, 1. H. (1987). Social cognition and social perception. Annual Review of
Psychology, 38, 369-425.
laspar,1. M. E, & Fraser, C. (1984). Attitudes and social representations. In R. M. Farr & S. Moscovici
(Eds.), Social representations (pp. 101-124). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kepplinger, H. M., & Hachenberg, M. (1980). Die fordernde Minderheit. Kolner Zeitschrift fUr
Soziologie und Social-Psychologie, 32,508-534.
Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 07:01 29 October 2017

Maass, A., & Clark, R. D., III (1983). The hidden impact of minorities: Fourteen years of minority
innuence research. Psychological Bulletin, 95,428-450.
Masters, R. D. (1984). Ostracism, voice and exit: The biology of social participation. Social Science
Information, 25, 877-893.
McGuire, W.1. (1986). The vicissitudes of attitudes and similar representational constructs in twentieth
century psychology. European Journal of Social P!i}'chology, 16,89-130.
Mill, 1. S. (1859). On liberty. London: T. W. Parker.
Moscovici, S. (1963). Attitudes and opinions. Annual Review of Psychology, 14, 231-260.
Moscovici, S. (1976). Social influence and social change. London: Academic Press.
Moscovici, S. (1985). The age of the crowd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
a
Moscovici, S. (1988). La machine [aire des dieux. Paris: Fayard.
Mugny, G. (1980). The power of minorities. London: Academic Press.
Noelle-Neumann, E. (1980). Die Schweigespirale. Munich: Riper.
Schachter, S. (1951). Deviation, rejection and communication. Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, 46, 190-207.
Stoetzel1. (1943). Theorie des opinions. Paris: P.U.F.
Tarde, G. (1910). L'opinion et la foule. Paris: Alcan.
Tocqueville, A. de. (1957). L 'allcien regime et la Revolution. Paris: Gallimard.
Verba, S. (1970). The impact of the public on policy. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34, 455.