For decades, political scientists have presumed that American citizens lack real opinions about what they want government to do on specific policy issues. They also thought that citizens' votes in elections are driven by other sorts of considerations, including identity-based affiliations with political parties, assessments of incumbent performance and personality, and more. But new work on the social psychology of attitudes suggests a different perspective: to understand a person's opinion on a policy issue requires measuring the strength of that opinion. And strength is multifaceted.

For more than 20 years, Professor Jon Krosnick has been studying how people form and change their opinions on issues of government policy, what causes some of those opinions to become strong, and what the cognitive and behavioural effects of strong opinions are in the political arena. In this seminar, Krosnick discusses this new perspective which casts the American democracy in a new light, and one that is more encouraging about its integrity than some alternative accounts suggest.

Speaker profiles

Jon Krosnick is a social psychologist who does research on attitude formation, change, and effects, on the psychology of political behaviour, and on survey research methods. At the University of Stanford, he is the Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor of Communication, Political Science, and (by courtesy) Psychology.

Jon is also winner of the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Accessibility

10 West has ramp access to the building and there are lifts inside.