Public Opinion and Political Socialization

Vocabulary flashcards covering core definitions, polling models, statistical distributions, and agents of political socialization from the lecture notes.

Public Opinion

Citizens' attitudes about political issues, leaders, institutions, and events.

Attitude (or opinion)

A specific preference on a particular issue.

Political ideology

A cohesive set of beliefs that forms a general philosophy about the role of government, being either left- or right-leaning.

Values (or beliefs)

Basic principles that shape a person's opinions about political issues and events.

Opinion Polling

A research method involving interviewing a sample of citizens, dating as a modern invention from the 1930s.

Majoritarian Model of Democracy

A democratic model that assumes the government should do what a majority of the public wants.

Pluralist Model of Democracy

A democratic model that assumes the public as a whole seldom demonstrates clear, consistent opinions on issues.

Statistical theory of sampling

A theory holding that a sample of individuals selected by chance from any population is representative of that population.

American Trends Panel (ATP)

Pew Research Center's national survey panel of about 10,000 randomly selected U.S. adults, recruited offline using random sampling from the U.S. Postal Service's residential address file.

The Gallup Panel

The largest probability-based U.S. panel created by Gallup for conducting online survey research.

Normal distribution

A symmetrical bell-shaped distribution centered on a single mode, indicating that the public tends to support a moderate policy on an issue.

Skewed distribution

An asymmetrical but generally bell-shaped distribution where the mode, or most frequent response, lies off to one side, showing that most respondents share the same opinion.

Bimodal distribution

A distribution showing two responses chosen about as frequently as each other, indicating that public opinion is sharply divided.

Political Socialization

The complex process through which individuals become aware of politics, learn political facts, and form political opinions.

Transmission model

The theory that parents transmit their partisan identification to their children.

Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory

A developmental framework that maps environmental influences across nested systems, including the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

Workplace Socialization

Adult socialization where workplaces offer opportunities to interact with people holding differing political perspectives, leading people to become more tolerant.

Gender gap

A feature of contemporary politics in which women identify with the Democratic Party more than men do.