Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes

356 Pages·1998·20.26 MB·English

by  Diana C. Mutz

IMPERSONAL INFLUENCE
How Perceptions of Mass Collectives
Affect Political Attitudes
People's perceptions of the attitudes and experiences of mass collectives
are an increasingly important force in contemporary political life. In
Impersonal Influence, Mutz goes beyond simply providing examples of
how impersonal influence matters in the political process to provide a
micro-level understanding of why information about distant and imper-
sonal others often influences people's political attitudes and behaviors.
Impersonal influence is worthy of attention both from the standpoint
of its impact on contemporary politics, and because of its potential to
expand the boundaries of our understanding of social influence pro-
cesses, and media's relations to them. The book's conclusions do not
exonerate media from the effects of inaccurate portrayals of collective
experience or opinion, but they suggest that the ways in which people
are influenced by these perceptions are in themselves not so much del-
eterious to democracy as absolutely necessary to promoting accounta-
bility in a large-scale society.
Diana C. Mutz is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin-Madison.

Cambridge Studies in Political Psychology and
Public Opinion
General Editors
James H. Kuklinski and Dennis Chong
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and
Northwestern University
Editorial Board
Stanley Feldman, State University of New York,
Stony Brook
Roger D. Masters, Dartmouth College
William J. McGuire, Yale University
Norbert Schwarz, Zentrum fiir Umfragen, Methoden
und Analysen ZUMA, Mannheim, FRG
David O. Sears, University of California,
Los Angeles
Paul M. Sniderman, Stanford University and Survey
Research Center, University of California, Berkeley
James A. Stimson, University of Iowa
This series has been established in recognition of the growing sophistication in
the resurgence of interest in political psychology and the study of public opinion.
Its focus ranges from the kinds of mental processes that people employ when
they think about democratic processes and make political choices to the nature
and consequences of macro-level public opinion.
Some of the works draw on developments in cognitive and social psychology,
and relevant areas of philosophy. Appropriate subjects include the use of heu-
ristics, the roles of core values and moral principles in political reasoning, the
effects of expertise and sophistication, the roles of affect and emotion, and the
nature of cognition and information processing. The emphasis is on systematic
and rigorous empirical analysis, and a wide range of methodologies are appro-
priate: traditional surveys, experimental surveys, laboratory experiments, focus
groups, in-depth interviews, as well as others. These empirically oriented studies
also consider normative implications for democratic politics generally.
Politics, not psychology, is the primary focus, and it is expected that most
works will deal with mass publics and democratic politics, although work on
nondemocratic publics is not excluded. Other works will examine traditional
topics in public opinion research, as well as contribute to the growing literature
on aggregate opinion and its role in democratic societies.
Other books in the series
Asher Arian, Security Threatened: Surveying Israeli Opinion on Peace and
War, o 521 48314 X, o 52.1 499*5 9
Other books in the series (continued)
James DeNardo, The Amateur Strategist: Intuitive Deterrence Theories and the
Politics of the Nuclear Arms Race, o 521 48121 X, o 521 48446 4
John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Congress as Public Enemy: Public
Attitudes Toward American Political Institutions, o 521 48299 2,
o 521 48336 o
Robert Huckfeldt and John Sprague, Citizens, Politics, and Social
Communication, o 521 45298 8
George E. Marcus, John L. Sullivan, Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, and Sandra L.
Wood, Experimenting with Violence o 521 43396 7, o 521 43997 3
Paul M. Sniderman, Richard A. Brody, and Philip E. Tetlock, Reasoning and
Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology, o 521 40255 7,
o 521 40770 2
John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, o 521 40449 5,
o 521 40786 9
IMPERSONAL INFLUENCE
How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect
Political Attitudes
DIANA C. MUTZ
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www. c ambridge. org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521631327
© Diana C.Mutz 1998
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1998
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN-13 978-0-521-63132-7 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-63132-7 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-63726-8 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-63726-0 paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2006
to Robin