Public opinion is embedded in underlying societal beliefs—a social paradigm—and these organize the way that people perceive and interpret the functioning of the world around them. Paradigms are so fundamental as to be taken for granted, but they do change. Evidence is presented that modern industrial societies now are undergoing a paradigm shift; substantial proportions of the public are now operating on the basis of one or more new paradigms. Public opinion analysts no longer can take for granted the belief paradigm that had been our context for opinion. Instead they must investigate paradigms and take them into account in the design and analysis of opinion studies.
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References
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1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
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2. Peter Schwartz and James Ogilvy, The Emergent Paradigm: Changing Patterns of Thought and Belief, VALS Report No.7 (Menlo Park, CA: Stanford Research Institute International, 1979).
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3. This belief structure is referred to as a “dominant Western World view” by William R. Catton, Jr., and Riley E. Dunlap, “A New Ecological Paradigm for Post-Exuberant Sociology,”The American Behavioral Scientist, 24: 15-47 (Sept.-Oct. 1980).
4.
4. Ibid., pp. 17-18.
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5. The evidence for this challenge is drawn from a three-nation (England, German, and United States) study of environmental beliefs and values in which I am participating. Many of the points made in this article are developed more fully in my book, Environmentalists: Vanguard for a New Society (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984).
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and Daniel Yankelovich and Bernard Lefkowitz, “National Growth: The Question of the 80's,”Public Opinion, 3:44-57 (Dec.-Jan. 1980).
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7. Cotgrove, Catastrophe or Cornucopia, p. 33.
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8. Ibid., p. 82.
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9. Project details can be obtained from me.
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10. The correlation coefficient r is a measure of association. One interpretation of it is that r2—in this case, .542 or .29—shows to what degree favoring the use of direct action to fight for causes believed in predicts membership in the vanguard. In this case, 29 percent would be predicted by this variable.
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11. The interpreters of the March 1983 federal election in Germany frequently committed the error of trying to force-fit the German Green Parties on the left-right dimension. The fit was awk-ward and misleading, but even reporters who may have understood the underlying meaning of the Greens lacked a shorthand way of communicating that meaning to the public; the language of the old DSP is no longer adequate for communication.
