Cantril's Laws of Public Opinion

Cantril suggested fifteen observations of the dynamics of public opinion and one describing the dimensions of opinion.

1. Opinion is highly sensitive to important events.
2. Events of unusual magnitude are likely to swing public opinion from one extreme to another. Opinion does not become stabilized until the implications of events are seen with some perspective.
3. Opinion is generally determined more by events than by words--unless the words themselves are interpreted as an "event."
4. Verbal statements and outlines of courses of action have maximum importance when opinion is unstructured, when people are suggestible and seek interpretation from a reliable source.
5. By and large, public opinion does not anticipate emergencies--it only reacts to them.
6. Psychologically, opinion is basically determined by self-interest. Events, words, or any similar stimuli affect opinion only insofar as their relationship to self-interest is apparent.
7. Opinion does not remain aroused for any length of time unless people feel their self-interests are acutely involved or unless opinion--aroused by words--is sustained by events.
8. Once self-interest is involved, opinion is not easily changed.
9. When self-interest is involved, public opinion in a democracy is likely to be ahead of official policy.
10. When an opinion is held by a slight majority or when opinion is not solidly structured, an accomplished fact tends to shift opinion in the direction of acceptance.
11. At critical times, people become more sensitive to the adequacy of their leadership--if they have confidence in it, they are willing to assign more than usual responsibility to it; if they lack confidence in it, they are less tolerant than usual.
12. People are less reluctant to have critical decisions made by their leaders if they feel that somehow, they, the people, are taking some part in the decision.
13. People have more opinions and are able to form opinions more easily about goals than they are to methods necessary to reach goals.
14. Public opinion, like individual opinion is colored by desire (emotion), and when opinion is based chiefly on desire rather than on information, it is likely to show especially sharp shifts with events.
15. The important psychological dimensions of opinion are direction, intensity, breadth, and depth.