The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion

Blurb

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion is a 1992 non-fiction book by political scientist John Zaller that examines the processes by which individuals form and express political opinions and the implications this has for public opinion research. The book has been called "the single most important book on public opinion since V. O. Key's 1961 classic, Public Opinion and American Democracy."
Zaller argues that public opinion is heavily influenced by exposure to elite discourse on political matters. He attributes variation in political attitudes between individuals to individual-level differences in receptivity to this discourse, in terms of political awareness and concordance with prior beliefs.
By rejecting the notion that voters hold single preferences, the book challenges the usefulness of public opinion surveys. Zaller’s argument as to how individuals form survey responses is effectively summarized by his "Receive-Accept-Sample" model, according to which the opinions individuals express reflect the messages they have received, accepted, and sampled from.