Why we don’t dare state our opinion
Let us assume that you have a five-hour train ride ahead of you, and in
your crowded compartment a person starts talking about tightening the
asylum laws. Would you like to talk to this person or not?
This is the ‘railway test’, which the German social scientist Elisabeth
Noelle-Neumann used to examine who sticks up for their opinion in public
and who doesn’t. Her hypothesis: the willingness of people to voice their
opinion in public dwindles in situations where they believe that the
majority opinion is different from their own. In other words, we do not
like to be of a different opinion to others. If we notice that the group
majority has a different opinion to ours, we remain silent. This
phenomenon is called the ‘spiral of silence’ and can be explained by these
six points, of which the last two are arguably the most important:
- Most people have a fear of isolation and observe the behaviour of others
to assess which opinions will be accepted or rejected. ‘We fear isolation
more than being wrong,’ wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in the nineteenth
century.- We exert pressure on each other: we pull a face, roll our eyes or turn
away when someone says something that does not comply with the
prevailing opinion.- Fear of isolation and a pressure to conform occur unconsciously. We do
not think about the extent to which we are guided by public opinion.- We tend to conceal our opinion if we think that it will expose us to
group pressure. If we feel public support, however, we tend to express
our opinion loudly and clearly.- If consensus on a subject prevails in a group, it is unlikely that a spiral
of silence will begin.- The number of people who share an opinion is not necessarily
significant. A minority opinion can appear to be a majority opinion if its
proponents appear confident enough and represent their opinion in
public forcefully.