The Rhetoric of Public Opinion Polls
When Persuasion Masquerades as Description
Recently, I’ve been picking my way through Stanislav Andreski’s (1972) Social Sciences as Sorcery. In this book, Andreski (1919-2007), himself a sociologist, provides a critique of the social sciences. Among other things, Andreski thinks that social scientists all too often sell their wares to the highest bidders, lending their aura of authority to those in power.
It’s not just social scientists that do this, of course. Others do, too. But the problem is with:
the aura of authority that social scientists seem to possess and
the power that this perceived authoritativeness lends to their public statements.
Needless to say, Andreski takes issue with the easy identification of the social sciences with the natural sciences. Per Andreski, if by “science” in “social science,” you mean “science” just like physics or chemistry, then the social sciences are not sciences.
The question is: Why, though? Why aren’t the social sciences just like the natural sciences?
The answer is simple, and it has to do with the qualitative difference between hurricanes and human beings. Unlike hurricanes (and other natural phenomena), human beings cannot help but respond to the words, language, and symbols used to describe them.
Hurricanes and Human Beings
If you call a hurricane “Ivan” or “Irma,” does it care? No. A hurricane doesn’t care what you label it. The hurricane will spin on regardless of whether you give it a male name (Ivan) or a female name (Irma).
Does a human being care what you label him or her? Of course.
You better be absolutely sure you’re not calling Ivan “Irma” or vice-versa.
Similarly, a person may behave differently based upon whether you label him “stupid” or “smart,” “anxious” or “well-adjusted.”
Andreski writes,
“…everybody knows that one can make a person discontented by deploring the circumstances under which he lives, encourage his endeavour by praise, or discourage it by sarcasm; that a physician’s reassurance may aid recovery, and that an anxious parent can make the child timid. True, the powers of persuasion are not boundless, and there are many conditions – whether disease or destitution or some other scourge – which no amount of reassurance can alleviate; but in innumerable cases a few authoritatively spoken words can turn the scales.” (emphasis mine)
The words that we use alter the world around us insofar as these words are directed towards others. The power of words to infect the minds of those unaware to their effects is tantamount to magic, bad medicine, and—in a word—sorcery.
Inflation is Going Down
Let’s do an experiment to demonstrate how descriptive accounts of reality affect the reality described. Call me a scientist. I specialize in economics. I pen an article on inflation and give it this headline: “Inflation is Going Down.”
How do you feel after reading those words? Don’t even consider the article itself just yet. Just ponder the headline.
How do these words make you feel after paying $12 for a 30-pack of Breathe Right Strips? How do they make you feel after spending $10 to replace your 2.5” microwave lightbulb? My guess is that they make you feel better even before you read the article.
Do you want to believe me when I tell you that inflation is going down?
How do you feel when I tell you that inflation is getting worse?
Or that inflation isn’t really going anywhere meaningful (it hasn’t gotten better or worse)?
What do you want to happen with regards to inflation?
The point here is that the words themselves regardless of the reality they refer to make you feel different. Of course, inflation may or may not be actually getting worse. I won’t deny that there are signs we can read about the economy that give us a relatively accurate indicator of what is actually happening. Rather, I only mean to draw your attention to how the reading of these signs may influence the signs themselves.
Perhaps even more ironically, if I write “Inflation is Going Down” and I really mean it (I’ve got the signs/evidence to back it up), and people spend more as a result, and if more consumer spending contributes to inflation, does that mean that inflation will go up? If I want inflation to go down (discourage consumer spending), should I try to find evidence that inflation is going up?
Another (perhaps clearer) example has to do with banking. If I tell you the banks are failing, what are you going to do? You might just pull your money out of the bank. And what happens when everyone does that? The banks fail. If I tell you war is inevitable, what do you do? Well, one option is to argue with me. Another is to prepare for war. It’s inevitable, after all, and you’d be an idiot not to.
Who Polls the Pollsters?
Ironically enough, you can influence political realities by making merely descriptive statements about political realities. Andreski writes:
“If we convince the subjects that their ruler’s power is irresistible, they will abandon all thoughts of rebellion, while by spreading the view that a revolution is imminent and sure to win, we might be creating one of the conditions necessary for its outbreak. The politicians, generals and managers have, of course, always known about this connection, encouraged the spread of exaggerated notions about their power, and tried to impress them on the populace with the aid of pomp surrounding high office.”
Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed many headlines related to polls, polls, polls. Given where we’re at in the calendar relative to the upcoming election, this isn’t totally surprising, of course.
What do you know about how to take a poll? Surely, you’ve made one in Survey Monkey. You’re no idiot. Or you’ve asked a group of people to raise their hand before in support of an initiative. Again, you’re not an idiot, right?
Wrong. No. You’re a major idiot. And so am I. You know how I know? There are special people (very special) who know how to poll. They went to school to learn how to poll, the school of rock and poll. They know all about samples, margins of error, etc. In other words, they know all sorts of things about the technology of polling that you don’t. They know, and you don’t.
Just Google the word “shock poll” and see what you find:
Question: How do these polls make you feel? If you’re a Trump voter, three of them might make you feel like garbage. If you’re a Harris voter, you may get a boost of enthusiasm from all but one. The headlines themselves have an effect on you, and they might alter whether or not you feel like it is worth even going out to vote.
When people see polls that predict the political future in one way instead of another, they may be more likely to resign themselves to that political future. The prophets (social scientists) say that this is how reality is, and thus, this is how it will be. Such discouraged folk might say to themselves: “This is the direction we’re headed,” regardless of whether it actually is.
Here’s the point: The polls influence the reality they only purport to describe. Some people know this. Others don’t.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
As with reports about inflation, real numbers do matter when it comes to polling, of course. But the question is what numbers and headlines obscure, not necessarily whether they’re false, per se (although that matters, too). And one thing polls obscure, at least, is how the poll itself influences the reality it only purports to describe.
Like all social scientific descriptions of reality, polls are persuasive—and not simply to those taking them or those giving them, but to those who simply think of them as neutral descriptors of reality.
Perhaps all I can tell you is to learn a lesson from Oedipus, the curséd King of Thebes who insisted on knowing whether or not he was his father’s killer and mother’s husband. If you know anything about this story, you know it is a very ironic tale about a King who fulfills a prophecy by trying to avoid it. A closer reading of Oedipus Rex reveals that he may have just avoided his fate if his parents had refused to listen to the ministers of Apollo. By attempting to escape their fate, they secured it. So it goes with all self-fulfilling prophecies.
The next time a secular prophet speaks, you don’t necessarily have to close your ears. You just have to remember that words are magic, and you’re not as immune to mere descriptions as you might think.
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Get Involved:
Do you know how to bring out-of-print books back into print? Please contact me. I have an ongoing list of texts that I want to bring back, including Andreski’s.
Credit Where Credit is Due:
I got my ideas of banks failing and the inevitability of war from this page. Most of my connections to Andreski come from having read the first few chapters of Social Sciences as Sorcery. Ian Hacking also talks about human beings as “looping kinds” (i.e., as creatures liable to use descriptions about them as tools for self-interpretation). Carl Elliott has a fascinating (if not disturbing) article that uses Hacking’s concept to think about why people amputate their limbs for non-medical reasons.
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I've read "Language Is Sermonic" by Richard Weaver and the chapter on concealed rhetoric in scientistic sociology was very insightful and relative to this subject. When I read that book, I felt like a fish who became highly aware of the swamp water around him but had no vocabulary to describe this fishy feeling to his fish friends. The fishy feeling being that our western culture is facing hyper subversion through the social sciences. My best attempt at describing this feeling is that our language, ideals, and relational dynamics are being constantly polluted through the incautious dumping of social scientistic terms that fail to plainly describe the metaphysical reality they attempt to refer to. A very crude explanation but their something of substance somewhere in that statement.
Can a true theory emerge from the scientific study of social phenomena?