A leading German research institute has found evidence to support Tocqueville's view: "More frightened of isolation than of committing an error, they joined the masses euen though they did not agree with them."Returning to classical statements on the concept of public opinion, I have tried to substantiate empirically the process o f public opinion formation through the individual's observation of his or her social environment.Of all the pertinent statements by Tocqueville (S), Tiinnies (9), Bryce (4), and Allport (l), I can mention here only Allport's example of a process of public opinion: the pressure brought to bear on householders in a neighborhood to shovel the snow from their sidewalks. This example illustrates that social conventions, customs, and norms are included, along with political questions, among the "situations" and "proposals of significance" with which a large number of people express agreement or disagreement in their public lives.If public opinion arises from an interaction of individuals with their social environments, we should find at work the processes which Asch (2) and Milgram (6) have confirmed experimentally. To the individual, not isolating himself is more important than his own judgment. This appears to be a condition of life in human society; if it were otherwise, sufficient integration could not be achieved.For our purpose let us assume that this fear of isolating oneself (not only fear of separation but also doubt about one's own capacity for judgment) is an integral part of all processes of public opinion. This is the point where the individual is vulnerable; this is where social groups can punish him for failing to toe the line. T h e concepts of public opinion, sanction, and punishment are closely linked with one another.

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13o, PINION and attitude surveys were, from the start, linked to the concept of public opinion. When a new quarterly journal for this field was founded in 1937, the title of Public Opinion Quarterly was adopted, apparently without qualms. Yet the relationship between survey results and public opinion has been insufficiently discussed. We have developed new kinds of questions and analytic models based on an interpretation of the concept of public opinion. This conceptualization enables us to observe the development of the climate of opinion and of the attitudes of individuals earlier and more clearly than is possible with conventional survey questions.Two very different meanings attach to the concept of public opinion: The first carries a critical connotation-public opinion is the judgment, founded on rational discussion, of informed and responsible citizens meting out praise or blame to the government. The second meaning, which is older, connotes pressure to conform. This is how Jean Jacques Rousseau, who coined the concept of public opinion in 1750, understood it, and so did John Locke, almost a hundred years earlier, who gave a Abstract New tools for measuring changes in public opinion can be derived from the theory of the spiral of silence. Measures of individual assessment of the climate of opinion and of confidence about showing one's own opinion document the processes by which the losing side falls increasingly silent and the winning side is therefore overrated.

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