Public Opinion — Chapter X The Detection of Stereotypes

1. 1. Ruritania used different stereotypes—natural frontier, self-determination, historic right, reparation, cultural superiority, national defense—to justify annexing each sector of territory.
2. 2. In 1918, many demanded reestablishing an Eastern Front by using the Japanese army, ignoring the 5,000-mile distance and broken railway from Vladivostok to the battle line.
3. 3. Space in practical life is a matter of available transportation, not geometrical distance, as shown by a motorist who needs to know about detours and road conditions.
4. 4. Time perspectives vary: geological, biological, social; using the wrong one—like ignoring present emergencies or fixating on the immediate—distorts judgment.
5. 5. Popular history confuses time: an Irish patriot may treat Cromwell's actions as contemporary, while an Englishman sees them as long dead, creating barriers between peoples.
6. 6. The future is elusive: proposals for sudden proletarian dictatorship skip necessary training time, while resistance to sharing responsibility denies that human capacity can change over time.
7. 7. The Sheffield social workers surveyed 816 randomly selected workers to estimate mental equipment, finding about one quarter well equipped, nearly three-quarters inadequately, and one-fifteenth mal-equipped.
8. 8. People readily accept sequence as cause and effect when two ideas arouse the same feeling, as when Increase Mather linked smallpox to alehouses or a professor linked Bolshevism to Einstein's theory.
9. 9. Public opinion tends toward absolutism: we dislike qualifying adverbs like 'rather,' 'perhaps,' 'almost,' preferring to see things as one hundred percent, everywhere, forever.