The Social Pressures Index
Project Overview
Think tank Populace's groundbreaking initiative, in partnership with Gradient, was designed to uncover the hidden truths of public discourse by quantifying the pervasive impact of social pressures on Americans' private opinions. It was driven by a set of clear objectives:
1. Assess social pressures: Measure the extent to which Americans experience social pressures, and are thus afraid to express their true opinions.
2. Find deltas between private and public opinions: Estimate the public and private opinion, as well as the difference between both, for various sensitive topics, ranging from immigration to healthcare.
3. Understand majority perceptions: Measure Americans’ perceived majority and coalition sizing bias for sensitive statements
- Most Americans are feeling social pressure
- (Un)fair society
- Distrust in American institutions
A significant majority of Americans (61%) admit to self-silencing their true beliefs due to fear of offending others. This self-silencing is strongly correlated with lower social trust, as those who self-silence are far less likely to privately agree that most people can be trusted (30%) compared to those who do not self-silence (52%). This demonstrates a widespread societal pressure that directly impacts open discourse and trust among individuals.
Even though a sizable minority of Americans (37%) publicly express a belief that we live in a mostly fair society, only 7% privately agree — a 30-point difference between public and private opinion. The difference is largest among Americans living in high income households (46% public vs. 6% private) and Republicans (50% public vs. 11% private).
Public opinion results suggest low public confidence in the Supreme Court (36%) and a general distrust of the government (22%) and media (24%). Private opinion reveals that trust is even lower than public opinion results would suggest (21% confidence in the Supreme Court, 4% trust in government, and 7% trust in media).
Research Approach
Survey Administration
The Social Pressure Index instrument was fielded from May 16, 2024 to June 24, 2024. The survey is based on 19,879 interviews conducted by YouGov on the internet, comprising a base sample of US adults (N = 7,144). Additionally, low-incidence groups were over sampled to improve the precision of private opinion estimates. In addition to the base sample of 7,144, the Social Pressure Index survey was administered to oversamples of Asian respondents (N = 4,620), Black respondents (N = 3,934), and Hispanic respondents (N = 4,181).
List Experiments
The Social Pressure Index elicited Americans’ private opinions using a list experiment for a series of sensitive political, social, and cultural issues salient among the American population today. List experiments (also called the itemcount technique) are a form of indirect questioning developed to minimize social desirability and nonresponse bias by concealing respondents’ answers to sensitive items. Privacy is maintained by aggregating responses to sensitive items with other items.