A Spiral of Silence for Some: Attitude Certainty and the Expression of Political Minority Opinions.

Spiral of silence theory does not assume a simple, bivariate relationship between opinion climate and opinion expression. In fact, the notion of "hardcore" individuals embraces the idea that there are some people for whom this relationship does not hold true. However, previous research has treated this notion rather as an assumption, not putting it to a direct empirical test. In this paper, we propose that attitude certainty is a key variable to identify the hardcore. Data from three surveys demonstrate that the climate of opinion does only determine opinion expression when individuals hold their attitudes with weak or moderate attitude certainty. For individuals with certain attitudes, no such effect can be found. Thus, there is a spiral of silence only for some, but not for all members of the public. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]