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Table 4. Test of the Hypothesis of Silence: When Support to Own Opinion Is Assured Nonsmokers W h o Demand That Smokers
Forego Smoking in the Presence o f
Nonsmokers
Without Support With Support from an Aggressive from an Aggressive Partisan Partisan ( n = 330) ( n = 197) Respondents willing to join in a conversation on the subject of smoking in presence of nonsmokers Respondents not willing to discuss Undecided
%
%
37.3 50.6 12.1
48.5 36.7 14.8
100.0
100.0
avoid each other. The more the adherents of opposing viewpoints avoid each other, the more the estimates of the climate of opinion will differ because they judge more and more on the basis of impressions from different social circle^.^ The instrument will be demonstrated using the case of the federal election campaign of 1976. The interview question about the climate of opinion for the Christian Democratic Party has been employed before. It runs: "Regardless of your personal opinion, d o you think most people in the Federal Republic are holding a favorable opinion of the Christian Democratic Party, or don't you think so?" In order to measure the congruence o r distance of the assessments of the climate of opinion among partisans and opponents of the Christian Democratic Party, we use the measure of discrepancy D = introduced by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957). Thus it can be shown how during the election year of 1976 the notions about a favorable or unfavorable climate of opinion for the Christian Democratic Party deviate more and more from each other (Table 5). The highest measures of polarization as shown by the discrepancy between assessments resulted from views about the favorable or unfavorable climate of opinion for Chancellor Willy Brandt in January 1971 (D = 78.7) and for the treaties with the Eastern countries (D = 71.1). An especially low discrepancy resulted in April 1976 from the question whether or not a member of the Communist Party should be admitted as judge (D = 12.2).
' This is a shortened exposition emphasizing the assessment of the climate of opinion through personal contacts, personal observations. In fact, however, the mass media play an important part for the assessment of the climate of opinion. This connection can only be treated in a more detailed description of this measure of polarization.