According to the authors, “Public opinion lies at the juncture of society, communication, and the individual; of the public and the private domains; of civil society and the state; of citizenry and politics; of masses and elites; of social control and rationality; of norms and events” (p. 2). Current theories are inadequate in that they have not captured the various constituent elements of public opinion, particularly the nuances and motivational factors by which public opinion is constructed and maintained. To correct these deficiencies, Shamir and Shamir propose a theory that lies at the confluence of communication, social psychology, social cognition, political science, and political psychology. They base their theory upon four premises.

First, public opinion is a social construct and, as such, is “perceptible, exposed, shared, and relevant to all citizens as well as to government” (p. 3). Public opinion is not static, but rather an “organic entity” which emerges and is continually recreated through societal discussion and debate. Public opinion is the product and reflection of the society in which it is found. However, it also helps to construct society in its continual expression. Public opinion thus maintains a symbiotic relationship with society.

Second, public opinion is multidimensional and cannot be reduced to a single expression. Current theories of public opinion concentrate on measuring attitudes and what these attitudes mean in reference to policy issues and/or political candidates. Such attempts do not assess the values of individuals or society, or the various dimensions that underlie these values. The authors attempt to assess public opinion in all of its facets while recognizing the various guises in which public opinion can manifest itself—i.e., symbolic, verbal, individual, group, electoral, etc.

Third, public opinion is dynamic and evolutionary. Shamir and Shamir contend that there are multifaceted divergences and convergences in public opinion. One such divergence, that of the concept of the “silent majority,” is indicative of the discrepancy that exists between the evaluative and the expressed facets of public opinion. By coming to understand the silent majority and if it, in fact, exists, the authors hope to answer the “nagging political and theoretical question” of which public opinion the government should heed in making its policy choices.

Finally, public opinion consists of an “information environment” whose nature must be studied and understood in order to determine the processes that the expression of public opinion will set in motion. Previous studies of public opinion have included little about attitude distributions and the component elements of public opinion. The authors intend to study public opinion not simply from an observational standpoint, or from a point “outside the box,” but from an interactive standpoint by climbing into the box and dissecting public opinion and then recombining it through meaningful interpretation.

With these four premises as their theoretical impetus, Shamir and Shamir set out to decipher the information environment in which public opinion is formed. Their task is a formidable one. Indeed, the authors recognize that their study is broad in its scope and that their efforts are but scratching the surface of a full understanding of public opinion. However, they are quite successful in laying the foundation for an interesting and innovative approach to public opinion research.

Using as their case study Israeli public opinion on issues of peace and territories before and during the first Intifada, Shamir and Shamir combine an innovative use of survey instruments and “thinking-aloud protocols” to help decipher the cognitive elements which comprise public opinion. Their research is guided by a rich and detailed survey of public opinion literature, though they rely upon the works of Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann to an unusual degree in their research. Despite their lengthy discussion of such terms as “pluralistic ignorance''—which is the gap between “aggregate distributions of opinion and their perceptions by the public at large” (p. 1), and which comprises the entirety of Chapter 5—the most interesting aspect of the authors' approach to understanding public opinion is their use of “thinking-aloud protocols.''

Pioneered by Anders Ericsson and Herbert Simon (Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports As Data, 1984), thinking-aloud protocols are designed to provide clues to the cognitive processing of individuals as found in their verbal reports. By utilizing the thinking-aloud methodology, Shamir and Shamir provide rich insights into the “information environment” of Israeli public opinion. Indeed, their interpretations of their subjects' responses to questions concerning peace and the return of territories during the Intifada period are crucial to understanding the multidimensional facets which make up the information environment as well as the variability of that environment.

By virtue of their methodology—particularly the thinking-aloud protocols—the authors conclude that estimates of public opinion are an exercise in everyday reasoning—not formal reasoning as evidenced by exercises which measure problem-solving abilities. Thus, people use cognitive shortcuts and heuristics when assessing public opinion, but the process is far from infallible. In fact, citizens still make mistakes in their assessments—such as those manifested by pluralistic ignorance. These mistakes occur because the cognitive shortcomings of individuals do not allow for adequate information processing to take place.

Believing that typical public opinion research has ignored motivations, the authors delve into how citizens construct their opinions, what information they rely upon, and how well they discern the overall environment of public opinion. Thus, a major issue for the authors is the role which values play in the formation and maintenance of attitudes. These values can be assessed in light of the “climate of opinion” which exists in any society. This climate in which the values of the individuals are found is a socially derived phenomenon which is collective and shared. The climate itself is the result of societal processes and interactions, such as those manifested by the direct relations of individuals (one-on-one interactions), small groups, various social networks, and large aggregations of individuals and groups (a community or state). Shamir and Shamir find that individuals base their opinions on their own personal experiences, as well as those of their family, friends, and colleagues and the groups of which they are a part. These findings are interpolated from the thinking-aloud protocols and reinforce the authors' contention that public opinion is not simply a number manifested by a poll or a sampling of attitude distributions. Rather, it is a dynamic phenomenon which is created by the information environment in which it is found, but is also re-created at various times and shapes the opinions of those who find themselves in that information environment.