Mark Blumenthal, who operates the website Mystery Pollster (and who, as noted in my October 18, 2004 entry, did his undergraduate work at UM; click for October 2004 archives) recently reviewed polling data on President Bush's Social Security proposals. In my opinion, Mark's is the webpage of record for explaining the mechanics of polling to a general audience.

In analyzing recent polls on Social Security, Mark invokes the concept of "non-attitudes," coined by Phil Converse. "Non-attitudes" refer to opinions that are spontaneously generated by respondents who want to create the impression they are well-informed. Converse, though best known in political science circles, received his training as a social psychologist.

For nearly the entire time that my cohort and I were in graduate school at Michigan, Converse was the director of the Institute for Social Research, where social psychology faculty and student offices were located at the time. Converse then moved in 1989 to become director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a position he held until 1994.

Converse is today listed as a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Michigan.

In at least two of the graduate courses I took at UM -- Hazel Markus's on advanced social psychology and Don Kinder's on public opinion -- we covered Converse's work.