What lessons can we draw from the fact that Americans believed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction or that President Obama was foreign-born and ineligible to be President?
a. Most Americans favor cognitive dissonance and those who believed such stories about Saddam Hussein and President Obama were a small fraction of the country.
b. Americans tend to blindly follow opinion leaders because the lack of legitimate political information makes it hard for Americans to discover the truth.
c. People tend to pay more attention and more credence to sources and information that confirm rather than challenge their beliefs.
d. Americans will believe just about anything.
c. People tend to pay more attention and more credence to sources and information that confirm rather than challenge their beliefs.
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Justifications for imperialism include
a. the introduction of the modern state. b. establishing stable governments. c. fostering strong local economies. d. eliminating ethnic distinctions. e. creating exploitative trading relationships.
The principle of randomness in public opinion polling means
A) every individual sampled decreases the risk of bias error. B) ?every individual can choose to participate or decline participation in the opinion poll. C) ?every individual in the population is sampled. D) ?every individual has a known and equal chance of being sampled. E) every individual sampled has a unique perspective on the issues.
Which of the following best captures Thomas Dye's definition of public policy?
A. Only policies that were adopted by the government and placed into law are included. B. It is simply "whatever governments choose to do or not to do." C. Public policy is decisions regarding who gets what, when, and why. D. It is "whatever the public chooses to do or not to do."