The raw and the cooked - Two types of public opinion

Abstract

This article details two cases of widespread belief or public opinion. The first deals with levels of social satisfaction and their relationship to income and the second with the public perception of crime prevalence. By contrasting the determinants of these beliefs, the author argues that a distinction can be made between those types of beliefs which are of direct interest to social psychology and those which are not. Borrowing the dichotomy raw versus cooked or natural versus socialised, the author suggests that additional clarity can be added to the study of widespread beliefs by focusing on ‘cooked’ rather than ‘raw’ representations.