THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION: PERCEPTIONS OF OBSTACLES TO FREE SPEECH IN THREE CULTURES

Abstract

As part of a comparative study of attitudes toward freedom of expression, Americans, Israeli Jews, and Israeli Arabs were asked about the social contexts in which they feel unfree to speak and about the reasons that inhibit them. Home was the least inhibiting locus in all three cultures and, for the U.S. respondents, the workplace was most inhibiting. Responding to a battery of 33 reasons for not speaking out, all three cultures gave highest ratings to items related to the fear of hurting others. Questions measuring fear of being disapproved or hurt by others—including fear of isolation from the majority and fear of legal restraint—were ranked lower. An overall index of inhibition items proved highly reliable cross-culturally. Americans claimed least inhibition and Israeli Arabs most. Males and those with higher education levels and incomes were also less inhibited across the three cultures. Expression inhibition was negatively, though weakly, related to support for expressive rights among both Israeli groups and American whites but not American blacks, where the relation was positive. Expression inhibition was negatively related to political activity among Americans and Israeli Jews but not among Arabs. Free speech advocates—guardians of the right to say what one thinks—might be surprised to learn how often that right is subordinated to other values. The disciplinary division of labor is such that, while journalists or legal scholars Samuel Shye and Shlomit Levy of the Gunman Institute provided valuable assistance. For the U.S. study, funding came from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the' Freedom Forum, and Middle Tennessee State University's John Seigenthaler Chair of First Amendment Studies. For the Israeli survey, funds were provided by the Mirkle Foundation, the Kahanoff Foundation, the Smart Institute of Communication at Hebrew University, and Middle Tennessee's College of Graduate Studies. For the U.S. study, David Neft, vice president-research of the Gannett Co. Inc., served as technical consultant James R. Caplan, a Miami psychologist, and Judy Caplan, a Nashville media planner, provided significant assistance in developing the original scales. The U.S. study won the 1992 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Research About Journalism. O World Association for Public Opinion Research igg6 230 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH tend to assume a universal interest in self-expression, social scientists find that people—even in democracies—are often reticent about speaking their minds in public or in private. This 'expression inhibition' has a number of different roots and springs from a rich history in social research. Opinion and attitude studies attribute silence to feelings of inadequacy, ignorance, apathy, and powerlessness (Verba and Nie 1972, Neuman 1986, Eliasoph, 1993), to an unwillingness to flout group norms (Eliasoph 1993, Homans 1950), to a squeamishness about contradicting a presumed majority (Asch 1951, Mutz 1989, Noelle-Neumann 1974, 1984), or to a reluctance to defy other sources of authority (Janis 1982, Milgram 1974). In an extended review relating the conformity literature to free speech, Hollander (1975) identifies a cogent series of 'impediments to independence.' Included are the risk of disapproval, the lack of perceived alternatives, the fear of disrupting an event, misperceptions of the extent to which others share one's opinions, the unwillingness to take responsibility, and a sense of impotence. Further, as Maass and Clark (1984) have noted, much of the literature on minority behavior suggests that public compliance with the majority is the norm, though minorities still accept and voice minority positions in private. Historically, fear of harm or disapproval (from others or oneself) may be implicit in some of the causes for silence—but not all. The source of punishment, however, is not often attributable primarily to government or the law, even during periods such as witch hunts, security crises, and correctness crusades when free speech has come under threat. During the McCarthy period, for example, Stouffer (1955, p. 80) asked respondents why they felt inhibited when they reported feeling less free to speak their minds than they had in the past (13 percent of both general public and community leaders). Their reasons, revealed in open-ended responses, included the desire to keep out of trouble, fear that a job or business might be hurt, belief that others would suspect them of being too radical, concern that they might be talking to a 'subversive,' and just because they were getting older. Fear of direct government censure was not a major factor, even during that troubled period, though advocates of democratic openness might be disturbed if only a tiny fraction of the population exhibited such fear. And certainly the fears that Stouffer's subjects did voice are indicative of the climate of fear and repression fostered during the McCarthy era, a climate that may have done far more to undermine free expression than overt governmental action. Yet, if free expression—not only about politics narrowly defined—is important to the health of democratic society and to well-being in the workplace, the place of worship, the places of play, and the home, the extra-legal factors that enhance or undermine the working of participatory democracy must be more systematically understood. Foremost among these factors, perhaps, are the THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION 231 'spaces' or 'loci' provided by different societies for open expression and the extent to which norms of tolerance for deviant expression are institutionalized. Much of the literature of political tolerance (McClosky and Zaller 1984, Sullivan 1982, Sullivan et al., 1985) deals with support for expressive rights—the willingness to countenance the free expression of others or to support legal protection for speech one disagrees with—rather than with expression inhibition. However, the fact that suppressed groups, particularly in the USA and Israel (Caspi and Seligson 1983, Shamir 1991, Shamir and Sullivan 1983, Shamir and Sullivan 1985, Sullivan et al., 1985), have proved less than supportive of general political liberties suggests a potential connection between advocacy of rights and inhibition—assuming that suppressed groups also prove more inhibited. Just such a connection is substantiated by Gibson (1992), who finds that, among both American blacks and whites, individuals who were reluctant to express their political views were also more intolerant of the rights of others. A climate of communal and familial intolerance was also found to breed feelings of inhibition and self-censorship in order to 'avoid arguments,' to avoid 'making enemies,' because others might think their views are 'strange,' because they are concerned about 'what others think,' or because they worry that the 'government might find out.' In particular, Gibson finds that blacks were more reluctant than whites to speak about politics. Across all groups, however, those who were more tolerant of others were also less likely to engage in self-censorship, though the cause or direction of the relation between inhibition and tolerance was indeterminate. Further, Gibson finds that 'reluctance to discuss views' is related to 'behavioral self-censorship' regarding more explicit political expressions. These include displaying signs at one's home or apartment, displaying bumper stickers on cars, participating in demonstrations, wearing buttons to work or in public, signing petitions for publication in newspapers, and writing letters to elected officials. AIMS AND METHOD This paper is an attempt to take a broad and fresh look at a variety of factors affecting 'expression inhibition.' It represents an extension of a comprehensive study of attitudes toward freedom of expression undertaken for the American Society of Newspaper Editors to mark the 200th anniversary of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1991 (Wyatt 1991). In 1992, the study was replicated in Israel among both Jews and Arabs (Levinsohn and Katz 1993), in a society where civil rights compete daily with problems of security and intergroup relations. 232 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH