Validating the Willingness to Self-Censor Scale: Individual Differences in the Effect of the Climate of Opinion on Opinion Expression

Abstract

Hayes, Glynn, and Shanahan () defined self-censorship as the withholding of one’s opinion around an audience perceived to disagree with that opinion. They argued that people differ in their willingness to self-censor and introduced an -item self-report instrument, the Willingness to Self-Censor scale, to measure this individual difference. The results of an experimental study presented here provide further evidence of the construct validity of the scale. Each participant in the study was presented with a hypothetical scenario that contained information suggesting a group of people the participant was conversing with about a controversial topic held opinions that were either uniformly similar to or different from the participant’s own opinion. Four weeks prior, each participant had responded to the Willingness to Self-Censor scale and a measure of dispositional shyness. As expected, the manipulation of the climate of opinion affected willingness to express an opinion to the group, but more so among those who scored relatively high on the Willingness to Self-Censor scale. These results support the notion that some people rely on information about the climate of opinion more so than do others when they decide whether or not to voice their opinion publicly, and they suggest that the Willingness to Self-Censor scale measures this individual difference. After more than  years, Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence theory (NoelleNeumann, , ) continues to motivate research and debate about the dynamics of public opinion evolution, the role of the social context in our decisions to express opinions publicly, and the pros and cons of self-censorship over