A protest can be a fine way to get people’s attention—particularly the attention of those in positions of power. But one of the most important, and most overlooked, functions of protest is to prevent the dreaded “spiral of silence,” which can begin when people wrongly believe that their own point of view is not widely shared.
抗议是引起人们注意力的一种很好的方式，尤其是那些处于权力的人的注意力。但是，抗议的最重要，最被忽视的功能之一是防止可怕的“沉默螺旋”，当人们错误地相信自己的观点并没有被广泛分享时，这种功能就可以开始。
When political speech is considered socially sensitive or politically dangerous, people are more likely to sit out protests, mute themselves online, and keep quiet in everyday conversation. These small acts of silencing may seem merely polite or indifferent, but they can easily spiral.
当政治言论被认为对社会敏感或政治上的危险时，人们更有可能参加抗议活动，在网上静音并保持日常交谈。这些沉默的小动作似乎只是礼貌或冷漠，但它们很容易螺旋。
People sometimes take as many cues from silence as they do from noise. And because people interpret silence to mean quiet acceptance or approval of the status quo, they use it to inform their own decisions about whether to speak out. Silence begets silence, which begets further misunderstanding about what a society actually collectively believes or wants.
人们有时会从沉默中获得与噪音一样多的线索。而且由于人们将沉默解释为意味着对现状的安静接受或批准，因此他们使用它来告知自己关于是否发表的决定。沉默地沉默，这进一步误解了一个社会实际上相信或想要的东西。
Political and psychological scientists like me who study this phenomenon have found that a “spiral of silence” is one way that unpopular policies and regimes persist. One major reason is a muted, acquiescent public—the proverbial people watching the naked emperor’s parade.
像我这样的政治和心理科学家研究了这种现象，发现“沉默的螺旋式”是一种不受欢迎的政策和政权持续存在的一种方式。一个主要原因是一个柔和，默默地的公众 - 众所周知的人看着裸露的皇帝的游行。
Recent psychological research on public opinion regarding climate change has shown how wrong Americans can be about one another’s beliefs. For example: What percentage of Americans is at least somewhat concerned about climate change? Recently, a representative group of more than 6,000 Americans answered this question. On average, they guessed that less than half of Americans—only 43 percent—worry about climate change. In their eyes, a clear majority of Americans is unconcerned. This is not true, however. In actuality, 66 percent of Americans report worrying about climate change.
关于气候变化的公众舆论的最新心理学研究表明，美国人对彼此的信念有多错误。例如：至少有什么百分比的美国人关注气候变化？最近，由6,000多名美国人组成的代表团体回答了这个问题。他们平均猜测，只有不到一半的美国人（仅43％）对气候变化有所了解。在他们看来，明显的美国人很清楚。但是，这不是真的。实际上，有66％的美国人报告担心气候变化。
Listen: Who really protests–and why?
听：谁真正抗议 - 为什么？
This massive underestimate also extends to Americans’ perceptions of support for various climate policies aimed at slowing climate change. The survey, fielded by an interuniversity team of psychologists led by the psychologist Gregg Sparkman, asked people to estimate the amount of support among Americans for a carbon tax, mandates that electricity be generated by renewable energy, wind and solar infrastructure on public lands, and support for the Green New Deal. Average guesses for support of these policies ranged from 37 to 43 percent. In reality, 66 to 80 percent of Americans support these policies. The researchers noted in their findings that supporters of climate policies “outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true.” Americans are living in a “false social reality,” they concluded, when it comes to climate-change opinions.
这种大规模的低估也扩展到了美国人对旨在减缓气候变化的各种气候政策的支持的看法。由心理学家格雷格·斯帕克曼（Gregg Sparkman）领导的心理学家互换团队进行的调查要求人们估算美国人之间的碳税量支持，要求通过在公共土地上为公共土地上的可再生能源和太阳能基础设施产生电力，并支持绿色新交易。支持这些政策的平均猜测范围为37％至43％。实际上，有66％至80％的美国人支持这些政策。研究人员在他们的发现中指出，气候政策的支持者“超过了对手，而美国人则错误地认为是真实的。”在涉及气候变化的观点时，他们得出结论，美国人生活在“虚假的社会现实”中。
By now, we all know something about reality’s tenuousness—we’re bombarded with information but very frequently left grasping to figure out what is actually true. Layer on uncertainty about what others believe, and you’ll find yourself in a “false social reality” where you conclude that you are in the minority of people who care about a given issue. Such a misperception can make you lose hope for solutions, or discourage you from speaking up or acting. In the case of climate change, Americans also lose hope because they believe that opposition to climate policy is based on hostile partisan polarization. But hostile partisan polarization on this issue also turns out to be larger in perception than in reality.
到目前为止，我们都对现实的脆弱性了解 - 我们受到信息的轰炸，但经常留下来，以弄清楚实际是真实的。关于别人相信的不确定性，您会发现自己处于“虚假的社会现实”中，您可以得出结论，您是在乎给定问题的少数人。这样的误解会使您失去对解决方案的希望，或者阻止您大声疾呼或表演。在气候变化的情况下，美国人也失去了希望，因为他们认为反对气候政策是基于敌对的党派两极分化。但是，在这个问题上，敌对的党派两极分化也比实际上比现实更大。
In another study, this one by the psychologists David Sherman and Leaf Van Boven, participants guessed that Americans would support two climate policies—cap-and-trade and revenue-neutral carbon policy—if their own party proposed them, but not if they were proposed by the other party. This is a reasonable assumption in a highly polarized society. But for Democrats, this was incorrect—Democratic participants reported support for the climate policies whether they were proposed by a Democratic or a Republican lawmaker. Republican participants were unsupportive of climate policies if they were proposed by a Democrat, but Democratic participants overestimated their opposition, which was closer to “no support” than “active opposition.”
在另一项研究中，心理学家大卫·谢尔曼（David Sherman）和叶范·博文（Leaf Van Boven）的这项研究是，如果他们自己的当事方提出，则参与者猜测，美国人将支持两种气候政策 - 帽子和贸易和收入中性碳政策 - 如果他们提出的话，但不是由对方提出的话。这是高度两极分化的社会中的合理假设。但是对于民主党人来说，这是不正确的 - 民主参与者报告了对气候政策的支持，无论是由民主党还是共和党议员提出的。如果共和党参与者是由民主党提出的，但民主党参与者高估了他们的反对派，而这比“积极反对”更接近“没有支持”。
The fact that organized protest can break the spiral of silence, and correct our impressions of what other Americans think, is one of the most immediate and important values of protesting in the first place. My own research and the research of other social scientists have repeatedly documented instances from recent American history in which protest updated our impressions of what other citizens believe.
有组织抗议的事实可以打破沉默的螺旋，并纠正我们对其他美国人认为的印象，这是首先抗议的最直接，最重要的价值之一。我自己的研究和其他社会科学家的研究一再证明了美国最近的历史的实例，抗议活动使我们对其他公民的信仰更加印象。
For example, about three years ago, on June 24, 2022, protests broke out after the Supreme Court ruled, in Dobbs v. Jackson, that the federal government should not guarantee a right to legal access to abortion, overturning the precedent set by Roe v. Wade 50 years prior. A group of my colleagues and I, led by Chelsey Clark, had already been surveying Americans regarding their personal beliefs about abortion (Do you support legal access to abortion?) and other Americans’ beliefs (How many Americans do you think support access to abortion?). We found that following the Supreme Court decision, Americans’ beliefs about abortion barely budged, but their perceptions of other Americans’ beliefs were different. Despite the fact that the Court had just ruled against legal access to abortion, Americans were more likely to perceive that other Americans supported legal access.
例如，大约三年前，即2022年6月24日，在最高法院裁定Dobbs诉Jackson裁定，联邦政府不应保证获得堕胎的法律访问权，推翻了Roev。Wade50年前设定的先例。由切尔西·克拉克（Chelsey Clark）领导的我和我的一群同事已经一直在调查美国人对他们对堕胎的个人信念（您支持法律堕胎吗？）和其他美国人的信念（您认为有多少美国人认为支持堕胎？）。我们发现，在最高法院的裁决之后，美国人对堕胎的信念几乎没有兴起，但他们对其他美国人信仰的看法是不同的。尽管法院刚刚裁定不反对堕胎的法律访问，但美国人更有可能认为其他美国人支持法律访问。
What caused people to update their impressions of what Americans believe? In my research, we connected this change to their exposure to protest and dissent. Social media and traditional media were filled with images of people marching against the ruling. Analyzing millions of Twitter impressions and tweets, we found that the sentiment of tweets about the ruling were much more negative than positive. It also helped that more than 4 million of the tweets shared links to polling data indicating that a majority of Americans supported legalized abortion access, a fact that journalistic institutions also reported widely at the time.
是什么导致人们更新美国人认为的印象？在我的研究中，我们将这种变化与他们接触抗议和异议的情况联系在一起。社交媒体和传统媒体充满了反对裁决的人们的图像。分析了数百万个的Twitter印象和推文，我们发现有关该裁决的推文的观点比积极的片段要多得多。这也有帮助，超过400万条推文与投票数据共享了链接，表明大多数美国人支持合法的堕胎访问，这一事实是，新闻机构当时也广泛报道了这一事实。
Scholars of the Supreme Court have theorized that Court rulings can change public opinion, and even our impressions of what other Americans think. In fact, in our own prior work, led by Margaret Tankard, we studied the public-opinion impact of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage. Across the partisan divide and among older and younger men and women, our survey respondents did not change their own beliefs about same-sex marriage. However, their perceptions of other Americans’ beliefs changed: In the days and months following the ruling, they perceived that other Americans had increased their approval of same-sex marriage. This shift in their perception of other Americans was big—as big as the actual shift in personal opinions approving of same-sex marriage over the past 15 years among Baby Boomers.
最高法院的学者认为，法院裁决可以改变公众舆论，甚至我们对其他美国人的想法的印象。实际上，在玛格丽特·坦克德（Margaret Tankard）领导的我们的先前工作中，我们研究了最高法院的Obergefell诉Hodges裁决的公开影响，该裁决使同性婚姻合法化。在整个党派鸿沟中，在年龄较大和年轻的男人和女人中，我们的调查受访者没有改变自己对同性婚姻的信念。但是，他们对其他美国人信仰的看法发生了变化：在裁决后的几天和几个月中，他们认为其他美国人增加了对同性婚姻的认可。他们对其他美国人的看法的这种转变很大，就像在过去15年中，在婴儿潮一代批准同性婚姻的个人意见的实际转变。
You might recall that in the days following the ruling, there was another kind of American demonstration. Or, at least, you might remember the rainbows. Americans’ social-media feeds lit up in rainbows; Google posted a rainbow banner across its search page; and at night, the White House was bathed in rainbow lights. There was a great deal of media coverage of weddings (which also featured rainbows). Long-time couples rushed to courthouses and city halls, and local news was full of videos and pictures of happy couples crying and holding hands. The celebrations were hard to miss.
您可能还记得，在裁决后的几天里，还有另一种美国示威活动。或者，至少您可能还记得彩虹。美国人的社交媒体饲料在彩虹中亮起；Google在其搜索页面上发布了彩虹横幅；晚上，白宫用彩虹灯沐浴。有大量媒体报道婚礼（还包括彩虹）。长期的夫妇赶往法院和市政厅，当地新闻充满了录像带和快乐夫妇哭泣和牵着手的照片。庆祝活动很难错过。
In both cases, Americans heard about the Supreme Court ruling, and then looked around at the people in the streets, on their televisions, and on social media. After Obergefell v. Hodges, people observed the immediate, widespread celebrations and perceived more support for same-sex marriage than they had before the ruling. After Dobbs v. Jackson, Americans again looked around at their social world and inferred from the widespread protest, discontent, and polling evidence shared on Twitter that Americans were more supportive of legal access to abortion than they’d previously thought.
在这两种情况下，美国人都听说了最高法院的裁决，然后在街上，电视上和社交媒体上环顾四周。在Obergefell诉Hodges诉Hodges之后，人们观察到了直接的，广泛的庆祝活动，并认为对同性婚姻的支持比裁决之前的支持更多。在Dobbs诉Jackson案之后，美国人再次环顾四周，并从Twitter上分享的广泛抗议，不满和投票证据中推断出来，美国人比以前想象的更支持美国人的堕胎法。
Neither of these studies assessed whether Americans’ perception had updated to a perfectly accurate view of public opinion—we did not ask participants to estimate the percentage of supporters for either issue. Rather, these studies imply that Americans’ perceptions of public opinion changed in the direction of the public demonstrations, not in the direction of the Court rulings. Another recent data collection—by me and my colleagues—reinforces this point. After the Supreme Court ruled in two cases—Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina—against the use of race-based affirmative action in higher education, there was very little public protest. We found that survey participants again updated their perceptions of what Americans think about affirmative action—immediately after the ruling, they thought that Americans supported it less. In this case, the Court ruling was accompanied by relative silence. People take cues from silence.
这些研究都没有评估美国人的看法是否已更新到对公众舆论的完全准确的看法 - 我们没有要求参与者估计任何一个问题的支持者的百分比。相反，这些研究表明，美国人对公众舆论的看法在公开示威的方向上发生了变化，而不是在法院裁决的方向上发生了变化。我和我的同事最近的另一个数据收集提出了这一点。最高法院在两个案件中裁定（公平招生的学生诉哈佛大学和公平招生的学生诉北卡罗来纳大学的学生）之后，加上在高等教育中使用基于种族的平权行动的情况，公众抗议很少。我们发现，调查参与者再次更新了他们对美国人对平权行动的看法 - 裁定后，他们认为美国人支持较少的支持。在这种情况下，法院的裁决伴随着相对沉默。人们从沉默中获取线索。
Read: Do protests even work?
阅读：抗议活动甚至有效吗？
Michael Suk-Young Chwe is a political scientist who studies how public rallies, demonstrations, and parades can all be used to build “common knowledge”—not just a shared understanding of what is true but an awareness of both other people’s opinions and the fact that those people know our opinions. Because rallies and demonstrations are a form of “symbolic resistance,” they can be underestimated, Chwe acknowledges. But they build our common knowledge, because we are all observing one another watch the spectacle.
迈克尔·苏克·杨（Michael Suk-Young Chwe）是一位政治学家，他研究公众集会，示威和游行都可以用来建立“常识”，而不仅仅是对真实事物的共同理解，而是对其他人的观点以及这些人都知道我们的意见的事实的认识。CHWE承认，由于集会和示威是“象征性抵抗”的一种形式，因此可以低估它们。但是他们建立了我们的常识，因为我们都彼此观察奇观。
There is a class of people who do not underestimate symbolic gatherings in public: those who wish to seize and retain power. Evidence for this point stretches back to the Tudor kings and queens of 16th-century England, who paraded to various locations outside their court to be seen by their subjects. Although anthropologists have analyzed these local processions (or “progresses,” to use the term favored by historians) as direct acts of power in which monarchs such as Queen Elizabeth I marked each outlying territory as belonging to the Crown. Chwe points out that the underappreciated value of these parades were the “crowds of astonished peasants.” The audiences that gathered were not just watching the Queen—they were watching other people watch the Queen.
有一类人不会低估公开场合的象征性聚会：那些希望抓住和保留权力的人。这一点的证据可以追溯到16世纪英格兰的都铎王朝国王和皇后区，他们在法院外的各个地点游行，他们的臣民看到。尽管人类学家已经分析了这些地方游行（或“进步”，以历史学家的青睐一词）作为直接的权力行为，在这些行为中，伊丽莎白女王等君主我将每个外围领土都标记为属于王室。欧洲校园指出，这些游行的价值不足是“惊人的农民人群”。聚集的观众不仅在看女王，而且他们看着其他人看女王。
American leaders also believe in common knowledge. Many Americans can still recall President Richard Nixon’s famous 1969 speech asserting that a “silent majority” supported his Vietnam War policy, in contrast to the loud minority showing up to anti-war protests. President Barack Obama, in his 2009 speech presenting his health-care plan to a joint session of Congress, reminded the public that “a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option.” Today, President Donald Trump reflexively advertises and exaggerates the size of the crowds at his rallies and inaugurations, and introduces rumors with the phrase many people are saying. In advance of his Washington, D.C., military parade, which coincided with the nationwide “No Kings Day” protests, Trump claimed that he “hadn’t heard of any protests,” but threatened a “very heavy response” to any protesters at his parade.
美国领导人也相信常识。许多美国人仍然可以回想起理查德·尼克松（Richard Nixon）总统1969年著名的演讲，称“沉默的多数”支持了他的越南战争政策，这与大声的少数派出现在反战抗议活动中。巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）总统在2009年的演讲中向国会联合会议介绍了他的医疗保健计划，提醒公众“大多数美国人仍然赞成公共保险选择”。如今，唐纳德·特朗普总统反身宣传并夸大了他的集会和就职典礼上人群的规模，并用许多人说的话介绍了谣言。在华盛顿特区的军事游行之前，特朗普声称他“没有听说过任何抗议活动”，这与全国性的“无国王日”抗议活动相吻合，但威胁要对他的游行中的任何抗议者做出“非常重的回应”。
Of course, not all types of protests cause the public to update their impressions of public opinion in the direction of their cause. Violent protests, or media coverage that falsely frames protests as violent when they are not, can lead the public to view protesters as representatives of fringe or extremist viewpoints. As the political scientist Omar Wasow finds in the context of the civil-rights movement, protester-initiated violence can backfire in subsequent elections. It is for this reason that elites who are being challenged through protest often seek to frame protesters as violent or, Nixon-like, as part of a “vocal minority.” The challenge for protest organizers is to present a large, peaceful show of opinion that is not easily reframed or misrepresented by elites or by the echo chambers of social and partisan mass media.
当然，并非所有类型的抗议活动都会导致公众在其事业的方向上更新其公众舆论的印象。暴力抗议活动或媒体的报道错误地将抗议活动视为暴力时，可能会导致公众将抗议者视为边缘或极端主义观点的代表。正如政治科学家奥马尔·沃斯（Omar Wasow）在民权运动的背景下发现的那样，抗议者发起的暴力可能会在随后的选举中适得其反。出于这个原因，通过抗议挑战的精英经常试图将抗议者构成暴力或像尼克松一样，作为“声音少数”的一部分。抗议组织者面临的挑战是提出一个大型，和平的观点，这不容易被精英或社会和党派大众媒体的回声室重新构成或虚假陈述。
In his book Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge, Chwe quotes the renowned social theorist Jürgen Habermas: “The fundamental phenomenon of power is not the instrumentalization of another’s will, but the formation of a common will.” What do other Americans believe? To know, we look around for a public signal.
在他的书《理性仪式：文化，协调和常识》中，哥伦威引用了著名的社会理论家尤尔根·哈贝马斯（JürgenHabermas）的话：“权力的基本现象不是他人意志的工具，而是共同意志的形成。”其他美国人相信什么？要知道，我们四处寻找公共信号。
Politics is a challenge for human coordination. People want to participate in political action only if others do as well. Those who believe in self-governance must signal to other people that they wish to participate, that they believe in one form of politics or another. We must watch one another—not just through social media or a news channel—to learn what we believe. And we must be willing to speak up ourselves. This is the way to form common knowledge about what other Americans truly think and want. And this is the underappreciated value of protests. To paraphrase the political scientist Diana Mutz: they don’t tell us what to think, but they tell us what other people think.
政治是人类协调的挑战。人们只想在其他人也这样做才能参与政治行动。那些相信自治的人必须向其他人发出信号，他们希望参与，他们相信一种形式的政治或另一种形式。我们必须彼此观看 - 不仅是通过社交媒体或新闻渠道来了解我们的信念。我们必须愿意说自己。这是形成有关其他美国人真正想法和想要的常识的方法。这是抗议活动的价值不足。解释政治学家戴安娜·穆茨（Diana Mutz）：他们不告诉我们该怎么想，但他们告诉我们其他人的想法。
