International Journal of Public Opinion Research Vol. 8 No. j
0954-2892/96 $3.00
THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION
INHIBITION: PERCEPTIONS OF
OBSTACLES TO FREE SPEECH IN
THREE CULTURES
Robert O. Wyatt, Elihu Katz, Hanna Levinsohn and
Majid Al-Haj
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
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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.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC O P I N I O N RESEARCH
SUBJECTS
For the U.S. study, 1,508 adults from all 50 of the United States were selected
by random-digit dialing, then by the next-birthday method of designating
respondents within households. Interviews were conducted on April 2-23, 1990,
by a professional survey research firm, and all questions related to expression
inhibition were randomly rotated from respondent to respondent to control for
order effects.
The U.S. sample contained 1,264. whites (84 percent), 144 blacks (10 percent),
23 Asians (2 percent), 14 Native Americans (1 percent), and 58 'other' (4
percent). For most purposes in the following analysis, the entire U.S. population
is treated as one culture—given not only the dominance of whites but the small
size of other groups in the sample. But, where appropriate, black-white contrasts
are developed to provide some insight into the perceptions of the country's
largest minority, particularly in relation to Israeli Arabs. However, wisdom
dictates that generalizing from so small a sample of American blacks be done
cautiously. The informed refusal rate for the U.S. survey was 19 percent.
In Israel, face-to-face interviews were conducted among a representative
sample of adults during June 1992, and included 1,187 Jews and 521 Arabs.
Kibbutzim were excluded. Respondents, all of whom lived within the pre-1968
borders of Israel, were questioned by interviewers from their own ethnic group.
For the Israeli survey, probability sampling was done in three stages: selecting
among Jewish or Arab settlements stratified by size, choosing households at
random from a list of residents, then rotating the selection of household members
by gender and age. Interviewers were instructed to start with the household of
the drawn name, regardless of the current occupant, then substitute, following
strict instructions, from other households in the building or block when no one
was home or where no qualifying Hebrew/Arabic-speaking adult was available.
For both Jews and Arabs, the sample proved representative of the Israeli
population in gender, education and age. There was a 10 percent refusal rate.
Though Arabs make up only approximately 17 percent of the Israeli population,
they were deliberately oversampled and, because of their unique cultural and
political status, were analyzed as a separate group. Israeli Arabs are, by definition,
citizens of Israel who live within the post-1948 and pre-1968 borders of the state.
They do not include residents of the Golan Heights, the West Bank, or the Gaza
Strip. The Israeli questionnaire was translated into both Hebrew and Arabic
from the English of the American study, with minor adjustments for national
differences (e.g. 'prime minister' instead of 'president,' 'Israel' instead of 'United
States'). Questions were not rotated. Accuracy of the translations was verified by
the U.S. investigators through independent back-translation, with rewriting and
further back-translation of questionable items.
THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION
233
The project directors—among whom were Israeli-born Jews, an Israeli-born
Arab, a U.S.-born Israeli Jew and a U.S.-born American citizen—were aware
of the dangers of importing American ideas and constructs to a Middle Eastern
culture. But they felt that the concepts underlying each question—fear of
isolation, impoliteness, embarrassment, punishment—probed basic human dimensions universal to all three cultures.
MATERIALS
For the U.S. study, an initial list of 35 items thought to be related to expression
inhibition was drawn up based on the literature on expressive freedom already
cited and on personal interviews with selected high school students, college
students, working adults, and senior citizens. These items were pretested on
college students in large lecture courses at a large Southern state university.
Factor analysis was used to identify overlapping items, allowing the number to
be reduced. However, pretest interviews contributed unique items, leading to
an eventual set of 33 questions.
PROCEDURE
Following a set of questions on attitudes toward First Amendment rights,
respondents were asked 'how free [do] you feel to speak out and say whatever
is on your mind' in 10 different contexts ranging from one's own home and
the homes of friends, to the workplace, the place of worship, voluntary
organizations, restaurants, malls, and sporting events (see Table 1).
Next, the battery of expression inhibition items was presented. It was prefaced
by: 'People don't always say what is on their minds under certain circumstances.
As I list the following situations, please tell me, on a scale of one to 10, how
likely you are to keep quiet and not say anything. Ten represents extremely
likely and one indicates not at all likely to keep quiet. On a scale of one to 10,
how likely are you to keep quiet because ...'' The complete English text of
the questions is listed in Table 3, together with item means and rank-orders
for each culture. Replies to both sets of questions—the 10 loci of communication
1
Some observers have argued that the preamble does not provide sufficient context, suggesting that
different reasons may have different inhibiting powers in varying environments (at home, in public, around
the boss). Others object that the question wording confounds the frequency of remaining silent, the frequency
of different types of fears, and the likelihood that a given fear explains silence. To test the validity of these
objections, one author conducted an experiment on two large lecture courses for freshman and sophomore
communication students at a large Southern university. The preamble was re-worded to measure 'how often
do you keep q u i e t . . . ' or 'how fearful are you o f . . . ' in addition to 'how likely are you . . . ' to 'keep quiet
because.' Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the treatments, but there was no significant difference
among the three preambles, suggesting that the nature of the items overrides the context of fear, frequency
or likelihood.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
TABLE I Willingness to speak out freely in different places
Question wording: 'How free do you feel to speak out and say whatever is on your
mind.. ?'
U.S.
Mean Rank
At home among members of your
immediate family
At the homes of your close friends
At your place of worship around
the minister, priest or rabbi
At sports events
At parties
At your place of work, among
your fellow workers
At meetings of organizations or
civic clubs
At shopping malls or in a store
In restaurants or bars
At work around your supervisor
or boss
Spearman correlations among
populations
Jews
Arabs
Jews
Mean Rank
3-87
1
3-11
3.56
3-44
2
3-50
2.71
3
Arabs
Mean Rank
1
3-51
1
2
10
3.02
2.30
10
2
316
3-32
4
5
6
3.12
3.22
5
7
3
2-34
2.47
2-59
7
4
3
3-32
7
2.99
8
2.40
5
3-3°
3-27
8
9
3.21
3.12
319
10
2.89
4
6
9
2-33
2-39
2.32
8
6
9
U.S.
Jews
3-39
3-39
•44
•Si
.78
Note: Items are scored on 4-point scales from 'very free' to 'not free at all.' iVs
range between 1,407 and 1,505 for the U.S., between 934 and 1,183 f°r the Israeli Jews
and 497 and 519 for the Israeli Arabs.
and the expression inhibition items—were rank-ordered and compared across
all three cultures. Respondents were also questioned about their support for a
variety of speech and media-related rights and about the kinds of political
behaviors they have engaged in.
RESULTS
FREE EXPRESSION ENVIRONMENTS
Respondents' evaluations of the 10 different communications environments, or
loci, are displayed in Table 1 in terms of the relative freedom of expression
they experience in each, from 'very free,' to 'somewhat free,' to 'slightly free,'
then 'not free at all.' All three cultures ranked their own home and the homes
THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION
235
of their friends in first and second place. From research already cited (Gibson
1992), there is no reason to believe that home and the home of friends excludes
political conversation, but it is true that such environments are likely to be more
politically homogeneous than other loci. Even in the protected environments of
one's own home or in the homes of friends, Israeli Arabs experienced greater
inhibition than Israeli Jews, and Israeli Jews felt more inhibited than the U.S.
respondents. Moreover, the drop between one's own home and a friend's home
was greater among the Arabs than among the other two groups.
Differences between American blacks and whites were minor in terms of the
freedom they felt in these environments, though blacks did rate freedom at
sports events (yW = 3.6o) second to freedom at home ( ^ = 3.90) and scored the
homes of friends ( ^ = 3.47) fourth after speech around the minister ( ^ = 3.49)
and tied with conversation at parties.
In the USA, the workplace proved an uncongenial environment for free
speech. Speaking in the presence of the boss ranks last in the USA and the
two Israeli groups both rank it next to last. The freedom to speak one's mind
to fellow workers is also low in the USA, certainly relative to the Israeli groups,
who place dialogue with fellow workers in third place. On the other hand,
Americans find places of worship acceptable loci of free speech, but the two
Israeli groups place worship environments last. While we do not have a ready
explanation for this finding, it suggests that attending synagogues and mosques
in Israel may be experienced less communally than church-going in the USA.
Americans feel freer to speak in most places than both Israeli groups, who
are more similar to each other than to the Americans. The rank order of
communication loci is highly correlated for Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs
(Spearman's rho = .78), but the correlation is only moderate between Americans
and Israeli Jews (.44) or Israeli Arabs (.51). Altogether, what is evident here is
that private places are more hospitable to free speech than are public places, a
finding that is seconded by Eliasoph's (1993) ethnographic research on three
informal groups in California.
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN EXPRESSION INHIBITION
In order to determine whether the overall levels of expression inhibition could
be measured for each culture, the entire list of 33 inhibition items was combined
to form a single additive scale, producing high reliability scores for all three
groups. Cronbach's alpha for the U.S. data was .95, a high score found across
all ethnic and racial groups. The score for Israeli Jews was .96 and for Israeli
Arabs .89. In all three cultures, all questions displayed item-total correlations
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
TABLE 2
Expression inhibition in various subgroups
Means for jj-item expression inhibition scale
Group
Mean*
S.D.
N
AU U.S. Gtizens
Blacks
Whites
Israeli Arabs
Israeli Jews
156.40
174.18
I53-4I
196.68
165.51
63.08
76.66
60.32
46.97
70.64
1315
134
1090
447
962
Low education
Middle education
Upper education
176.02
i64-39
156.14
66.26
65.19
61.84
1006
916
801
Low income
Middle income
Upper income
175-66
167.84
156.07
6745
64.66
59-68
868
743
915
Females
Males
170.74
161.77
66.48
63-47
1352
1372
* Maximum for scale is 330 points, higher means indicate
higher inhibition.
Note: See text for question wording and scale construction.
greater than .30, generally considered a minimum for retaining any item in a
scale.
Next, in order to understand better the relation of culture to other indications
of power, dominance, and well-being, demographic variables such as education,
income, age, and sex were also considered as predictors of expression inhibition
in analysis of variance. These variables have long been associated with support
for free expression and expression inhibition (Badger 1991). Because education,
age, and income are distributed differently from culture to culture, each variable
was recoded into thirds for each group before the analysis to permit testing in
an overall model spanning all three cultures. Analysis of variance [^(11,2353) =
20.72, p<.ooi] controlled for culture, age, income, education, and sex. Main
effects were entered before interactions. The American population was divided
into white, black, and other. The entire model accounted for 9 percent of the
variance in inhibition. The Scheffe procedure was used as a follow-up. All
findings reported as significant throughout have p-values <.oi.
Israeli Arabs proved significantly more inhibited (see Table 2) than Israeli
Jews, who were, in turn, significantly more inhibited than the U.S. overall
sample. Among U.S. subgroups, blacks were significantly more inhibited than
whites but were not significantly different from Israeli Jews. American blacks
THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION
237
proved, as well, significantly less inhibited than Israeji Arabs. These results
proved intuitively satisfying because they were consistent with the understanding
that the consequences of speaking out were greater for Israel's Arab minority
than for the majority Jews. Israeli Jews, in turn, were more inhibited than
American whites, who live in a society displaying less conflict and fewer external
and internal threats to individual liberty and public order.
Examination of the rank order of the individual items in each culture,
provided in Table 3, indicates that those inhibitions centering on a fear of
hurting others or of being hurt by them were more salient than fear of
government monitoring or arrest—even among Israeli Arabs. That the most
salient individual reasons for remaining silent have little to do with state
suppression is noteworthy, though any fear of speaking out under normal
circumstances in a democracy may be disturbing to many. At the same time,
questions related to psychological insecurity—including fear of being in a
minority, lack of self-confidence, and the like—were generally accorded the
lowest position in all three cultures, and perceptions of American blacks and
whites were generally in accord. In other words, interpersonal concerns are
more likely to inhibit free speech than either official or psychological restraints.
In overall rank order of expression inhibitors, Israeli Jews proved to be highly
similar to U.S. whites (Spearman's rho = .84) but less similar to U.S. blacks
(.61). Agreement between American blacks and whites was, however, moderately
high (.73), while similarities between Israeli Arabs and Jews was also moderate
(.55). Arab similarity was lower to American whites (.36) and blacks (.45). The
most inhibiting factor for Arabs was fear of divine punishment, hardly even an
issue among the general American population or Israeli Jews. The desire not
to get involved is also a major factor for Arabs and Jews but falls in the middle
of the rank-order for Americans. Altogether, given the political and military
situation current in Israel at the time of the survey, the limited fear of
government, even among Arabs, and the high concern for the feelings of others
is remarkable.
DEMOGRAPHICS AND EXPRESSION INHIBITION
Significant main effects were also found for education level, income level, and
sex, but there were no significant two-way interactions. Thus, the relation
between these variables and culture was straightforward. Not only was culture
itself an independent predictor of inhibition, but so were sex, education, and
income—even given the lower absolute education and income levels of Israeli
Arabs and American blacks as compared with the majority Jews and whites. In
all cases, the relation between education or income and inhibition was inverse.
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TABLE
3 Reasons for keeping quiet
Means and rank-order for 33 expression inhibition items among U.S. citizens, Israeli Jews,
and Israeli Arabs
Question
Saying what's on your mind may
harm or damage other people
Speaking your mind may hurt the
feelings of those you care for
You want to be polite
You like for everything to go
smoothly
You could be sued
Your language could be offensive
to other people
You may be hit or physically
harmed
You like to avoid arguments
What you say may be taken out
of context or misquoted
Your supervisor or boss may make
things difficult for you
What you say may come back to
haunt you
Your opinions could be offensive
to other people
You may be misunderstood
You may not get ahead in the
organization or company you
work for
You don't want to get involved
What you say won't make any
difference anyway
People may think you don't know
what you're talking about
People you admire and respect
may not approve of you
A spouse, relative of close friend
is listening and would not approve of what you say
You are uncomfortable expressing
an unpopular viewpoint
You may be arrested for your
opinions
It's not worth the effort
Police or government authorities
may monitor your conversation
U.S.
Mean Rank
Jews
Mean Rank
Arabs
Mean Rank
6.48
1
6.15
2
6.67
4
6.04
2
6.36
1
6.71
3
S-75
5-49
3
4
5-39
5-28
8
5-88
12
5-98
19
13
5-31
5.22
5
6
523
5-38
13
9
6.09
6.64
12
5.22
7
5-99
3
5.46
29
5-14
8
9
5-71
5i4
5
5°5
16
6.23
5.82
23
504
10
5-23
14
5.92
17
5°4
11
5-42
6
6.23
10
500
12
541
7
6.29
7
4.82
13
14
4.98
463
513
19
17
6.13
5-40
30
4-59
4-55
15
16
5-97
503
4
6.76
2
18
5.91
18
4-55
17
4-35
25
5-32
3i
4-53
18
449
22
5-93
15
4-52
19
4-55
21
5.22
32
4-5°
20
423
29
5-83
22
4-49
21
5.20
15
5-93
16
4-49
4.48
22
5-31
4.84
10
5-88
20
20
6-55
23
5
9
11
6
continued
THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION
239
TABLE 3 Reasons for keeping quiet
Means and rank-order for 33 expression inhibition items among U.S. citizens, Israeli Jews,
and Israeli Arabs—cont'd
Question
U.S.
Mean Rank
You want everybody to like you
You may make a fool out of yourself
You are shy
People you want to be like may
reject you
Your opinions aren't really important
God may punish you for what
you say
You are reluctant to express a
minority viewpoint
You lack self-confidence
You don't want people to think
you are 'odd' or 'different'
People may think you are not
'cool' or not 'with it'
4.39
4.35
24
4.28
4.18
26
Jews
Mean Rank
Arabs
Mean Rank
4-33
5-30
26
5-84
II
6.24
8
27
4-47
4-43
23
24
5-50
5-94
27
14
4.10
28
4.30
27
5.51
25
4.05
29
4.26
28
7.03
1
4.03
30
4.13
33
5.48
28
3.96
3.96
31
32
4.16
4.17
31
30
4.62
5.51
33
26
3.80
33
4.14
32
5.58
24
25
21
Items are scored on a 10-point scale, from 'extremely likely' to remain quiet to 'not
at all likely.' In the USA, TVs range from 1,451-1,507, among Israeli Jews from
1,105-1,183, and among Israeli Arabs from 507-518. See text for question wording.
Among the lowest education groups across ethnic Lines, inhibition level was
highest, dropping for the middle group, then dropping again for the top education
level (see Table 2). Among income levels, the results were similar. Men also
proved less inhibited than women. Only age showed no effects across cultures.
The implications of these findings are inescapable: expression inhibition is
directly but inversely related to measures of status or security and well-being.
Inhibition was least evident among dominant cultural groups, the relatively
affluent, the relatively well-educated, and among males. It was greatest among
females, the poor, and the poorly educated—relations that hold up across
cultures and national boundaries. Multiple classification analysis revealed that
culture was the best predictor of expression inhibition (B = .24), followed by
education (.11), income (.08), and sex (.06).
INTOLERANCE AND EXPRESSION INHIBITION
Our data also give support to Gibson's (1992) more specifically focused finding
that the reluctance to discuss political views is negatively related to political
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF.PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
tolerance, defined as the willingness to let members of disliked groups run for
office, make speeches, hold rallies, teach in schools, and the like. Gibson
constructs unidimensional scales to measure both tolerance and reluctance to
speak out and finds significant negative correlations among both whites
(r= —.21) and blacks (r= —.17).
Our study finds parallel negative relations between expression inhibition and
support for legal protection for media and speech rights in three of four
subcultures, even when sex, age, income, and education are controlled. From
other questions in the study, an additive index measuring support for legal
protection for 50 different expressive freedoms produced high reliabilities across
all cultural groups. Expressive freedoms in the index ranged from the right of
newspapers to editorialize, to employees differing with their bosses about
politics, to dancing nude, to libraries keeping books in their collections after
public objections, to television showing music videos that promote sex or drug
use, to espionage and libel. The index of support for expressive rights was
entered as a covariate into an experimental sums-of-squares ANOVA model
simultaneously with age category, income level, education level, and sex. Results
indicated highly significant effects for the overall model, F(ii,i<w5) = io.tf>,
p<.ooi, and for the effect of support from expressive rights on expression
inhibition, 7^11,1943) = 18.08, p<.ooi.
Significant negative correlations were found between expression inhibition
and the index measuring support for expressive rights for Israeli Arabs (— .28),
Israeli Jews ( — .12), and American whites ( — .17). Only American blacks (.25),
contrary to Gibson's findings, provided data consistent with the logic of altruism
or enlightened self-interest: that those who feel relatively inhibited should be
more in favor of legal protection for expressive rights (for all) than the less
inhibited. In the other three groups, however, the more inhibited subjects were
less supportive of expressive rights, indicating that feelings of self-suppression
and intolerance are related—although the actual direction of causation is not
clear. There is no obvious explanation for the inconsistency between Gibson's
findings and ours concerning American blacks, particularly when his findings
concerning whites are so congruent with ours.
Of course, Gibson's measure of political tolerance is not identical to our
measure of support for legal protection for expressive rights, including talk
about politics, though the two obviously overlap. Gibson measures the degree
to which expressive rights should be granted to particular groups that
respondents dislike, while we measure support for rights that apply to all
citizens. Other explanations are also possible, such as differences in sampling
method and time (his data were from the 1987 GSS). The small sample of
blacks in our survey (144) also urges caution, while his sample was more
ample (544).
THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION
241
TABLE 4 Frequency of various expressive behaviors among U.S. citizens, Israeli
Jews and Israeli Arabs
In the last Jive years, have you ...
Attended a public meeting or
hearing of an organization interested in public affairs
Written a letter to or otherwise
contacted a local or state governmental official such as your
city council representative,
mayor, state representative or
governor
Written a letter to or otherwise
contacted your member of
Congress or your U.S. senator
Written a letter to or otherwise
contacted a candidate for public
office
Circulated a petition in support
of a cause
Spoken out at a public meeting
or hearing of an organization
interested in public affairs
Called in to a radio or television
talk show
Written a letter to the editor of a
newspaper
Worked in a political campaign
Written a letter to a magazine
Taken part in a public demonstration or march
Written a letter to the 'talk back'
or viewer response feature of a
television news program
U.S.
N Percent
Jews
N Percent
Arabs
N Percent
775 (52)
303 (26)
229 (44)
603 (40)
162 (14)
201 (39)
531 (35)
242 (20)
253 (49)
493 (33)
122 (10)
154 (30)
459 (3i)
122 (10)
166 (32)
450 (30)
146 (12)
154 (30)
289 (19)
185 (16)
143 (28)
256 (17)
125
174 (34)
252 (17)
228 (iS)
201 (13)
151 (i3)
194 (37)
78 (7)
114 (22)
212 (18)
246 (48)
77 (5)
48 (4)
88 (17)
(")
EXPRESSION INHIBITION AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR
Also in concert with Gibson's findings, expression inhibition was found to be
a significant predictor of various forms of politically expressive behavior in
America—but not among either Israeli group. In our surveys, respondents were
asked whether, in the last five years, they had engaged in various expressive
actions including writing letters to the editor, calling talk shows, writing letters
to officials, attending or speaking at public meetings, marching or circulating
petitions, and the like. As Table 4 indicates, Israeli Arabs were most politically
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
active, followed by Americans, than, contrary to popular impression, Israeli
Jews.
A highly reliable additive scale was constructed to measure 'expressive action,'
much of which was political (letters to candidates or officials, attending or
speaking at meetings, working in a campaign, letters to media, marching,
circulating petitions). Items were coded as dichotomies and summed, producing
generally high reliabilities (Israeli Jews .78; Israeli Arabs .69; Americans .79).
For American whites, there was a significant negative correlation between
expression inhibition and expressive action (— .26). While correlations were not
significant in the black subculture, the correlation ( — .12) may have achieved
significance had the sample been larger. Among whites, Gibson (1992) found
a modest correlation between 'reluctance to discuss views' and behavioral
self-censorship (.29, p <, .01), afindingsupported by ours. His correlation among
blacks, however, was marginal (.09, /><.O5). There is also a weak negative
correlation between expressive action and expression inhibition for Israeli Jews
( — .10), but the correlation for Israeli Arabs was not significant ( — .08). For
both American whites and Israeli Jews, correlations were significant even when
controlled for sex, age, income, and education levels in an ANOVA model.
There is no simple explanation for the fact that expression inhibition is a
negative predictor of expressive—mainly political—behavior among U.S. whites
and marginally so among Israeli Jews but not among Israeli Arabs. It might be
argued that political participation was so high among Arabs that the climate
encouraged even highly inhibited individuals to join in, while participation
among the Jews was so low that even many of the uninhibited failed to act.
But it is also obvious to any close observer of Israeli life that Arabs are more
inhibited than Jews in their private lives and that they are more mannerly and
observe more propriety interpersonally.
Arab society is more traditional than Jewish society. In many cases, individuals—particularly the young and women—are expected to behave politely
and remain silent as a way of showing respect to other people. Further, Arabs
are somewhat more cautious and inhibited within the larger contexts of Israeli
society—where they frequently work. Thus, when they find themselves among
Israeli Jews, a 'culture of silence' prevails, informed by fear of the authorities
and anxiety about not being promoted at work.
Yet Arabs are, nonetheless, resolute in their support for the current peace
process and are very active in their own municipal politics—where they represent
a majority apart from the Jewish population. When it comes to collective issues
of nationality or citizenship in Arab culture, individuals feel safer to participate
in assemblies and demonstrations because they have the moral support of the
group as a whole. Participation in such collective actions is also encouraged by
group pressure, which is part of the political culture of the minority. Thus,
THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION
243
Arabs may be at once more inhibited—particularly interpersonally and in the
larger Jewish society—and yet highly active politically in their own culture.
This finding about the high level of Arab activity is supported as well by
other recent studies from the Guttman Institute of Applied Social Research at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Thus, a study sponsored by the Institute
for Sikkui Foundation, still in draft, found that 36 percent of the Arab population
is 'politically active' but only 10 percent of the Jewish population.
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION
This study has demonstrated that non-legal and non-governmental factors are
the leading perceived causes of general expression inhibition among members
of the U.S. population and Israeli Arabs and Jews and that fear of harming
others is a greater inhibitor than fear of disapproval or rejection. The fact that,
across all groups, respondents attributed their silence to the fear of hurting
others more than to the fear of being hurt or disapproved challenges the primacy
given these latter concerns by theories of formal and informal repression. In
other words, considerations of sociability are given precedence over fear of
external reprisal—from law, bureaucracy, boss, God, even the tyranny of
majorities. This finding deserves a place alongside legal theories of restraint
and social psychologies of conformity and silence in exploring the reasons that
constrain people to remain silent across varying cultures.
It may be objected that the expression inhibition items—ordered generally
from fear of hurting others to fear of disapproval by them in all three
cultures—reflect rationalizations for remaining silent, rationalizations that may
be more socially desirable (concern for others) than the 'real' reasons for
inhibition (fear of punishment, retaliation, or rejection). A subsequent experiment, however, found no significant differences among respondents asked
to select 'socially acceptable' reasons for remaining silent, those asked to select
'real' reasons, and those exposed to the original preamble. Respondents were
i n residents from an urban Southern county interviewed by phone and
randomly assigned to one of the three experimental treatments.
It should also be noted that, in non-threatening, anonymous personal interviews, respondents have no reason to disguise their 'true reasons' for remaining
quiet insofar as they understand them. This could indicate that, far from being
rationalizations, respondents' 'true reasons' for not speaking up are identical to
the reasons that they think will 'sound good' to others. Or it could indicate
that the tendency to answer in a socially desirable manner is so deeply imbedded
that this experimental design cannot unmask it.
The fact that three widely varying cultures with divergent notions of what
is desirable fall into relative agreement, however, argues against interpreting
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
these results as rationalizations, as does the fact that, during confidential
interviews, respondents had no particular reason to mislead researchers. The
fact also remains that other items contained in this survey—such as support
for media rights and individual free expression rights—showed significant
differences among the three cultures. It is hard to understand why cultural
similarities would emerge in expression inhibition unless the questions tap
deeper motives in human communication behavior.
Culturally, Israeli Arabs proved more inhibited than Israeli Jews, who were,
in turn, more inhibited than Americans. Education and income were also
directly and inversely related to expression inhibition in all three cultures, and
women proved more inhibited than men—though the influence of these variables
was not as great as cultural differences in overall inhibition level. Except among
American blacks, expression inhibition was negatively related to support for
legal protection for expressive rights.
One major limitation of this study is an inability to establish the relation
between the reasons for inhibition and the various subject-matter domains and
social environments in which such inhibitors might be operative. For example,
we do know that the desire to be polite is a major reason for silence, but we
do not know if that desire is related more to political speech than to talk about
sexual and religious matters. Nor can we determine whether, say, the fear of
harming or damaging others is stronger in the home, the workplace, or the
place of worship.
Such an understanding of the relation between expression inhibition, subject
matter, and social context should be a major objective of future research, but
the number of questions required to establish such relations would need to be
much greater. However, the fact that other scales, notably McCroskey and
Richmond's (1987, 1990; McCroskey 1970, 1977, 1982) 'willingness to communicate' index, proved unidimensional across contexts suggests that expression
inhibition as measured by our overall scale may also span subject domains and
environments. And the fact that our own findings so closely parallel Gibson's
(1992) about the relations between tolerance and politically expressive actions,
on one hand, and general reluctance to talk about politics, on the other, suggests
that our findings would be as applicable to politics as to domestic or workplace
communication.
In our study, those demographic variables associated with well-being and
status or power within a culture were directly related to expression inhibition,
but only American blacks turned their feelings of inhibition into support for
greater protection for expression. Further, for most Americans, and, to a lesser
degree, Israeli Jews, expression inhibition was negatively related to expressive
behaviors such as contacting officials, writing the media, and acts of protest.
In conclusion, we wish to reiterate that items relating to the fear of hurting
THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION
245
or offending other people were the most prominent reasons for remaining silent
in all three cultures. If the health of democracy or well-being in intimate circles
or the workplace depends on open discussion of a variety of subject domains,
that discussion is thus not first and primarily inhibited either by fear of
government or fear of isolation from the majority, even among Israeli Arabs.
This is not to deny that suspicion of government is a minor factor, among even
the most secure of Americans, but that other forces are even stronger. Of
course, for many democratic theorists, any fear of government interference in
free speech is too much, and Israeli Arabs, to be sure, express considerable
concern about government monitoring as a reason for silence.
Whether public concern about government monitoring or arrest would
increase during times that stewards of free expression regard as even more dark
and threatening remains an open question. Only by systematically monitoring
public perceptions of expression inhibition can we understand the climate for
free speech across time. That is precisely the purpose for which this expression
inhibition scale was developed. Further, the high reliability of the scale suggests
that this instrument might serve as a standard measure of the climate for free
expression in longitudinal and cross-cultural studies.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Robert O. Wyatt is professor of journalism and director of the Office of Communication
Research at Middle Tennessee State University.
Elihu Katz is Trustee professor of communication and director of the postgraduate
scholars program at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of
Pennsylvania and a research associate at the Louis Guttman Israel Institute of Applied
Social Research at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Hanna Levinsohn is project director at the Guttman Institute.
Majid Al-Haj is senior .lecturer in sociology at Haifa University and a research associate
at the Guttman Institute.