With National Science Foundation support Drs. Russell Hardin and Alexander Schuessler will purchase a Sun Ultra 1 workstation, Model 170E with a 167 Mhz Ultra SPARC Processor for use by the Political Science Department at New York University. They will also acquire relevant software and the video machines and monitor required to perform specific experiments. This instrumentation will be used most immediately for two research projects. The first involves the role of public opinion in further shaping public opinion. In other words, is an individual's opinion influenced by the reported opinions of others? Public opinion specialists have long assumed that the publication of poll results and of other public opinion information in the media will in itself to some extent determine public opinion. While this claim is frequently made and agreed upon, social scientists have not been able to actually provide empirical tests to substantiate it. Since public opinion in this case constitutes both a dependent and independent variable, such a question is very difficult to address. Drs. Hardin and Schuessler have devised an experimental protocol in which subjects will be exposed to a controlled body of information as well as other's evaluations of this information; through the manipulation of relevant variables will be possible to collect relevant experimental data. A second project examines the impact of political regimes and political institutions on economic performance using a database of 135 countries between 1950 and 1990. The question to be addressed is whether democracy in the political realm, as well as its particular institutional arrangements, fosters or hinders economic performance and economic growth. The impact of the instrumentation extends beyond these two immediate projects. It work with involve graduate students and thus serve a training function. Both projects will play a direct and significant role in the development of graduate and undergraduate curricula and the instrumentation will raise the level of ongoing statistical research by students and faculty who use social science data.
