9 per cent of Brits say the Public Affairs Act 1975 should be repealed, and 9 per cent say it shouldn’t, according to a new poll by YouGov. If you’re wondering ‘What on Earth is the Public Affairs Act 1975?’, that’s probably because it doesn’t exist. And yet 18 per cent were willing to offer an opinion on it (interestingly, men were twice as likely to do so than women).
This is a recreation of an experiment conducted by researchers at the University of Cincinnati in the eighties, which also found that ‘a substantial number of people will offer opinions on fictitious topics in the context of a survey interview’.
YouGov used the controversial (or, rather, non-existent) Act to test how attaching a party’s position would alter people’s opinions on it. The first group were simply asked whether it should be repealed or not.
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