SOCIAL-INFLUENCE AND OPINION ON ABORTION

Evidence for social influence in politics is usually based on examinat ion of standard political science dependent variables such as vote cho ice, rather than more deeply felt personal and emotional ones like opi nion on abortion. This paper develops a system of simultaneous equatio ns that explicitly models the process of influence on abortion attitud es among pairs of political discussants. The results suggest that, in addition to other things, the way the influence process works may depe nd on the type of attitude being examined.