I want to make a distinct separation between our emotional alignment toward an object&emdash;our feelings for it of like or dislike, attraction, or repulsion&emdash;and our verbalized rationale, our set of articulated reasons, for that alignment.

Normally our alignments and rationales fit together. If we dislike fluoridation then we can usually state good reasons why we dislike it; if we dislike the people who oppose fluoridation, we can supply good reasons for that feeling as well. Occasionally alignment and rationale do not fit together, as when an environmentalist accepts the anti-fluoridationist warning against placing toxic material into the drinking water, and yet cannot feel much sympathy for the radical right-wingers whom he imagines to be at the center of the fluoridation protest. Such exceptions notwithstanding, it is usually the case that our alignment in a controversy has a good rationale which we can articulate when we are asked about it.

A core problem in the sociological study of controversy is to explain why people choose one side or another. If you ask people why they favour or oppose some technology, they will tell you, which means that they will state their rationale for the alignment. Thus, they favour nuclear power because it is the only new energy source that is realistically available in the next decades to keep our economy running; or they oppose nuclear power because there is no safe method for permanent disposal of radioactive waste products.

From the viewpoint of the partisan, his rationale may be a perfectly good explanation for his alignment. However, from the viewpoint of the sociologist, the rationale may be a satisfactory explanation or not, depending on whether it makes clear to us why that particular partisan took that particular position rather than another one. If a person said that he opposed the construction of an airport because his home lies in the proposed flight path and he objected to the noise that would result, then we would find this a satisfactory explanation because we all agree that life in a flight path is noxious, and anyone living there would likely become an opponent. However, if a biologist said that he opposed research using recombinant DNA techniques because of the great danger of creating virulent new organisms, then we might find this explanation incomplete because we know that many other biologists, equally concerned and informed, regard the danger of creating new organisms to be minor and easily guarded against (Grobstein, 1977). The rationale here seems as subjective as the position it is meant to explain, so we do not find it compelling. We will not be satisfied that we have a complete explanation of this partisan's position until we understand why he believes that the recombinant DNA hazard is great while others do not. His explanation only shifts our inquiry from the cause for his alignment to the cause for his rationale. In contrast, the rationale for airport opposition puts our inquiry to rest because it allows us to trace the route from the partisan's initial situation (living in the proposed flight path) to his eventual alignment, in easily understood steps.

If a partisan's rationale is the cause of his alignment, then we would expect that he must have learned of the rationale, and become concerned about it, before he became aligned. (If A causes B, then A must precede B.) However, there are numerous instances when rationale follows alignment. The most frequently heard reason today for favouring nuclear power is that it would reduce American dependence on Arab oil, a rationale that was virtually unknown before the Arab oil embargo of 1973, yet many of today's active proponents of nuclear power, mainly those in the nuclear industry, were proponents well before that date. When I interviewed leaders of the anti-nuclear movement in 1973, the most often stated reason for opposing nuclear power was that the emergency core cooling system for nuclear reactors had not been demonstrated to be effective on the scale of commercial power reactors. (This critical safety system would flood a reactor core with water in case the reactor lost its primary coolant, thus preventing a meltdown.) This problem had become public only within the previous two years (Gillette, 1971), at a time when most of these leaders were already active in the movement.

Another expectation we might hold, if rationale and alignment worked as simple cause and effect, is that once the rationale became known, then alignment would follow from it in a reasonably short time. The major problems of nuclear power have been known and publicized for years, and an active anti-nuclear movement has served since the late 1960's as a ready channel to facilitate the expression of opposition sentiments, yet large numbers of activists, particularly those closely identified with the anti-Vietnam movement, only entered the nuclear controversy after 1976 when the Clamshell Alliance focused national attention on the Seabrook power plant in New Hampshire The Clam was soon joined by a new Crabshell Alliance in Washington, D.C., an Abalone Alliance in California, and others. Presumably, these people, at least those over 25 years old, could have entered the movement earlier if their opposition was a simple response to well known problems such as accidental radiation release, or long term storage of nuclear waste. However, it was only after 1976, when there was a dearth of liberal movements, that many perceived in the anti-nuclear movement a suitable outlet for protest.

An alignment, once formed, usually remains stable, though the supporting rationale may change over time. The reasons given to support a position for or against nuclear power have been in continual flux over the years of the controversy, but individuals rarely switch from a position in favour of the atom to one opposing it, or vice versa. Even an event as jarring to the rationale for nuclear power as the accident at Three Mile Island, produced little desertion of nuclear proponents to the opposition (Mazur, 1981a). In many cases one's alignment serves as an anchor point around which to interpret the various issues in the controversy, so that they may be incorporated into one's viewpoint in a consistent manner. Thus, to opponents of nuclear power, Three Mile Island demonstrated what they had argued all along: that serious accidents will happen, and that in this case we came very near to disaster. To proponents of nuclear power, the essential feature of Three Mile Island is that no one was killed, and that in spite of all sorts of errors, the safety system worked.

Social Influence

When a partisan's stated rationale is not the cause of his alignment, what is? The best available answer is the one that permeates social psychology: We form our attitudes toward technology in the same way we form attitudes toward politics, religion, or any other topic&emdash;via social influence from friends, family, fellow workers, and public figures whom we respect (Gamson, 1966; Crain, 1966; Crain, et al-, 1969; Mazur, 1975; Duncan, 1978). We tend to agree with those we like and associate with, and we disagree with those whom we dislike or disapprove of. There is more to attitude formation than that, of course, but the main determinant is social influence.

When I graduated from college in 1961 with a bachelor's degree in engineering, I moved to California to take a job with a large aerospace company which manufactured intercontinental ballistic missiles. I found my friends and associates and my livelihood at that company, and lived and worked in a social milieu where nobody objected to building ICBMs, and neither did I. By 1969 I had left engineering and become a professor of sociology. Now I drew my friends, associates, and livelihood from the university of the 1960's, which had no sympathy for ICBMs, and neither did I by then. My attitudes were fairly typical of those around me because most of us reflect the influences of our social settings and of those people whom we consider to be like ourselves. Engineers I knew who were still in aerospace still had no objection to building ICBMs.

Several studies of recent social-protest movements indicate that recruitment often occurs along preexisting social links, and that people frequently join in an organizational bloc rather than as isolated individuals (Marx and Wood, 1975). The 30 leaders of the antinuclear movement whom I interviewed in 1973 showed this tendency. Two-thirds of these respondents had been active in the Environmental Movement prior to their opposition to nuclear power plants, their concerns about nuclear power developing largely in the context of local environmental groups which eventually affiliated with the anti-nuclear coalition. Half of these environmentalists explicitly reported that their concerns had been influenced by other anti-nuclear people with whom they had come into personal contact. A few non-environmentalists were introduced into anti-nuclear groups through friends, either as a social activity or in search of employment in the organization; their opposition developed only after becoming members of the group. Only a few respondents formed their anti-nuclear alignment completely independently of important social influences, three becoming involved because their homes were in immediate proximity to a proposed power plant or its transmission lines, and a few others saying that their anti-nuclear posture developed from literature which was critical of nuclear power.

The effect of social influence on alignment is apparent in the post-1976 phase of the nuclear power controversy. Prior to 1976, anti-nuclear activists were political liberals, but usually not those associated with the radical causes of the 1960's. Since the formation of the Clamshell Alliance in 1976, many people closely identified with these causes have joined the nuclear opposition, for example Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. Thus, in the last few years, the anti-nuclear movement has become associated in people's minds with the student movement of the 1960's. Many people who were not particularly interested in nuclear power identified themselves with the student movement of the sixties. They now see the anti-nuclear movement populated by their kind of person, and they naturally feel some sympathy for it. If they see an anti-nuclear demonstration on television, reminiscent of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the previous decade, they sympathize with the demonstrators. If the demonstration is nearby, they attend, particularly if some of their friends are going too (Van Liere, et al., 1979). Their enthusiasm and involvement grow and they join the movement. Along the way they become knowledgeable about the problems of nuclear power, and they develop rationales to explain their opposition to it.

A similar, though less intense, effect is occurring on the other side of the controversy, where many who disapproved of the student radicals during the sixties now make facetious remarks about Jane Fonda, hope that anti-nuclear demonstrators will be arrested, defend nuclear power, and, of course, form rationales to support these positions.

A word needs to be said here about the respectability of social influence. Activists who have read the above discussion may feel that it ignores the individual's own inherent moral sense as a determinant of his behavior, treating him like a sheep whose actions are predetermined by the movement of the flock. It is not my intention to demean activists or their actions, and I apply the effects of social influence as readily to explain my own behavior as to explain the work of an activist. Everyone is conditioned and affected by the social influences which currently surround him, and by those which have surrounded him in the past&emdash;that is the nature of a social being. Some people will conform more quickly than others to the expectations of the immediate social setting, for example, the young person whose anti-nuclear protests begin and end within a few weeks of a large rock-music demonstration which he attended, but I have explicitly excluded such ephemeral behaviour from activism, focusing instead on those who are persistently concerned.

However, the fact that a concern is persistent does not mean that it was formed and sustained independently of social influences. Many who were on the university campuses of the 1960's were deeply concerned about black civil rights and acted on those concerns, much more so than those on the same campuses in the decades before and after. We have no reason to believe that the students and faculty of the 1960's were better people, more sincere and humane than those of the 1950's or 1970's, so why were their actions and concerns so different? It cannot be that the problem was more pressing then because the needs of the nation's poor blacks were about as great in the 1950's and 1970's as in the 1960's. What was different was the social milieu of the campuses of the 1960's, which had begun with the idealism of the Kennedy presidency. If one were in an academic sociology department at that time, the civil libertarian influence was strongly felt, as was the anti-Vietnam influence a few years later. Nearly everyone was involved, including people who had never before expressed much interest in racial equality, and many stayed involved throughout the decade, their sincerity unquestioned. Yet there is no doubt, in retrospect, that their actions, and often concerns, were produced by the prevailing social influences of that setting at that time, which were not there previously or afterward.

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