The Social Desirability of Rallying ’Round the Flag

Abstract

Identifying the sincerity of shifts in public opinion is difficult: survey settings involve social pressure to provide seemingly popular answers. Names for newborn children in the United States provide an alternative, behavioral measure that can indicate the presence of social-desirability bias. First names typically exceed middle names in visibility and hence sensitivity to social-desirability effects. First names should therefore be more likely to change when name-givers wish to conform to widespread sentiments they do not share. This hypothesis is explored during foreign-policy crises (rallies): French-derived first, but not middle, names declined as anti-French sentiment rose around the 2003 Iraq War, yet no analogous divergence emerged after the 11 September 2001 attacks. Treating all rallies as equally meaningful may then produce misleading analyses of public opinion; seeming waves in political views may reflect conformist dissimulation rather than actual attitudes.