The Structure of Public Opinion Concerning Social Conflicts as a Fractal Structure for Society

Twenty years of Agoramétrie survey research in France on opinions concerning social conflict has shown that a small set of approximately 40 "trunk" questions appear in each annual sample of media coverage of social conflicts, independent of economic crises, international or political crises, or other environing events. These trunk questions – such as "are there too many immigrant workers", "are doctors trust-worthy", "should women have the same rights as men", "are politicians corrupt" – appear as basic human interrogations concerning society, and the use of the Agoramétrie method in Great Britain, Russia and Costa Rica reinforces this surprising result. The trunk questions define an overall structure with two fundamental dimensions: first, an opposition between an ouverture toward society and its problems(social problems and conflicts can be addressed and dealt with) and closure ("we were better off in the past"); second, an opposition between emotive/conflictual and nonemotive/cooperative reactions to social conflict. Research results show that this general structure is scale independent, apparently of unlimited applicability to human society, and very similar to human cerebral affect asymmetry. These results imply that we are in the presence of a fractal phenomenon and we will try to develop some of the sociological implications such as possible interpretations of a power law and a fractal dimension.