Where  public opinion come from 

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Identifying where  public opinion come from  discuss its cognitive foundations and how socialization produces these. Why might aggregate public opinion be ok (that is, rational), even if people don’t know a lot about politics? Why not – what might undermine these mechanisms? The term “public opinion” was derived from the French opinion publique, which was first used in 1588 by Michel de Montaigne in the second edition of his Essays (ch. XXII). The French term also appears in the 1761 work Julie, or the New Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.