"[1] Zaller argues that public opinion is heavily influenced by exposure to elite discourse on political matters.

and concordance with prior beliefs (i.e., do the messages received conform to an individual’s basic political values?).

He writes:[3] However poorly informed, psychologically driven, and "mass-mediated" public opinion may be, it is capable of recognizing and focusing on its own conception of what matters.

It also aims to propose a model that helps generalize and simplify the then fragmented field of public opinion.

Zaller's RAS model is grounded in four key points about how people respond to public opinion surveys.

Therefore, the model Zaller proposes argues that people respond to a question by averaging a non-random sample of frames.

How citizens acquire information and convert it into public opinion Zaller starts with defining "considerations" and "political messages".

To form an "opinion statement", people receive information on an issue, decide to accept it or not, and to sample considerations they could retrieve at the moment.