The problem with these conservative cries is that they don’t tend to cite any evidence to counter the prevailing view. But is it possible that Americans are caving to social pressure and lying to researchers about their attitudes regarding same-sex marriage? Could it be that public opinion has not shifted as much as is commonly believed? The best people to answer such questions are public-opinion experts, and most say that this conservative theory is unlikely.

The official social-science term for what conservatives are insinuating is at play is “social-desirability bias,” which is the tendency of respondents to answer sensitive questions in a manner that will cast them in the best possible light to an interviewer.

According to Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), social desirability bias is only a risk when poll questions address an issue widely believed to have a consensus opinion and the poll involves a live human interviewer about whose opinion the respondent is worried.

“One straightforward way to test for the existence of social desirability bias is to remove the presence of the human interviewer by asking the identical question in an online survey, where the respondent is assured anonymity and answers the question in the privacy of their own home without any live human interaction,” Jones says.

In 2013, PRRI conducted two surveys in the same time period. Both utilized a random sample of adults, but one was conducted using traditional live telephone interviewing and the other was conducted online. The two surveys asked an identical question about support for same-sex marriage, but found no statistical differences between the online and telephone surveys.

“We found no evidence of social-desirability bias on the question about same-sex marriage and have no evidence that Americans are systematically lying to researchers about their true opinions,” Jones says. “This point is further supported by the convergence of findings across hundreds of surveys conducted by dozens of different polling organizations, which all point to the same thing: a real sea change in American attitudes about same-sex marriage.”

Jones is not the only religion researcher who seems skeptical of the idea that a significant number of people are lying to pollsters. Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research notes that while cultural pressure can produce a “halo effect” that might inflate numbers in polls, “acceptance of same-sex marriage is the trend either way.” David Kinnaman of the Barna Group also acknowledges that the possibility of bias, but he also concludes “almost all the polling points to the fact that attitudes on same-sex marriage and LGBT issues are changing.”

I can only find a single study that suggests social desirability may be at work on this matter, and that study estimates the influence at about 5 to 7 percent. So conservatives’ best-case scenario would only reduce the shift in American attitudes by a nominal amount.