Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Thornhill again!
Brief item in New Superstitionist:
Gelfand's finding is pretty much a rediscovery of what everyone understood perfectly before 1968. Still, I'm happy to see a modern "social scientist" understanding and quantifying the phenomenon without self-censorship.
And here we have Thornhill again. Working hard to subvert common sense, working hard to destroy civilization. Jesus H. Roosevelt Fucking Christ. What a dangerous fucking idiot.
Luckily, the Arab world isn't reading Thornhill. They're tossing out a decadent secular ruling class and reclaiming their own version of strict civilization. The West, meanwhile, is following Thornhill into newly discovered Circles of Hell. ¶ 4:56 AM
Societies facing a host of dangers are more likely to have strict social norms and be intolerant of people who deviate from them. The more secure a society, the more liberal and tolerant its people.
To find out how strict social norms are in different places, Michele Gelfand of the University of Maryland in College Park, and colleagues, surveyed 6800 people in 33 countries. They used the results to give each country a "tightness" figure, reflecting how many social norms there were and how strictly they were enforced.
"Tight" countries like India and South Korea had more and stricter social norms than "loose" countries like the Netherlands and Estonia. [Tight countries] were more likely to condemn prostitution, abortion, divorce, cheating, avoiding a fare on public transport and accepting a bribe. There was less diversity of opinion, religion was more prominent, and their governments were more autocratic.
Gelfand then pulled together data on the threats each country faced from high population density, shortages of food and clean water, pollution, natural disasters, diseases and hostile neighbours. All of these threats were more prevalent in tight countries.
Becoming socially tight may be a healthy response to threats, Gelfand says. She suggests that an embattled society might have a better chance of surviving if it became tighter.
But that doesn't necessarily follow, says Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He says it is not obvious that conformity would be a defence against so many different threats.
Gelfand's finding is pretty much a rediscovery of what everyone understood perfectly before 1968. Still, I'm happy to see a modern "social scientist" understanding and quantifying the phenomenon without self-censorship.
And here we have Thornhill again. Working hard to subvert common sense, working hard to destroy civilization. Jesus H. Roosevelt Fucking Christ. What a dangerous fucking idiot.
Luckily, the Arab world isn't reading Thornhill. They're tossing out a decadent secular ruling class and reclaiming their own version of strict civilization. The West, meanwhile, is following Thornhill into newly discovered Circles of Hell. ¶ 4:56 AM
