Openness and Self-enhancement are predictors of cultural and economic beliefs: an analysis of European countries across 15 years

Self Transcendence ◽

Using Data ◽

In this study, we investigate the relationship between values and political beliefs and how it varies as a function of cultural context and time. In particular, we analyzed the effects of Conservation vs. Openness to change and Self-transcendence vs. Self-enhancement for cultural and economic political beliefs using data from nationally representative samples of citizens from 34 European countries from eight rounds of the European Social Survey (data spans the 2002–2016 period). We found that the effects of values on political beliefs are moderated by the Western vs. Eastern cultural context and that there is a modest round-to-round variation in the effects of values on beliefs. The relationship between Openness and cultural beliefs was negative and largely consistent across the Western and Eastern countries. Similarly, the effects of Self-enhancement were positive across these Western and Eastern countries. In contrast, the effects of Openness on economic beliefs were positive for the Eastern countries but largely weak and inconsistent for the Western countries. Finally, the effects of Self-enhancement on cultural beliefs are weak for both cultural contexts.

The Authoritarian Dynamic During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects on Nationalism and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment

Social Psychological and Personality Science ◽

10.1177/1948550620978023 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 194855062097802

Author(s):

Todd K. Hartman ◽

Thomas V. A. Stocks ◽

Ryan McKay ◽

Jilly Gibson-Miller ◽

Liat Levita ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Order ◽

Situational Factors ◽

Right Wing ◽

Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

The Social ◽

Political Outcomes ◽

Using Data ◽

Research has demonstrated that situational factors such as perceived threats to the social order activate latent authoritarianism. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to test whether existential threat stemming from an indiscriminate virus moderates the relationship between authoritarianism and political attitudes toward the nation and out-groups. Using data from two large nationally representative samples of adults in the United Kingdom ( N = 2,025) and Republic of Ireland ( N = 1,041) collected during the initial phases of strict lockdown measures in both countries, we find that the associations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and (1) nationalism and (2) anti-immigrant attitudes are conditional on levels of perceived threat. As anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic increases, so too does the effect of RWA on those political outcomes. Thus, it appears that existential threats to humanity from the COVID-19 pandemic moderate expressions of authoritarianism in society.

Two hearts and a loan? Mortgages, employment insecurity and earnings among young couples in six European countries

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/0042098017717211 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 55 (11) ◽

pp. 2451-2469 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Giulia M Dotti Sani ◽

Claudia Acciai

Keyword(s):

Social Inequalities ◽

Logistic Models ◽

European Countries ◽

Earned Income ◽

Employment Insecurity ◽

National Differences ◽

The Uk ◽

The Relationship ◽

Employment Instability

Homeownership is increasingly understood by policy makers and social scientists as a fundamental asset against poverty risks, especially in times of economic uncertainty. However, in several Western countries, homeownership among younger generations appears to be increasingly difficult to achieve, likely a result of growing employment instability and stringent criteria to access credit. This article uses multinomial logistic models and nationally representative EU-SILC data from six European countries to examine (a) to what extent precarious employment among young couples is linked to being a mortgage holder; (b) whether earned income can compensate for employment instability in being a mortgagee; (c) cross-national differences in the relationship between being a mortgage holder, earnings, and employment insecurity. Our results indicate that the higher the levels of employment insecurity, the lower the chances of being a mortgage holder in all countries. Moreover, we find that at a given level of employment insecurity, households with higher levels of earned income have higher chances of being mortgage holders than households with lower earned income. However, while earned income has a stronger effect in achieving a mortgage among couples who have secure employment in Italy, earnings are more important among couples with lower levels of employment security in France, the UK, Spain and Poland. These results suggest that the relationship between social inequalities and housing is partially mediated by the national context.

The Relationship Between Age and Happiness Varies by Income

Journal of Happiness Studies ◽

10.1007/s10902-021-00445-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Dimiter Toshkov

Keyword(s):

Income Distribution ◽

Old Age ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Demographic Variables ◽

Social Survey ◽

Middle Income ◽

The Subject ◽

Using Data ◽

AbstractThe link between age and happiness has been the subject of numerous studies. It is still a matter of controversy whether the relationship is U-shaped, with happiness declining after youth before bouncing back in old age, or not. While the effect of age has been examined conditional on income and other socio-demographic variables, so far, the interactions between age and income have remained insufficiently explored. Using data from the European Social Survey, this article shows that the nature of the relationship between age and happiness varies strongly with different levels of relative income. People in the lowest decile of the income distribution experience a ‘hockey stick’: a deep decline in self-reported happiness until around age 50–55 and a small bounce back in old age. The classic U-curve is found mostly in the middle-income ranks. For people at the top of the income distribution, average happiness does not vary much with age. These results demonstrate the important role of income in moderating the relationship between age and happiness.

Institutional trust and multilevel government in the European Union: Congruence or compensation?

European Union Politics ◽

10.1177/1465116511419250 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 551-574 ◽

Cited By ~ 64

Author(s):

Jordi Muñoz ◽

Mariano Torcal ◽

Eduard Bonet

Keyword(s):

European Union ◽

Hierarchical Linear Modeling ◽

European Social Survey ◽

The European Union ◽

Linear Modeling ◽

Country Level ◽

National Institutions ◽

Using Data ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Eu

Does trust in national institutions foster or hinder trust in the institutions of the European Union (EU)? There is no agreement in the literature on popular support for the EU about the direction of the relationship between trust in national and European institutions. Some scholars argue that both will be positively related, others have proposed the opposite hypothesis: low levels of trust in national institutions will lead citizens to higher levels of support for the EU. We argue that both hypotheses are true but operate at different levels: whereas more trusting citizens tend to be so in both the national and the European arenas, we also find that at the country level the relationship is negative: living in a country with highly trusted and well-performing institutions hinders trust in the European Parliament. We test our hypotheses using data from the European Social Survey and Hierarchical Linear Modeling.

Tying Knots With Communities

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly ◽

10.1177/0899764016634892 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 45 (6) ◽

pp. 1113-1129 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Young-Il Kim ◽

Sung Joon Jang ◽

Byron R. Johnson

Keyword(s):

Civic Engagement ◽

Youth Development ◽

Community Involvement ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Adult Males ◽

American Adult ◽

Using Data ◽

Using data from a nationally representative sample of American adult males ( N = 2,512), this study examines (a) whether duration of membership in the Boy Scouts of America is associated with adult civic engagement and (b) whether five characteristics of positive youth development (confidence, competence, connection, character, and caring) account for the relationship between duration of Scouting membership and adult civic engagement. The results from structural equation modeling indicate that duration of participation in Scouting is positively associated with four indicators of civic engagement: community involvement, community volunteering, community activism, and environmental activism. Among the five positive characteristics, confidence and competence were found to fully mediate the effects of Scouting on all four types of civic engagement, whereas the other three only to partly mediate the effects.

Conservation motivation, social equality and left-right ideological preferences in Western and Eastern Europe

Europe’s Journal of Psychology ◽

10.5964/ejop.v13i2.1334 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 336-351 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Márton Hadarics

Keyword(s):

Western Europe ◽

Great Part ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Eastern European ◽

Social Equality ◽

Social Survey ◽

Individual Level ◽

Using Data ◽

The Right ◽

We investigated how attitudes towards social equality can influence the relationship between conservation motivation (or openness) and personal ideological preferences on the left-right dimension, and how this relationship pattern differs between Western and Central & Eastern European (CEE) respondents. Using data from the European Social Survey (2012) we found that individual-level of conservation motivation reduces cultural egalitarianism in both the Western European and the CEE regions, but its connection with economic egalitarianism is only relevant in the CEE region where it fosters economic egalitarianism. Since both forms of egalitarianism were related to leftist ideological preferences in Western Europe, but in the CEE region only economic egalitarianism was ideologically relevant, we concluded that the classic “rigidity of the right” phenomenon is strongly related to cultural (anti)egalitarianism in Western Europe. At the same time, conservation motivation serves as a basis for the “rigidity of the left” in the post-socialist CEE region, in a great part due to the conventional egalitarian economic views.

Relationship Quality Among Cohabiting Versus Married Couples

Journal of Family Issues ◽

10.1177/0192513x15622236 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 38 (12) ◽

pp. 1730-1753 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Susan L. Brown ◽

Wendy D. Manning ◽

Krista K. Payne

Keyword(s):

Relationship Quality ◽

Marital Quality ◽

Diffusion Theory ◽

Married Couples ◽

Using Data ◽

Union Type ◽

Using data from the nationally representative 2010 Married and Cohabiting Couples Survey of different-sex cohabiting and married couples, we compared the relationship quality of today’s cohabitors and marrieds. Consistent with diffusion theory and recent conceptual work on the deinstitutionalization of marriage, we found that the relationship between union type and relationship quality is now bifurcated with direct marrieds reporting the highest relationship quality and cohabitors without marriage plans reporting the lowest marital quality. In the middle were the two largest groups: marrieds who premaritally cohabited and cohabitors with plans to marry. These two groups did not differ in terms of relationship quality. This study adds to the growing literature indicating that the role of cohabitation in the family life course is changing in the contemporary context.

Conflicted Religionists: Measuring political backlash

10.31235/osf.io/sk857 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Sean Bock

Keyword(s):

Church Attendance ◽

Past Research ◽

Political Orientation ◽

Considerable Proportion ◽

Exact Matching ◽

Using Data ◽

Matching Techniques ◽

The Relationship ◽

Political Backlash

Over the past few decades, a steadily increasing number of people have identified as “nonreligious.” Scholars have suggested that this trend is in part due to attitude conflict within churches, where a political backlash of sorts has driven religionists away from their affiliations. While past research has largely focused on drawing descriptive patterns of those who have already disaffiliated from churches, there has been less of an effort to measure those religionists who experience attitude conflict with their churches—I call these individuals conflicted religionists. Using data from the Baylor Religion Survey (Wave II, 2007), a nationally representative sample, I expand the political backlash model and provide a novel measure of conflict by (1) measuring conflict on two specific and important issues: same-sex marriage and abortion, (2) identifying the socio-demographic makeup and magnitude of conflicted religionists, and by (3) measuring the association between attitude conflict and church attendance. Overall, the results show that a considerable proportion of religionists are indeed conflicted. Results from multivariate analyses suggest that political orientation is a clear and important predictor of attitude conflict. Moreover, Evangelicals stand out as being especially unlikely to conflict, even after other variables are controlled. Finally, using Coarsened Exact Matching techniques, I show that conflicted religion is associated with significantly lower church attendance. This paper provides the first known attempt to measure attitude conflict in churches and takes initial steps toward understanding the relationship between conflict and religious participation. Broader implications for the study of religion, politics, and social change are discussed.

How class identities shape highbrow consumption: A cross-national analysis of 30 European countries and regions

10.31235/osf.io/u9dmy ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Aaron Reeves

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Cultural Capital ◽

Cultural Practices ◽

European Countries ◽

Class Identity ◽

Using Data ◽

National Analysis ◽

The Relationship ◽

Cross National

Highbrow culture may not always be central to cultural capital and, in such circumstances, the distinctiveness of middle-class consumption of highbrow culture may diminish, becoming more similar to working-class consumption. Using data from 30 European countries, I explore this issue through examining three questions: 1) is class identity associated with highbrow consumption; 2) does this association vary across countries; and 3) is the relationship between class identity and highbrow consumption altered when the majority of people in a given society identify as either ‘working-class’ or ‘middle-class’? After accounting for other socio-demographic controls, people who identify as middle-class are more active highbrow consumers than those who identify as working class. Yet, the distinctiveness of middle-class consumption of highbrow culture varies across countries and is negatively correlated with how many people identify as working-class in a society. As more people identify as working-class (rejecting middle-class identities) highbrow culture less clearly distinguishes middle-class and working-class identifiers. In the absence of any class-structured divisions in highbrow culture, whether and how cultural practices function as a form of cultural capital is likely quite different, reinforcing the claim that the centrality of highbrow culture to cultural capital varies geographically.

Do Interviewer Assessments of Respondents’ Performance Accurately Reflect Response Behavior?

Field Methods ◽

10.1177/1525822x19888616 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 32 (2) ◽

pp. 193-212 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Laura Jacobs ◽

Geert Loosveldt ◽

Koen Beullens

Keyword(s):

Data Quality ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Response Styles ◽

Actual Behavior ◽

Item Nonresponse ◽

Response Behavior ◽

Face To Face ◽

Using Data ◽

The Relationship ◽

Interviewer Observations

A growing body of literature points to the possibilities offered by postsurvey interviewer observations as a source of paradata to obtain insights into data quality. However, their utility in predicting actual behavior of respondents has attracted limited scholarly attention so far. Using data from Round 7 of the European Social Survey, we aim to clarify the relationship between interviewer observations and response styles (straightlining, item nonresponse, use of middle and extreme categories). We contribute to previous research by empirically verifying whether interviewer observations in face-to-face interviews can be effectively used as accurate predictors of data quality. Findings suggest that interviewers’ assessments of response behavior to some extent reflect response styles and can potentially be a valuable tool for the evaluation and improvement of survey data quality, although this seems mainly restricted to the most overt (i.e., easily observable) response styles.