Conservatism predicts aversion to consequential Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize society by automating tasks as diverse as driving cars, diagnosing diseases, and providing legal advice. The degree to which AI can improve outcomes in these and other domains depends on how comfortable people are trusting AI for these tasks, which in turn depends on lay perceptions of AI. The present research examines how these critical lay perceptions may vary as a function of conservatism. Using five survey experiments, we find that political conservatism is associated with low comfort with and trust in AI—i.e., with AI aversion. This relationship between conservatism and AI aversion is explained by the link between conservatism and risk perception; more conservative individuals perceive AI as being riskier and are therefore more averse to its adoption. Finally, we test whether a moral reframing intervention can reduce AI aversion among conservatives.

Perceptions of love and sex in young and middle Greek adults, relationship satisfaction and duration

Sexuality is perceived either as result or prerequisite of love or as working in tandem with love in romantic relationships. Hendrick & Hendrick (2002) proposed a theory and a measure capturing the lay perceptions of the love-sex link. The PLSS (Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale) comprises four themes/subscales, Love is Most Important, Love Comes Before Sex (“love themes”), Sex is Declining, Sex Demonstrates Love (“sex themes”). We examined the validity of PLSS in the Greek context, across two age-groups, young (18-40) and middle adults (41-65), and whether the themes predicted relationship satisfaction and duration. Greek participant (N=631) in romantic relationships responded online to the PLSS and other measures of relationship constructs (e.g., passionate, companionate love, sex, satisfaction). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the PLSS maintained its fourfold structure. The PLSS sexual themes correlated more strongly with relationship constructs than love themes. Young adult women stated that Sex was Declining less than middle adult ones and reported shorter relationships than men. Irrespective of age-group, Sex is (not) Declining, Love is Most Important, and Sex Demonstrates Love predicted satisfaction. Love Comes Before Sex and Sex is Declining predicted duration among young adults. Sex is Declining was the only predictor of duration among middle adults. Our findings suggest that love and sex work in tandem but sexual themes are more important for the Greek population. The study corroborated the validity of PLSS in the Greek context, demonstrating its sensitivity to capture cultural developments in conceptions of intimacy.

‘We Have Equal Opportunities – in Theory’: Lay Perceptions of Privilege, Meritocracy and Inequality in Denmark

This article reports on the findings from a qualitative, longitudinal study on lay perceptions of opportunity structures among young adults in Denmark. Previous research suggests that people often underestimate the extent of inequality and that rising inequality aggravates misperceptions. Our study deepens the understanding of the multi-layered processes that form meritocratic beliefs, and it identifies key factors at the macro-, meso- and micro-level. A macro-level factor that proved influential was a cultural script revolving around the Danish lay concept, social arv [social inheritance]. At the meso level, the factor of reference groups in socio-economic heterogeneous schools was instrumental for formations of inequality perceptions, but in dissimilar ways depending on micro-level subjective factors. Overall, the participants viewed the free educational system in Denmark as part of a welfare system that equalises opportunity structures in principle, while the majority simultaneously exhibited a nuanced awareness of social forces negating meritocracy in practice.

Meanings of democracy: mapping lay perceptions on scholarly norms

I am grateful for the honor to write this comment because it gave me the opportunity to read this truly exquisite compilation of works collected under the editorship of Osterberg-Kaufmann, Stark and Mohamad-Klotzbach. The focus of the special section is on new frontiers in the empirical investigation of citizens’ subjective understandings of democracy. It is a methodologically and phenomenologically diverse, and yet thematically cohesive, assemblage of studies that comes at due time and in which the various pieces indeed speak to each other. The compendium covers a significant portion of the innovations going on in the field of measuring lay perceptions of democracy across cultures.To me, the key point is how lay perceptions of democracy map on scholarly norms and where and why mismatches between lay perceptions and scholarly norms exist and what the implications of such mismatches are in terms of global regime-culture coevolution. My comments to the individual articles in the special issue are framed within this broader question. I am phrasing my reflections in a more brainstorming manner, rather than systematically going through each contribution in a point-by-point style. For this reason, my discussion will not address each contribution equally but rather in terms of what I feel should loom large on our research agenda. In a nutshell, I am advocating a decidedlyculturaltheory of autocracy-vs-democracy—cultural in the sense that we need to triangulate people’s support for and their notions of democracy in the context of encultured values.

‘We have equal opportunities—in theory’: Lay perceptions of privilege, meritocracy and inequality in Denmark

This paper reports on the findings from a qualitative, longitudinal study on lay perceptions of opportunity structures among young adults in Denmark. Previous research suggests that people often underestimate the extent of inequality and that rising inequality aggravates misperceptions. Our study deepens the understanding of the multi-layered processes that form meritocratic beliefs, and it identifies key factors at the macro-, meso-, and micro-level. A macro-level factor that proved influential was a cultural script revolving around the Danish lay concept, social arv [social inheritance]. At the meso level, the factor of reference groups in socio-economic heterogeneous schools was instrumental for formations of inequality perceptions, but in dissimilar ways depending on micro-level subjective factors. Overall, the participants viewed the free educational system in Denmark as a part of a welfare system that equalises opportunity structures in principle, while the majority simultaneously exhibited a nuanced awareness of social forces negating meritocracy in practice.

Perception of COVID-19 in Bangladesh: Interplays of Class and Capital

This article delineates the lay perceptions of COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. More specifically, it discusses how people interpret the origin and transmission of COVID-19. Like the other countries of the world, this virus appeared as a new phenomenon in Bangladesh and is now known as coronarog. The transmission of this virus added new terms such as lockdown, quarantine, isolation, et cetera, to the popular discourse and produced a new experience. The high rates of infection and death caused by the virus have percolated fear and anxiety among people. Excessive fear about the disease has led to the stigmatisation of the disease and the infected. Drawing on observation, media reports and qualitative interviews, this article argues that laypeople use either a personalistic or a naturalistic explanation to make sense of the disease. Their explanations are associated with their access to different types of capital. This article contributes to medical anthropology literature on health and illness by explaining the cultural model of illness classification related to COVID-19.