9 ms·

America’s Liberal Social Climate and Trends: Change in 283 General Variables

58 points by INGELRII 5y ago

gruez 5y ago
Figure 3a[1] is kind of weird. Most of the variables are seen trending up, but there's also a trend where many of them dip in the the middle? What made people less liberal around the 90s? [1] https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747190/nfab061f3a.tif https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747190/nfab061...
- showerst 5y ago
  I'd hazard a guess that it's related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Revolution -- which also coincided with the meteoric rise of conservative talk radio and creative use of CSPAN.
- mabub24 5y ago
  I don't really know if it explains why America became "less liberal" in that period, but it is also the period when the Republican party took back control of Congress in the 1994 election, which is known as the "Republican Revolution". It is also the period when Republicans controlled a majority of state legislatures and governorships. They did so by adopting a national strategy for the entire party, regardless of state, and this probably intensified some conservatism. When some state elections might have been localized, independents could choose either party depending on local context and issues. It used to be common to have a state with democratic senators and a republican governor, and vice versa. When the state elections are all "nationalized" as it were, you get intensification of political sides. In many respects, America is still in that situation. You are also seeing backlash to Bill Clinton and his attempts at healthcare reform (this would come again during Barak Obama's term and the rise of Tea-party style conservatism against health-care reform and the ensuing spiral into present day conservatism).
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
    It’s important to remember that the pushback to the healthcare plans was astroturf — the Tea Party was announced by a mortgage broker on CNBC.
    - wutangflanged 5y ago
      I don't understand how that's evidence of Astroturfing. Someone gave a name to a widely held sentiment (keep the government out of my life), someone formed or attempted to form a party around this?
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > You are also seeing backlash to Bill Clinton and his attempts at healthcare reform (this would come again during Barak Obama's term and the rise of Tea-party style conservatism against health-care reform and the ensuing spiral into present day conservatism). I do not see it as having to do with healthcare reform, but rather having to do with the wealth transfer necessary to facilitate the healthcare reform. For decades, the progress of certain socioeconomic classes had stalled, even by the 90s. Those classes could see those above them pulling away, but at least they had the comfort of knowing they were not at the bottom. However, the wealth redistribution required for healthcare reform would bring those below them up to their level, or at least remove the veneer of not being near the bottom and no longer being in the same world as those making gains, which is apparently not a preferable situation. In summary, I am pointing to the increasing wealth/income gap and relative movement of various socioeconomic tribes, perhaps inevitable due to technology and the consequences of its economies of scale. As long as the pie is getting bigger, and everyone is getting a bigger slice proportional to the size of their original slice, there is less strife (except at the bottom). Once the sizes of the slices start moving down relative to others’, there starts to be a retreat to tribal affiliations to fight against it.
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    They did so by adopting a national strategy for the entire party, regardless of state, and this probably intensified some conservatism. And Rush Limbaugh's syndication on even FM stations plus the launch of Fox News in the mid 90s helped get that national message across.
- decremental 5y ago
  It was probably just the death throws of American culture. People realized the direction things were headed and realized how terrible it would be. Then those people were punished and silenced and now everyone just goes along with it all, no matter the cost or consequences.
- francisofascii 5y ago
  As an aside, Fox News launched in 1996, although that could have been a response to the market rather than a cause.
wing-_-nuts 5y ago
I know we've had anecdotal conversations here about declining technical literacy with the increase of tablet / smartphone use, but this figure is striking https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747189/nfab061f2.tif https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747189/nfab061... Computer use has actually declined since ~ 2013?! Wow. That's actually kind of sad.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  Probably smartphones aren’t included and hence the decrease. 2013 is roughly when the smartphone revolution hits the general populace.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Which doesn't even make sense. Some smartphones have the same specs as laptops and you can do, essentially, everything you could on a laptop or desktop on your smartphone. There's more reasons to include the smartphone in the category of computer than not to.
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      Architecturally they’re still very different from traditional desktops/laptops. SoCs are a main distinguishing feature and that pervades a lot of the low-level SW design where you actually basically have a non-transferable OS installation hard coded to the device instead of a traditional HAL letting you easily swap out a processor without much difficulty. For a very long time the control model was flipped as well and your baseband (cellular modem) CPU was actually the primary CPU with the OS running on the more restricted “application processor” (I think most or all designs have corrected this error these days, but certainly this was true in 2013). These differences of course are superficial and your phone could be used as a computer. It’s an arbitrary category like most categorizations that we make. I think the important distinction is that smart devices are largely content consumption devices vs computers being relegated to content creation. For example, would you say that someone who’s used a SmartTV has used a computer just because the specs are largely the same? I think you should fully expect computer use to decline over time because most people consume rather than create content.
MrsPeaches 5y ago
I thought this section was quite interesting. Seems like there is little movement on some of the hottest political topics. > Conspicuously missing from the top of the list are several issues central to political polarization and partisan sorting (Baldassarri and Park 2020). Abortion ranked 237th overall, gun ownership ranked 124th, gun regulation 251st, help for the poor 167th and 229th (two forms of the question), and health care ranked 149th, 150th, and 227th (asked three ways). Their low rankings are not an artifact. Change and conflict are separate. Future research will have to decide if lack of change promotes conflict or conflict stunts change, but from these results we can say that the liberal drift of Americans’ identities and attitudes, especially as reflected in cohort replacement, left several hot issues unmoved.
- culi 5y ago
  Makes sense to me. Identity is strengthened in opposition. People double-down when feelings are hot. I think part of the success of marijuana and gay marriage's rapid change in opinion is people were exposed to it through media (e.g. tv shows) but weren't forced to make some decision about where they stand on the issue during that time
  - rhacker 5y ago
    It's weird though. I would say I shifted right recently after seeing homeless everywhere, crime in front of my face in many places I go, my laundry smelling like MJ at a public laundromat. I wouldn't stop gays from marrying at all, but there are a lot of issues that make me feel like democrats have been pulled into some weird pro-crime or anti-society movement. It's all falling apart and I feel like democrats have been asking for it and continue to do so.
    - SLOGoing 5y ago
      Obviously a fellow Californian.
    - blueflow 5y ago
      Imagine how it looks to non-US people.
palijer 5y ago
Seeing 403 forbidden - not sure if too much HN traffic or they blocked access from outside the US Edit: requesting Desktop site from mobile works. I guess they redirect mobile devices to a 403 screen? That is an interesting design decision...
nabla9 5y ago
"Atheist's civil liberties" is is not changing.
antux 5y ago
Not a surprise that political climate is getting more liberal since mainstream media is largely run and controlled by liberal think tanks and lobbyists. As such, they're able to promote and espouse liberal ideology and wokism into the minds of the majority.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  You say this as if it is a bad thing.
  - spaniard89277 5y ago
    It is.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  Mainstream media is run and controlled by advertisers. As education increasingly becomes the political dividing line in America, liberal politics are where the valuable ad dollars are. Edit: upon reflection, I would be remiss to not also advance the fact that the mainstream media is inescapably caught up within Twitter and it’s discourse. As much as Twitter “is not real life” and it is not representative of Americans views as a whole, it is representative of an outsized fraction of elite media attention.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - amalcon 5y ago
    This is exactly it. "Vote with your wallet" sounds like a pretty good idea until you notice that your wallet doesn't actually contain that many votes.
    - josephh 5y ago
      But don't ratings matter most to advertisers? Who's going to run ads on a station that nobody watches?
karaterobot 5y ago
Did anybody find a list of the actual wording of the questions that were being asked to participants?

58 points by INGELRII 5y ago

Figure 3a[1] is kind of weird. Most of the variables are seen trending up, but there's also a trend where many of them dip in the the middle? What made people less liberal around the 90s? [1] https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747190/nfab061f3a.tif https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747190/nfab061...

showerst 5y ago
I'd hazard a guess that it's related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Revolution -- which also coincided with the meteoric rise of conservative talk radio and creative use of CSPAN.
mabub24 5y ago
I don't really know if it explains why America became "less liberal" in that period, but it is also the period when the Republican party took back control of Congress in the 1994 election, which is known as the "Republican Revolution". It is also the period when Republicans controlled a majority of state legislatures and governorships. They did so by adopting a national strategy for the entire party, regardless of state, and this probably intensified some conservatism. When some state elections might have been localized, independents could choose either party depending on local context and issues. It used to be common to have a state with democratic senators and a republican governor, and vice versa. When the state elections are all "nationalized" as it were, you get intensification of political sides. In many respects, America is still in that situation. You are also seeing backlash to Bill Clinton and his attempts at healthcare reform (this would come again during Barak Obama's term and the rise of Tea-party style conservatism against health-care reform and the ensuing spiral into present day conservatism).
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  It’s important to remember that the pushback to the healthcare plans was astroturf — the Tea Party was announced by a mortgage broker on CNBC.
  - wutangflanged 5y ago
    I don't understand how that's evidence of Astroturfing. Someone gave a name to a widely held sentiment (keep the government out of my life), someone formed or attempted to form a party around this?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > You are also seeing backlash to Bill Clinton and his attempts at healthcare reform (this would come again during Barak Obama's term and the rise of Tea-party style conservatism against health-care reform and the ensuing spiral into present day conservatism). I do not see it as having to do with healthcare reform, but rather having to do with the wealth transfer necessary to facilitate the healthcare reform. For decades, the progress of certain socioeconomic classes had stalled, even by the 90s. Those classes could see those above them pulling away, but at least they had the comfort of knowing they were not at the bottom. However, the wealth redistribution required for healthcare reform would bring those below them up to their level, or at least remove the veneer of not being near the bottom and no longer being in the same world as those making gains, which is apparently not a preferable situation. In summary, I am pointing to the increasing wealth/income gap and relative movement of various socioeconomic tribes, perhaps inevitable due to technology and the consequences of its economies of scale. As long as the pie is getting bigger, and everyone is getting a bigger slice proportional to the size of their original slice, there is less strife (except at the bottom). Once the sizes of the slices start moving down relative to others’, there starts to be a retreat to tribal affiliations to fight against it.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  They did so by adopting a national strategy for the entire party, regardless of state, and this probably intensified some conservatism. And Rush Limbaugh's syndication on even FM stations plus the launch of Fox News in the mid 90s helped get that national message across.
decremental 5y ago
It was probably just the death throws of American culture. People realized the direction things were headed and realized how terrible it would be. Then those people were punished and silenced and now everyone just goes along with it all, no matter the cost or consequences.
francisofascii 5y ago
As an aside, Fox News launched in 1996, although that could have been a response to the market rather than a cause.

wing-_-nuts 5y ago

I know we've had anecdotal conversations here about declining technical literacy with the increase of tablet / smartphone use, but this figure is striking https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747189/nfab061f2.tif https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747189/nfab061... Computer use has actually declined since ~ 2013?! Wow. That's actually kind of sad.

vlovich123 5y ago
Probably smartphones aren’t included and hence the decrease. 2013 is roughly when the smartphone revolution hits the general populace.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Which doesn't even make sense. Some smartphones have the same specs as laptops and you can do, essentially, everything you could on a laptop or desktop on your smartphone. There's more reasons to include the smartphone in the category of computer than not to.
  - vlovich123 5y ago
    Architecturally they’re still very different from traditional desktops/laptops. SoCs are a main distinguishing feature and that pervades a lot of the low-level SW design where you actually basically have a non-transferable OS installation hard coded to the device instead of a traditional HAL letting you easily swap out a processor without much difficulty. For a very long time the control model was flipped as well and your baseband (cellular modem) CPU was actually the primary CPU with the OS running on the more restricted “application processor” (I think most or all designs have corrected this error these days, but certainly this was true in 2013). These differences of course are superficial and your phone could be used as a computer. It’s an arbitrary category like most categorizations that we make. I think the important distinction is that smart devices are largely content consumption devices vs computers being relegated to content creation. For example, would you say that someone who’s used a SmartTV has used a computer just because the specs are largely the same? I think you should fully expect computer use to decline over time because most people consume rather than create content.

MrsPeaches 5y ago

I thought this section was quite interesting. Seems like there is little movement on some of the hottest political topics. > Conspicuously missing from the top of the list are several issues central to political polarization and partisan sorting (Baldassarri and Park 2020). Abortion ranked 237th overall, gun ownership ranked 124th, gun regulation 251st, help for the poor 167th and 229th (two forms of the question), and health care ranked 149th, 150th, and 227th (asked three ways). Their low rankings are not an artifact. Change and conflict are separate. Future research will have to decide if lack of change promotes conflict or conflict stunts change, but from these results we can say that the liberal drift of Americans’ identities and attitudes, especially as reflected in cohort replacement, left several hot issues unmoved.

culi 5y ago
Makes sense to me. Identity is strengthened in opposition. People double-down when feelings are hot. I think part of the success of marijuana and gay marriage's rapid change in opinion is people were exposed to it through media (e.g. tv shows) but weren't forced to make some decision about where they stand on the issue during that time
- rhacker 5y ago
  It's weird though. I would say I shifted right recently after seeing homeless everywhere, crime in front of my face in many places I go, my laundry smelling like MJ at a public laundromat. I wouldn't stop gays from marrying at all, but there are a lot of issues that make me feel like democrats have been pulled into some weird pro-crime or anti-society movement. It's all falling apart and I feel like democrats have been asking for it and continue to do so.
  - SLOGoing 5y ago
    Obviously a fellow Californian.
  - blueflow 5y ago
    Imagine how it looks to non-US people.

palijer 5y ago

Seeing 403 forbidden - not sure if too much HN traffic or they blocked access from outside the US Edit: requesting Desktop site from mobile works. I guess they redirect mobile devices to a 403 screen? That is an interesting design decision...

nabla9 5y ago

"Atheist's civil liberties" is is not changing.

antux 5y ago

Not a surprise that political climate is getting more liberal since mainstream media is largely run and controlled by liberal think tanks and lobbyists. As such, they're able to promote and espouse liberal ideology and wokism into the minds of the majority.

unethical_ban 5y ago
You say this as if it is a bad thing.
- spaniard89277 5y ago
  It is.
wbsss4412 5y ago
Mainstream media is run and controlled by advertisers. As education increasingly becomes the political dividing line in America, liberal politics are where the valuable ad dollars are. Edit: upon reflection, I would be remiss to not also advance the fact that the mainstream media is inescapably caught up within Twitter and it’s discourse. As much as Twitter “is not real life” and it is not representative of Americans views as a whole, it is representative of an outsized fraction of elite media attention.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- amalcon 5y ago
  This is exactly it. "Vote with your wallet" sounds like a pretty good idea until you notice that your wallet doesn't actually contain that many votes.
  - josephh 5y ago
    But don't ratings matter most to advertisers? Who's going to run ads on a station that nobody watches?

karaterobot 5y ago

Did anybody find a list of the actual wording of the questions that were being asked to participants?