Abstract
Accumulating evidence indicates that climate change awareness and concern has increased globally, but commentators suggest a climate change generation gap whereby younger people care more ...about climate change than older people. Here we use a decade of panel data from 56,513 New Zealanders to test whether belief that “Climate change is real” and “Climate change is caused by humans” increased over the 2009-2018 period; and whether changes are uniform across 12 five-year birth cohorts spanning those born from 1936 to 1995. Results confirm a generation gap in mean (intercept) climate change beliefs but not in over-time increase (slope). The generation gap occurs because older cohorts started from a lower initial belief level (circa 2009), but all age cohorts increased their belief level at a similar rate over the last decade; and these results were not qualified by respondents’ gender. The findings offer hope for collective action that bridges efforts across generations.
Ambivalent sexism theory states that prejudice toward women comprises two interrelated ideologies. Endorsement of hostile sexism—aggressive and competitive attitudes toward women—is linked with ...endorsement of benevolent sexism—paternalistic and patronizing attitudes toward women. We conduct the first systematic tests of how endorsement of sexism differs across age and across time, using six waves of a nationally representative panel sample of New Zealand adults (N = 10,398). Results indicated U-shaped trajectories for men’s endorsement of hostile sexism, women’s hostile sexism, and women’s benevolent sexism across the life span. However, over time, endorsement of these sexist attitudes tended to decrease for most ages. In contrast, men’s benevolent sexism followed a positive linear trajectory across age and tended not to change over time. These results provide novel evidence of how ambivalent sexism differs across age and highlight that benevolent sexism is particularly tenacious.
The contagiousness and deadliness of COVID-19 have necessitated drastic social management to halt transmission. The immediate effects of a nationwide lockdown were investigated by comparing matched ...samples of New Zealanders assessed before (Nprelockdown = 1,003) and during the first 18 days of lockdown (Nlockdown = 1,003). Two categories of outcomes were examined: (a) institutional trust and attitudes toward the nation and government and (b) health and well-being. Applying propensity score matching to approximate the conditions of a randomized controlled experiment, the study found that people in the pandemic/lockdown group reported higher trust in science, politicians, and police, higher levels of patriotism, and higher rates of mental distress compared to people in the prelockdown prepandemic group. Results were confirmed in within-subjects analyses. The study highlights social connectedness, resilience, and vulnerability in the face of adversity and has applied implications for how countries face this global challenge.
Public Significance Statement
This study describes the immediate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown on levels of institutional trust and attitudes toward the nation and government and health and well-being in New Zealand, with implications for other nations. Our results suggest that a strong national response to COVID-19 may bolster national attachment and increase trust in the bodies determining and enforcing lockdown guidelines. Against a backdrop of general resilience, small increases in psychological distress serve as a warning about potential psychological consequences of lockdown and isolation.
The resurgence of right-wing political parties across the globe raises questions about the origins of national identity. Based on the Dual Process Model of Ideology and Prejudice, we argue that ...people’s tendency to submit to ingroup authorities (Right-Wing Authoritarianism RWA) and preference for group-based hierarchy (Social Dominance Orientation SDO) underlie people’s belief in the superiority of their nation (nationalism) and attachment to their homeland (patriotism). We examine these hypotheses using three waves of data from an annually conducted national longitudinal panel study of New Zealanders (N = 3,838). As predicted, RWA had positive cross-lagged effects on nationalism and patriotism. Conversely, SDO had a positive cross-lagged effect on nationalism, but a negative cross-lagged effect on patriotism. Little evidence of reciprocal cross-lagged effects (i.e., national identity on authoritarianism) was found. These results demonstrate that nationalism and patriotism are related, albeit distinct, ways of identifying with one’s nation that are ultimately rooted in authoritarianism.
•Model developmental patterns in stability of Big-Six personality markers.•Multi-cohort panel study of adult New Zealanders.•Structural Equation Models testing patterns of linear, quadratic and cubic ...effects of age.•Most markers of personality exhibit quadratic ‘inverted U’ patterns of rank-order stability.
We model developmental patterns in the stability of Big-Six personality markers over a two-year period in a multi-cohort panel study of adult New Zealanders (n=3910). Structural Equation Models testing patterns of linear, quadratic and cubic effects identified considerable variation in the stability of most aspects of personality across the adult age range (20–80years). Agreeableness showed a slight linear decrease in consistency with increasing age. Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, and Honesty–Humility exhibited quadratic ‘inverted U’ patterns of rank-order stability. Unlike Agreeableness, the two-year consistency of these other personality dimensions increased from young adulthood towards middle age, then decreased as people progressed toward old age. Implications for personality research and emerging trends are discussed.
A four-wave survey on a national probabilistic sample (N = 17,399) tested novel predictions about how positive and negative contact with racial out-groups predicts warmth and anger toward those ...groups. Three competing hypotheses were tested: (a) that negative contact will outweigh positive contact when predicting both emotions (“bad is stronger than good”); (b) that negative and positive contact will similarly predict each emotion; and (c) that negative contact will have a disproportionately large association with anger (a negative emotion), whereas positive contact will have a disproportionately large association with warmth (a positive emotion)—a phenomenon known as affect matching. The data revealed clear evidence for affect matching: Negative contact was associated with high levels of anger more than low levels of warmth, whereas positive contact was associated with high levels of warmth more than low levels of anger. Results suggest that positive and negative feelings about out-groups may be tied to qualitatively distinct contact experiences.
The Global Trust Inventory (GTI), conceptually assessing trust in others ranging from close interpersonal relationships to relationships with government and financial institutions as a whole, was ...administered to representative online samples in 11 democratic states (N = 11,917 from Europe, the Americas, and New Zealand). A seven-factor solution had configural, metric, and reasonable scalar invariance in multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. Using latent profile analysis, individual-level measures of trust were derived that complement existing measures of social capital in their impact and implications. Western societies had proportionately more people with high propensity to trust, Catholic/European intermediate, and Latin American societies the least. A High Trust Profile had virtues associated with social capital: greater participation in political discussion, greater elaboration of political thinking, more community engagement, less prejudice, and greater participation in elections. A Low Trust Profile exhibited opposite tendencies. Demographically, high trust was associated with higher self-reported social status, home ownership, older age, and political conservatism. A more complex set of relationships differentiated two intermediate profiles, dubbed Moderate and Low Institutional Trust. Conceptually, the GTI operationalizes a holistic view of trust as a “synthetic force” that holds various aspects of society together, ranging from interpersonal to institutionalized relationships.
In a single comprehensive model, using a large nationally representative sample, we investigate longitudinal relationships between mental distress and “Big Six” personality using an analysis approach ...sensitive to dynamic effects (i.e., to effects of deviations from individual trajectories). We find that, consistent with a mechanism involving scarring by distress, upward deviations (flare-ups) in distress predict flare-ups in Neuroticism 12 months later. Among younger adults (n = 4,775), distress flare-ups predict dips in Conscientiousness. Consistent with a dynamic precursor model, (a) flare-ups in Neuroticism and Extraversion predict subsequent flare-ups in distress among older adults (n = 11,167), and (b) slopes of distress correlate with slopes of a number of traits (e.g., positively for Neuroticism, and, among older adults, negatively for Extraversion). While demonstrating these scarring and dynamic precursor effects, we draw attention to a nuanced direction of dynamic effect for Extraversion, a newly discovered dynamic effect of Conscientiousness, and previously undocumented dynamic effects of traits on each other.
This study examines attrition rates over the first four years of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a longitudinal national panel sample of New Zealand adults. We report the base rate and ...covariates for the following four distinct classes of respondents: explicit withdrawals, lost respondents, intermittent respondents and constant respondents. A multinomial logistic regression examined an extensive range of demographic and socio-psychological covariates (among them the Big-Six personality traits) associated with membership in these classes (N = 5,814). Results indicated that men, Māori and Asian peoples were less likely to be constant respondents. Conscientiousness and Honesty-Humility were also positively associated with membership in the constant respondent class. Notably, the effect sizes for the socio-psychological covariates of panel attrition tended to match or exceed those of standard demographic covariates. This investigation broadens the focus of research on panel attrition beyond demographics by including a comprehensive set of socio-psychological covariates. Our findings show that core psychological covariates convey important information about panel attrition, and are practically important to the management of longitudinal panel samples like the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Using a nationally representative sample, the present research tested whether conceptions of national identity differentially predicted attitudes toward bicultural policies among New Zealanders of ...European, Māori, Asian, and Pacific descent. A series of multi-group structural equation models revealed that among members of the majority group and all minority groups, endorsement of a civic conception of national identity (i.e., respecting political institutions and laws) was related to opposition to resource policies, but such a relationship was especially strong among the majority group. By contrast, endorsement of an ethnic conception of national identity (i.e., having Māori or European ancestry) was related to support for resource and symbolic policies among minority group members, but to opposition to the same policies among the majority group. The present work documents that belonging to a majority vs. minority group moderates the relations between conceptions of national identity (civic vs. ethnic) and support or opposition to specific bicultural policies. In addition, some elements of civic conceptions of national identity may legitimize inequalities rather than reduce them.
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