"VERY GOOD – VERY BAD" OR

"SOMEWHAT GOOD – SOMEWHAT BAD"

DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSE STYLE AND SOCIAL

POLARIZATION ACROSS 47 NATIONS

Michael MinkovInternational

University College

•Very important

•Somewhat important

•Not very important

•Not important at all

RESPONSES TO ITEMS ABOUT VALUES: "How important is this to you in your

life?"

•Noise? (traditional view)

•Dimension of culture? (Smith, 2011)

RESPONSE STYLE

47 nations studied in 2007

Nationally representative or nearly representative samples

Social judgments: good / bad

http://www.pewresearch.org/

• national government

• media

• immigrants

• large foreign companies

• globalization

• use of military force

• market economy

• protect the environment at the expense of growth, etc.

ITEMS ABOUT:

Operational definition: High percentages answering ”very good” and high percentages answering ”very bad”

Scoring: For each item and for each country

% "very good" x % "very bad"(0 % transformed into 1 %)

SOCIAL POLARIZATION (SP)

RESULTS

Highest SP

Lowest SP

Arab countries

Africa

Pakistan

USA

North-Western Europe

Latin America

Eastern Europe

South-Western Europe

South-East Asia

East Asia