"Heroes" and "villains" of world history across cultures.

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Date
2015
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
Rights
Hanke et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Abstract
Emergent properties of global political culture were examined using data from the World History Survey (WHS) involving 6,902 university students in 37 countries evaluating 40 figures from world history. Multidimensional scaling and factor analysis techniques found only limited forms of universality in evaluations across Western, Catholic/Orthodox, Muslim, and Asian country clusters. The highest consensus across cultures involved scientific innovators, with Einstein having the most positive evaluation overall. Peaceful humanitarians like Mother Theresa and Gandhi followed. There was much less cross-cultural consistency in the evaluation of negative figures, led by Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. After more traditional empirical methods (e.g., factor analysis) failed to identify meaningful cross-cultural patterns, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was used to identify four global representational profiles: Secular and Religious Idealists were overwhelmingly prevalent in Christian countries, and Political Realists were common in Muslim and Asian countries. We discuss possible consequences and interpretations of these different representational profiles.
Description
Keywords
Science & Technology, Multidisciplinary Sciences, Science & Technology - Other Topics, LATENT CLASS ANALYSIS, SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS, COLLECTIVE MEMORY, IDENTITY, PERSONALITY, LEADERSHIP, DYNAMICS, POLITICS, EVENTS, PEOPLE
Citation
PLOS ONE, 2015, 10 (2), pp. ? - ? (21)
URI
Collections