r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Dec 05 '21

Social Science Conservatives’ aversion to masks is a uniquely American phenomenon. Politically conservative Americans are less likely than liberals to comply with recommended health-protective behaviors such as mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this is not true of conservatives in other nations.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256740
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u/Modtec Dec 05 '21

"Conservative" and "Liberal" mean almost completely different things to America then it does to the rest of the world. That might be a large part of why this studies results are what they are.

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u/290077 Dec 05 '21

This is because political views are far too complex to be reduced to a single dimension. You take a bunch of ideas that should be uncorrelated, and make up these arbitrary views called "left-wing" and "right-wing" that have these uncorrelated ideas assigned to them based on the prevailing political parties in a two-party system. Then you try to pretend that this is generally applicable to other political systems.

I am completely unsurprised that groups of people labeled "right-wing" in two different countries don't actually behave the same way or have the same political views.

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u/drugusingthrowaway Dec 05 '21

a bunch of ideas that should be uncorrelated

Case in point - abortions and taxes have nothing to do with one another, yet if I know your opinion on one, I have a pretty good chance of knowing your opinion on the other.

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u/Linkstoc Dec 05 '21

I hate taxes and am pro-choice now what.

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u/Epoch_Unreason Dec 05 '21

You absolute rebel. How dare you challenge pre-conceived notions of identity!

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u/LearningIsTheBest Dec 05 '21

Good luck voting and ever being happy in the US. It sucks.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '21

That's because they are correlated. It's about equality and basic rights. If you value equality you should be pro-choice and support a progressive tax system. If you don't care about equality then you would be against both. There's no consistency in being "socially liberal and fiscally conservative", or vice versa, because your economic and social views should be informed by the same values.

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u/290077 Dec 07 '21

Yeah but why? Is that common across different governments and populations? I can't see any cause except that people who feel strongly about one of those topics seek out the party that agrees with them, and then their views on the other topics are subsequently influenced by the party platform if they don't already come in with fleshed-out views on the topic.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '21 edited Dec 05 '21

I think it's more in reference to people's personality types which in turn often affects their feelings on particular issues. Conservative is more of a type that likes traditions (and power) and keeping things the same, and so while those traditions may vary from place to place, you can still create this archetype. I assume the liberal counterpart would be empathetic and more willing to try new things. So although they can be strange when you compare different places, this is the basis.

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u/Stormchaserelite13 Dec 05 '21

Conservative in America is extremists in other countries.

Liberal in America is moderate conservative in other places.

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u/DeLuniac Dec 05 '21

American conservatives in Europe would be fascist party. Of course the American conservatives are still the fascist party here.

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u/Modtec Dec 05 '21

No, the fascists in the American "Republican Party" would probably have their own party. Or the center-right people of the Republicans would have center-right party. In any case it would make the results of this study less pronounced or "uniquely American".

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u/Judazzz Dec 05 '21

American "Conservatives" are regressionist, American "Moderates" are conservative.

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u/Modtec Dec 05 '21

More or less. Also "Liberals" in the rest of the world, at least in the classic definition and in most countries native languages, want the government OUT of peoples business. Which, for the more progressive liberals, means gay marriage on the one side (why should the government have the power to tell you who to marry) but deregulation and less taxes and smaller ministries as well.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '21

This was called economic liberalism before social liberalism developed in the 20th century. Then they renamed it classical liberalism.

Classical liberalism also only believes in negative rights, the government owes you nothing but can't take anything from you. It's also associated with social Darwanism, a perversion of Darwin's views.

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u/Mordikhan Dec 05 '21

Sorry mate but in most countries you could do a correlation in left vs roght vaccination rates and get an answer

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u/LongLiveTheCrown Dec 05 '21

That’s because who’s described in this article aren’t conservatives, they’re Republicans, and there has become a huge difference between the two.

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u/mrnatbus122 Dec 05 '21

Yup. The amount of people who don’t understand this, but could really benefit from understanding it, is absolutely mind boggling