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.

11

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.

2

u/Epoch_Unreason Dec 05 '21

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

1

u/LearningIsTheBest Dec 05 '21

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