Increasingly, researchers have better data on social justice ideology (some call this ‘woke’, though I dislike the term). This week, the British Election Study (BES), a large panel study of British voters, published a wave which includes a battery of items on social justice ideology. When analysed with data from the 2020 American National Election Study (
Interesting reading, would be keen to hear more about the difference between liberalism and social justice ideology.
It feels to me like there's a soft conservatism within social justice ideology. They wish, like conservatives in the 1950s, people could just behave or obey.
Sorry if I could have explained this better! As you move from left to right, an increase in the variable (age, education etc.) make it more likely that people will hold social justice attitudes. The red line is '0' and the point at which there is no influence/insignificant influence. The further away from the red line (either side), the stronger the influence.
As many would guess, age is to the left of the red line (extremely so, in the UK), meaning that increased age makes it less likely that one will favour social justice ideology. Education is to the right of the red line, meaning that increased education makes it more likely that one will favour social justice ideology. But as I say in the text, this variable is statistically insignificant in the US, meaning that one can't have great confidence that the effect is real. Regression tables always contain information about statistical significance, but this information is more difficult to get into a chart!
Aha, I was reading 'age' as 'youth' (as a pro-SJ variable). Now clear - thanks. The bit that ends up surprising to me is the economic variable in the US, given how Trump approached 2016. Much more intuitive are those effects of sex and education, given how closely they match my personal anecdotal experience.
I'd love to see research into this. Amusingly I have an academic friend who blithely says that the education effect is because students "learn how to think". As if the SJ principles are deduced in a kind of Bayesean way. But I was pretty radical as a student and now recall that it just felt cooler and more caring to be left-wing. I hope you'll write more about these data.
Education level is highly correlated with age due to the massive increase in people attending university, i.e. saying "university educated people" is nearly equivalent to saying "young people".
In theory the statistical techniques used can separate about these correlations and let you see them independently, but in practice they don't always work completely and it's easy to make mistakes.
This is good stuff, albeit it feels so far a bit shallow. Women and the young are more left wing than old men, gosh, you don't say :)
A lot of these aspects feel clearly like they're just correlates of each other that weren't fully controlled for, e.g. I'd expect social justice ... adherents (SJW is just so much easier to type though) to have lower income because they gravitate towards highly competitive but relatively low paid and insecure roles like NGOs, charities, art/drama, journalism etc. That is, their low income is an effect not a cause of their ideology.
As for what drives this at a fundamental level, I feel like it was already solved decades ago by Thomas Sowell's theory of visions. It's not something he tried to prove with data, but I've found his theory to have great predictive power in a variety of real-world situations and it generalizes across many very different domains beyond ordinary hot button national politics. I think this generalization ability comes from the very deep and abstract level at which it operates, which in turn allows you to "compute" what views people will have on very different questions by progressively lowering the abstraction level until you arrive at the specific question you're interested in. He shows in his book "Conflict of Visions" how to apply this theory to many different areas of life and generate valid predictions for how people will behave.
Sowell is an (American) academic but the sort that has tenure and spends his time writing books instead of doing surveys and publishing papers. He's also quite explicitly conservative, and so his impact in academia has been limited to say the least.
Interesting reading, would be keen to hear more about the difference between liberalism and social justice ideology.
It feels to me like there's a soft conservatism within social justice ideology. They wish, like conservatives in the 1950s, people could just behave or obey.
Thanks! I wrote some more about definitions here: https://www.thepathnottaken.net/p/with-few-conservatives-academia-will
This paper, by my Cardiff colleagues, is also very good: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01461672221097529
If you can't get access to this, email me and I'll send it to you
Could you explain the charts for this dullard, please? What the numbers on the horizontal axis mean along with what the red line signifies?
Sorry if I could have explained this better! As you move from left to right, an increase in the variable (age, education etc.) make it more likely that people will hold social justice attitudes. The red line is '0' and the point at which there is no influence/insignificant influence. The further away from the red line (either side), the stronger the influence.
As many would guess, age is to the left of the red line (extremely so, in the UK), meaning that increased age makes it less likely that one will favour social justice ideology. Education is to the right of the red line, meaning that increased education makes it more likely that one will favour social justice ideology. But as I say in the text, this variable is statistically insignificant in the US, meaning that one can't have great confidence that the effect is real. Regression tables always contain information about statistical significance, but this information is more difficult to get into a chart!
Aha, I was reading 'age' as 'youth' (as a pro-SJ variable). Now clear - thanks. The bit that ends up surprising to me is the economic variable in the US, given how Trump approached 2016. Much more intuitive are those effects of sex and education, given how closely they match my personal anecdotal experience.
I'd love to see research into this. Amusingly I have an academic friend who blithely says that the education effect is because students "learn how to think". As if the SJ principles are deduced in a kind of Bayesean way. But I was pretty radical as a student and now recall that it just felt cooler and more caring to be left-wing. I hope you'll write more about these data.
We've got a book coming out on this! Will reveal details soon ;-)
Great news. There's an insight gap there!
Education level is highly correlated with age due to the massive increase in people attending university, i.e. saying "university educated people" is nearly equivalent to saying "young people".
In theory the statistical techniques used can separate about these correlations and let you see them independently, but in practice they don't always work completely and it's easy to make mistakes.
Unless you're me and you can't even read the charts properly to begin with !
This is good stuff, albeit it feels so far a bit shallow. Women and the young are more left wing than old men, gosh, you don't say :)
A lot of these aspects feel clearly like they're just correlates of each other that weren't fully controlled for, e.g. I'd expect social justice ... adherents (SJW is just so much easier to type though) to have lower income because they gravitate towards highly competitive but relatively low paid and insecure roles like NGOs, charities, art/drama, journalism etc. That is, their low income is an effect not a cause of their ideology.
As for what drives this at a fundamental level, I feel like it was already solved decades ago by Thomas Sowell's theory of visions. It's not something he tried to prove with data, but I've found his theory to have great predictive power in a variety of real-world situations and it generalizes across many very different domains beyond ordinary hot button national politics. I think this generalization ability comes from the very deep and abstract level at which it operates, which in turn allows you to "compute" what views people will have on very different questions by progressively lowering the abstraction level until you arrive at the specific question you're interested in. He shows in his book "Conflict of Visions" how to apply this theory to many different areas of life and generate valid predictions for how people will behave.
Sowell is an (American) academic but the sort that has tenure and spends his time writing books instead of doing surveys and publishing papers. He's also quite explicitly conservative, and so his impact in academia has been limited to say the least.