"Heroes" and "villains" of world history across cultures - PubMed (original) (raw)

. 2015 Feb 4;10(2):e0115641.

doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115641. eCollection 2015.

James H Liu 2, Chris G Sibley 3, Dario Paez 4, Stanley O Gaines Jr 5, Gail Moloney 6, Chan-Hoong Leong 7, Wolfgang Wagner 8, Laurent Licata 9, Olivier Klein 9, Ilya Garber 10, Gisela Böhm 11, Denis J Hilton 12, Velichko Valchev 13, Sammyh S Khan 14, Rosa Cabecinhas 15

Affiliations

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

Katja Hanke et al. PLoS One. 2015.

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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1

Fig 1. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and Evaluations scatterplot.

Fig 2

Fig 2. Rotated MDS solution for the Catholic-Orthodox (Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain) cluster with all 40 figures.

Fig 3

Fig 3. Rotated MDS solution for the Western (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Fiji, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Switzerland, UK, USA) cluster with all 40 figures.

Fig 4

Fig 4. Rotated MDS solution for the Muslim (Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia) cluster with all 40 figures.

Fig 5

Fig 5. Rotated MDS solution for the Asian (China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) cluster with all 40 figures.

Fig 6

Fig 6. Estimated means for a four-profile Latent Profile Analysis evaluation of historical figures, ordered from left to right according to positions in factor structures (American Presidents, Humanitarians, Explorers, Tyrants, Communists, Conquerors, Religious, Scientists, and Other).

Fig 7

Fig 7. Distribution of historical representation profiles across cultural zones.

References

    1. Ritzer G (2011) Globalization: The Essentials. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
    1. Burke E (1790/2006) Reflections on the revolution in France. New York, NY: Pearson Longman.
    1. Hilton DJ, Liu JH (2008) Culture and inter-group relations. The role of social representations of history In: Sorrentino R &Yamaguchi S, editors. The Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: The Cultural Context. New York, NY: Guilford Press; pp. 343–368.
    1. Liu JH, Hilton DJ (2005) How the past weighs on the present: Social representations of history and their impact on identity politics. British Journal of Social Psychology 44: 537–556. -PubMed
    1. Hobsbawm E, Ranger T(1983) The invention of tradition. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources