Survivalism and Public Opinion on Criminality: A Cross-National Analysis of Prostitution (original) (raw)
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Attitudes toward prostitution: is an ideological issue?
The European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context
Prostitution has been the subject of intense debate in all societies and cultures though to varying degrees of public acceptance or rejection. The choice of legal approach to deal with this issue (i.e., legalization or prohibition) may be influenced by ideological factors. The primary aim of this study was to assess, in a sample of 620 individuals drawn from general population, the legal stances towards prostitution, and attitudes and beliefs regarding the underlying motives and behaviour of men who resort to prostitution. Moreover, the effects of sexist attitudes and beliefs and the legal stance towards prostitution on victim-blaming in cases of physical or sexual assault to prostitutes were assessed. The results reveal significant differences in legal stance towards prostitution in relation to attitudes and beliefs concerning the underlying motives and behaviour of men who procure the services of a prostitute. In other words, a high score in prohibition was associated to hostile a...
2018
Attitudes towards prostitution are related to stereotypes that normalize the phenomenon and justify violence against women in the sex industry. The present study explored attitudes towards prostitution in Greece by investigating their relation to beliefs in a just world, previous experience as a client of prostitution and key demographic characteristics in a sample of 624 Greek female and male client and non-client participants. The results indicated that most of the participants perceived prostitution as a socially harmful phenomenon, whereas low belief in immanent justice and high belief in ultimate justice were significantly correlated to negative attitudes towards prostitution. Gender differences were also revealed, with male participants showing more positive attitudes towards prostitution. Previous experience as a client of prostitution was also found to predict positive attitudes, with clients (as compared to non-clients) adopting more positive attitudes towards prostitution.
A Test of the Temperance Hypothesis: Class, Religiosity, and Tolerance of Prostitution
Public attitudes toward prostitution are a neglected area of study. Temperance theory posits that end-of-the century political culture is characterized by the persistence of moral politics in which personal behavior is moralized and sanctioned. Driving this politics is the economic insecurity of the middle class to reassert status boundaries as markers of respectability in order to clearly separate classes physically and socially. This hypothesis has not been tested empirically and it contradicts hypotheses derived from post materialist theory or revised modernization theory, which proposes that there is a trend toward more tolerance of deviance in contemporary society, and that the traditional class-based cleavages have shifted and now focus more on value cleavages. This article tests these competing hypotheses, examining whether there is a trend toward greater intolerance of prostitution and whether the middle class became more intolerant in the 1990s. In addition, we test the effects of social class and religiosity on tolerance of prostitution. Results show that the U.S. pubic became more tolerant toward prostitution across social classes in the 1990s and that religiosity continues to serve as a powerful counterbalance to social acceptance of prostitution.
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Sociological Forum, 2020
Although there has been a growing literature on the effects of culture on the cross-national variation of homicide , this literature remains limited in the operationalization of national culture as well as in the modeling of the cultural effects. Adopting a multidimensional measure of national culture developed in the World Values Survey, this study examines the effects of various aspects of national culture, as well as their interaction, on the cross-national variation of homicide. The findings of this study provide evidence for the effect of national culture on homicide variation across countries while painting a more complex picture about the potential mechanisms of these effects.
THE GLOBAL PURSUIT OF HUMAN EMPOWERMENT: DOES PROSTITUTION PUBLIC POLICY MATTER
Ongoing project
The empowerment of women not only undermines the oldest form of discrimination, recent research evidences that this change is key to the development of peace, prosperity, and democracy. This project examines the relationship between prostitution policy typologies and its effects on emancipative values that are causal to more gender equalitarian societies. The project follows an elaborate multi-method research approach based on a longitudinal and cross-sectional statistical analysis and 32 cases worldwide between 1999 and 2014. Innovation in both, academia and government with the emergence of the post-prohibitionist Swedish prostitution typology enables this project to reach beyond the empirical ambiguities on the success of policy solutions. New research, like this, can build on findings that evidence a causal relationship between top-down policy measures and subjective values upheld by society, which subsequently drives greater freedom and equality. As society and politics are mutually dependent on norms and policy models to accelerate individual freedom, equality and human development, this study hypothesises that criminalisation of the purchase of sexual service leads to higher levels of gender equality. This study aims to find promising measures that provide governments with empirical evidence on emancipative orientations towards prostitution legislation – evidence-based prostitution policy models that simultaneously empower, and develop a society's human potential.
Acceptance of Prostitution and Its Social Determinants in Canada
International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 2015
The nature of collective perception of prostitution is understudied in Canada. Except some rudimentary reports on the percentages of the key legal options, multivariate analysis has never been used to analyze the details of public opinion on prostitution. The current study explores the trend of public attitude toward prostitution acceptability in Canada over a 25-year span and examines the social determinants of the acceptability of prostitution, using structural equation modeling (SEM), which allows researchers to elaborate both direct and indirect effects (through mediating variables) on the outcome variable. Results show that the public has become more acceptant of prostitution over time. In addition, the less religious, less authoritarian, and more educated are more acceptant of prostitution than the more religious, more authoritarian, and less well educated. The effects of religiosity and authoritarianism mediate out the direct effects of age, gender, gender equality, marriage,...