Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/10878
Title: Heroes and villains of world history across cultures
Authors: Hanke, K
Liu, JH
Sibley, CG
Paez, D
Gaines, SO
Moloney, G
Leong, C-H
Wagner, W
Licata, L
Klein, O
Garber, I
Böhm, G
Hilton, DJ
Valchev, V
Khan, SS
Cabecinhas, R
Keywords: Factor analysis;Latent profile analysis;Cross-cultural studies;Religion
Issue Date: 2015
Publisher: Public Library of Science
Citation: PLoS ONE, 10(2): e0115641, ( 4 February 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.
Description: © 2015 Hanke et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
URI: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115641
http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/10878
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115641
ISSN: 1932-6203
Appears in Collections:Dept of Life Sciences Research Papers

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
Fulltext.pdf499.48 kBAdobe PDFView/Open


Items in BURA are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.