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Some good news for Trump....
Posted on: October 12, 2016 at 13:34:45 CT
Spanky KU
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Study finds people fear government corruption, terrorists and Islam
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/government-731845-respondents-people.html
ORANGE – People don’t fear ghosts or monsters nearly as much as they fear their fellow man, Chapman University’s third annual Survey of American Fears released Wednesday finds.
Conspiracy theories, Islamophobia and a deep fear of government corruption are among the top findings in this year’s look at what fills Americans with dread – this is the first time the survey was taken in the heat of a presidential election.
A random sample of 1,511 Americans who speak English and are over the age of 18 answered the survey in May. It took about 20 to 25 minutes to complete.
The team of Chapman sociology and political science professors, with assistance from student researchers, conducts the study to better understand our fears and see what we can learn from them, Professor Christopher Bader said.
Respondents are more fearful of corrupt government officials than they are a terrorist attack on the nation – the fear of corruption topped the list for the second year, becoming even more distinct with the election drawing near.
To explore the political climate, two new focuses were chosen by the team for this year’s study: conspiracy theories and Islamophobia.
As respondents were asked questions about their comfort level with Muslims, an apparent distrust emerged.
Almost half said they would be uncomfortable with a mosque being built in their neighborhood, with roughly one-third believing that Muslims are more likely to be terrorists and that the Muslim immigration should be banned.
“A third of the population is basically saying we need institutionalized discrimination based on religion. That’s a scary thing for America,” Ed Day, chair of the Department of Sociology, said.
The most effective way to stem this fear might be simply for the fearful to meet a Muslim in person, he said.
“Honestly, I think it comes down to ‘Do you know a Muslim?’ When we look at the correlates, we find the people who are most afraid of Muslims tend to be white, male, older, have a high school education or less and are rural,” Day said. “These are the people who are least likely to have ever met one, so their entire image of what a Muslim is is coming from the media.”
Paranoia was a key factor when it came to the study’s findings on conspiracy theories. Nearly 55 percent of respondents said they believe the government is concealing information about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Bader said “9/11 conspiracy” is a large umbrella that catches all kinds of theories, but the number was shocking nonetheless, he said.
More than half of the respondents still think secrets are being kept about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, about 40 percent thought the government was hiding information about aliens, with a third believing the government had a hand in covering up the origin of the AIDS virus.
Most tellingly for the team, nearly a third of respondents believed the government is hiding something about “the North Dakota crash” – a conspiracy Bader and his team fabricated.
Making up the crash tests paranoia – the team wanted to see if people generally see the world as a place where hidden powers work deviously in the shadows. Respondents weren’t lying or pretending they knew what the crash is, Bader said, they simply feel certain that if there’s any question, the government is probably lying about it.
“We theorize that this belief in conspiracies has to do with uncertainty,” Bader said. “People like certainty, we like to know who’s behind things and how the world works. Conspiracy theories, if you think about it, are the ultimate form of certainty. They take a complicated thing and turn it into a few evil people in a room pulling the strings.”
The professors said fear and paranoia have been further agitated by the political atmosphere in recent years and especially by campaigning. As both sides continuously say the other is corrupt, the public slowly begins to believe that the whole system is rotten.
Though it always comes out near Halloween, the Survey of American Fears has repeatedly indicated the things Americans are most terrified of tend to be man-made or social realities. Though two-thirds of respondents believe in the paranormal – be it Bigfoot, psychic powers, alien visitors – these rank very low compared to grounded problems of having inadequate funds for the future, gun control, worry a loved one will fall ill or die and economic collapse.
The things we fear the most are those we think can upset our control of our predictable, familiar lives, Bader said.
“A ghost might be scary, but nobody talks about how they saw a ghost and lost their job,” Bader said. “These are stories we love to tell around the campfire. People indicate they’re scared of ghosts, but they don’t generally have the potential to upend your entire life.”
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/government-731845-respondents-people.html
ORANGE – People don’t fear ghosts or monsters nearly as much as they fear their fellow man, Chapman University’s third annual Survey of American Fears released Wednesday finds.
Conspiracy theories, Islamophobia and a deep fear of government corruption are among the top findings in this year’s look at what fills Americans with dread – this is the first time the survey was taken in the heat of a presidential election.
A random sample of 1,511 Americans who speak English and are over the age of 18 answered the survey in May. It took about 20 to 25 minutes to complete.
The team of Chapman sociology and political science professors, with assistance from student researchers, conducts the study to better understand our fears and see what we can learn from them, Professor Christopher Bader said.
Respondents are more fearful of corrupt government officials than they are a terrorist attack on the nation – the fear of corruption topped the list for the second year, becoming even more distinct with the election drawing near.
To explore the political climate, two new focuses were chosen by the team for this year’s study: conspiracy theories and Islamophobia.
As respondents were asked questions about their comfort level with Muslims, an apparent distrust emerged.
Almost half said they would be uncomfortable with a mosque being built in their neighborhood, with roughly one-third believing that Muslims are more likely to be terrorists and that the Muslim immigration should be banned.
“A third of the population is basically saying we need institutionalized discrimination based on religion. That’s a scary thing for America,” Ed Day, chair of the Department of Sociology, said.
The most effective way to stem this fear might be simply for the fearful to meet a Muslim in person, he said.
“Honestly, I think it comes down to ‘Do you know a Muslim?’ When we look at the correlates, we find the people who are most afraid of Muslims tend to be white, male, older, have a high school education or less and are rural,” Day said. “These are the people who are least likely to have ever met one, so their entire image of what a Muslim is is coming from the media.”
Paranoia was a key factor when it came to the study’s findings on conspiracy theories. Nearly 55 percent of respondents said they believe the government is concealing information about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Bader said “9/11 conspiracy” is a large umbrella that catches all kinds of theories, but the number was shocking nonetheless, he said.
More than half of the respondents still think secrets are being kept about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, about 40 percent thought the government was hiding information about aliens, with a third believing the government had a hand in covering up the origin of the AIDS virus.
Most tellingly for the team, nearly a third of respondents believed the government is hiding something about “the North Dakota crash” – a conspiracy Bader and his team fabricated.
Making up the crash tests paranoia – the team wanted to see if people generally see the world as a place where hidden powers work deviously in the shadows. Respondents weren’t lying or pretending they knew what the crash is, Bader said, they simply feel certain that if there’s any question, the government is probably lying about it.
“We theorize that this belief in conspiracies has to do with uncertainty,” Bader said. “People like certainty, we like to know who’s behind things and how the world works. Conspiracy theories, if you think about it, are the ultimate form of certainty. They take a complicated thing and turn it into a few evil people in a room pulling the strings.”
The professors said fear and paranoia have been further agitated by the political atmosphere in recent years and especially by campaigning. As both sides continuously say the other is corrupt, the public slowly begins to believe that the whole system is rotten.
Though it always comes out near Halloween, the Survey of American Fears has repeatedly indicated the things Americans are most terrified of tend to be man-made or social realities. Though two-thirds of respondents believe in the paranormal – be it Bigfoot, psychic powers, alien visitors – these rank very low compared to grounded problems of having inadequate funds for the future, gun control, worry a loved one will fall ill or die and economic collapse.
The things we fear the most are those we think can upset our control of our predictable, familiar lives, Bader said.
“A ghost might be scary, but nobody talks about how they saw a ghost and lost their job,” Bader said. “These are stories we love to tell around the campfire. People indicate they’re scared of ghosts, but they don’t generally have the potential to upend your entire life.”
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Some good news for Trump.... - Spanky KU - 10/12 13:34:45