As we continue to work on Culture Graphics, we occasionally run across interesting findings in the data.
One of the topics evaluated in the most recent World Values Survey is the attitude of people towards science and technology. According to theories about value in post-materialist societies (the book to read is Modernization and Postmodernization by Prof. Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan), people value science less the more they are separated from conditions of economic scarcity. More specifically, generations that do not experience material want during their formative years tend to be more skeptical of the benefits of science and technology.
This phenomenon is illustrated tellingly in the chart above. The survey asked the question, "In the long run, do you think the scientific advances we are making will help or harm mankind?" The chart shows the percentage of respondents who believe science will harm mankind, broken down by age group.
Two interesting observations emerge from the data. The first is that the typical pattern in 44 countries surveyed is for skepticism of the benefits of science to increase with age. In the United States, the pattern is reverse. A far higher proportion of younger respondents believe science is more likely to harm than help mankind than the older age groups.
The second notable takeaway is that the youth of America are nearly twice as likely to view science negatively as the youth of other countries. In fact, almost a quarter of Americans surveyed under 25 believe science will be harmful.
These cultural factors are important in a number of business and policy contexts.
We started examining attitudes towards science when working with a science-oriented magazine who was having trouble attracting and keeping younger readers. Clearly, if a significant proportion of America's youth see science as a problem rather than a solution, attracting these readers becomes a more difficult task.
Similar difficulties at the national policy level are illustrated by these data. For years we have, as a nation, been concerned about declining achievement by our youth in the sciences, and the gap between our scores and those of other countries has been widening. We often approach this as a supply problem -- we need to spend more money on teachers, programs, and facilities. But culture is often stronger than any of the weapons arrayed against it. If our youth believe science is bad, programs focused on spending are bound to fail.
Culture nearly always wins.
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