Archive: Jul 2015

Suicidal behavior has been found to cluster in and around certain areas and groups. For example, the nine western states that make up the “suicide belt” in the United States, including Arizona, Oregon, and Wyoming, consistently report higher suicide rates than the rest of the country. Research also finds that suicidal behavior can “spread” between individuals; when someone experiences a friend or loved one’s suicide, he is much more likely to attempt his own suicide. If suicide is contagious, how and why does it spread?

In their analysis of suicide contagion among young adults, Anna Mueller and Seth Abrutyn use network data from a national survey of adolescents to analyze how the disclosed and undisclosed suicide attempts of one adolescent affects the suicide attempts and ideation of that adolescent’s friends one year later. They find that when an adolescent knows about their friend’s suicide attempts, they are more likely to think about and attempt suicide themselves. However, they find that undisclosed suicide attempts and ideations do not result in suicidal attempts or ideation among their friends.

Mueller and Abrutyn conclude that when an individual shares their suicide attempts with their friends, it “transforms the distant idea of suicide—as something that other people do—into something that people like them use to cope with distress, sorrow, or alienation.” They argue that suicide spreads when it becomes a “cultural script” for coping with emotional distress; the more someone is exposed to suicidal behavior among their peers, the more likely the generalized idea of suicide will become an acceptable option for how that individual deals with her own distress. When suicide becomes prevalent enough in a peer group or culture to qualify as an option, it is much more likely to spread.

Liberals like lattes, organic food, and independent films, we are told, while conservatives like hunting, trucks, and country music. Stereotypes like these have persisted long enough that to suggest that there might be some real foundations to them, but the substance of those foundations remains fuzzy.

“Culture wars” theories have gained traction among scholars and pundits alike, but even if liberals and conservatives have conflicting understandings of morality, what does that have to do with taste in music, coffee, or leisure activities?

In a new study in the American Journal of Sociology, Daniel Dellaposta, Yongren Shi, and Michael Macy look for answers. First, they seek to empirically validate these popular assumptions. They find that political ideology correlates with cultural preferences consistently over 28 years of survey data, showing that aesthetic tastes, leisure activities, and even belief in astrology map onto a fairly neat conservative-liberal ideological split. Yet such correlations fail to provide causes for division.

The cultural arguments to which many scholars turn can be easily molded to tell a particular story—for example, “If conservatives are more skeptical of astrology, the reason is that astrology is regarded as sacrilegious; if conservatives are less skeptical, the reason is that they feel less need for scientific proof.”

The authors argue, instead, that network effects hold the key. There’s nothing inherently “liberal” or “conservative” about liking particular kinds of food or music. Rather, liberals drink lattes because their friends do. Using a computer simulation, the authors show hypothetical sets of attitudes that are not correlated in the survey data can become highly correlated when network ties between people with similar ideas are introduced. This leads the authors to conclude “lifestyle preferences and political views become socially, spatially, and demographically clustered” through interactions between people.

Perhaps the idea that social networks and interactions reinforce cultural preferences will surprise few, but this study’s results suggest that at the heart of the current cultural and political alignment of the U.S. lies in a set of fundamentally arbitrary connections between ideology and taste. Clusters of people develop ideas about politics and taste together, pairing political and cultural preferences together in more or less random fashion. Over time and through network effects, some of these pairings become pervasive enough to gather attention and give rise to stereotypes. It may be that politics doesn’t divide American culture, then, but reflects pre-existing cultural divisions.

Despite popular notions that the U.S. is now “post-racial,” numerous recent events (such as the Rachel Dolezal kerfuffle and the Emmanuel AME Church shooting) have clearly showcased how race and racism continue to play a central role in the functioning of contemporary American society. But why is it that public rhetoric is at such odds with social reality?

A qualitative research study by Natasha K. Warikoo and Janine de Novais provides insights. By conducting interviews with 47 white students at two elite US universities, Warikoo and de Novais explore the “lenses through which individuals understand the role of race in society.” Described as race frames, Warikoo and de Novais articulate the manner in which their respondents rely on particular cultural frames in making sense of race and race relations in the U.S.

They label the first of these the colour-blind frame*, a perspective held by respondents that suggests that the U.S. is now a “post-racial” society where race has little social meaning or consequence.

The colour-blind frame is challenged by what Warikoo and de Novais identify as the diversity frame, or the view that race is a “positive cultural identity” and that the incorporation of a multitude of perspectives (also referred to as multiculturalism) is beneficial to all those involved.

Integral to Warikoo and de Novais’ study is the finding that about half of their student respondents simultaneously house both the colour-blind and diversity frames. Of 24 students who held a colour-blind frame, 23 also promoted a diversity frame. Warikoo and de Novais explain this discursive discordance as a product of the environments in which respondents reside: a pre-college environment where race is typically de-emphasized and a college environment that amplifies the importance of diversity and multiculturalism.

Importantly, Warikoo and de Novais argue that the salience of these two co-occurring race frames is significant not only because of their seeming contradictions, but because they share conceptions of race that largely ignore the structural basis of racism and racial inequality in the U.S. Ultimately, Warikoo and de Novais’ findings illustrate the general ambivalence that their white respondents share about race and race-based issues—undoubtedly reflective of the discrepancies concerning race in broader society.

*Spelling from original article.