{"id":25780,"date":"2010-07-25T10:32:51","date_gmt":"2010-07-25T15:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=25780"},"modified":"2013-12-05T05:02:19","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T10:02:19","slug":"are-americans-more-patriotic-than-citizens-of-other-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/07\/25\/are-americans-more-patriotic-than-citizens-of-other-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Americans More Patriotic than Citizens of Other Countries?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claude Fischer at Made in America offered some data<\/a> speaking to the idea that Americans are especially patriotic. That they, in other words, are more likely than citizens of other nations to think that “We’re Number One!”<\/p>\n

Fischer provides some evidence by Tom Smith at the International Social Science Programme (ISSP<\/a>; Tom’s book<\/a>).\u00a0 The ISSP, Fischer explains…<\/p>\n

…involves survey research institutions in dozens of countries asking representative samples of their populations the same questions. A couple of times the ISSP has had its members ask questions designed to tap respondents\u2019 pride in their countries… One set of questions asked respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with five statements such as \u201cI would rather be a citizen of [my country] than of any other country in the world\u201d and \u201cGenerally, speaking [my country] is a better country than most other countries.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Smith put responses on a scale from 5 to 25, with 25 being the most patriotic.\u00a0 Here are the results from some of the affluent, western democracies (on a shortened scale of 5 to 20):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As Fischer says, “Americans were #1 in claiming to be #1.”\u00a0 Well, sort of.\u00a0 Americans were the most patriotic among this group.\u00a0 They turned out to be the second most patriotic of all countries.\u00a0 Venezuela beat us.<\/p>\n

(In any case, what struck me wasn’t the fact that the U.S. is so patriotic, but that many other of these countries were very patriotic as well!\u00a0\u00a0 The U.S. is certainly no outlier among this group.\u00a0 In fact, it looks like all of these countries fall between 14 and 18 on this 20-point scale.\u00a0 Statistically <\/em>significant, perhaps, but how meaningful of a difference is it?)<\/p>\n

Fischer goes on to ask what’s good and bad about pride and closes with the following concern for U.S. Americans:<\/p>\n

We believe that we are #1 almost across the board, when in fact we are far below number one in many arenas \u2013 in health, K-12 education, working conditions, to mention just a few. Does our #1 pride then blind us to the possibility that we could learn a thing or two from other countries?<\/p><\/blockquote>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Claude Fischer at Made in America offered some data speaking to the idea that Americans are especially patriotic. That they, in other words, are more likely than citizens of other nations to think that “We’re Number One!” Fischer provides some evidence by Tom Smith at the International Social Science Programme (ISSP; Tom’s book).\u00a0 The ISSP, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[260,1765,1766,1811,1770,2055,2026,1776,1777,1817,1818,1790,1791,1795,1802,1804,1805,3920,276],"class_list":["post-25780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-international-comparisons","tag-nation-australia","tag-nation-austria","tag-nation-britainthe-u-k","tag-nation-canada","tag-nation-denmark","tag-nation-finland","tag-nation-france","tag-nation-germany","tag-nation-ireland","tag-nation-israel","tag-nation-new-zealand","tag-nation-norway","tag-nation-portugal","tag-nation-spain","tag-nation-sweden","tag-nation-switzerland","tag-nation-united-states","tag-nationalismpatriotism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25780"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59908,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25780\/revisions\/59908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}