Abstract
National surveys reveal notable individual differences in U.S. citizens’ attitudes toward freedom of expression, including freedom of the press and speech. Recent theoretical developments and empirical findings suggest that ecological factors impact censorship attitudes in addition to individual difference variables (e.g., education, conservatism), but no research has compared the explanatory power of prominent ecological theories. This study tested climato-economic, parasite stress, and life history theories using four measures of attitudes toward censoring the press and offensive speech obtained from two national surveys in the U.S.A. Neither climate demands nor its interaction with state wealth—two key variables for climato-economic theory—predicted any of the four outcome measures. Interstate parasite stress significantly predicted two, with a marginally significant effect on the third, but the effects became non-significant when the analyses were stratified for race (as a control for extrinsic risks). Teenage birth rates (a proxy of human life history) significantly predicted attitudes toward press freedom during wartime, but the effect was the opposite of what life history theory predicted. While none of the three theories provided a fully successful explanation of individual differences in attitudes toward freedom of expression, parasite stress and life history theories do show potentials. Future research should continue examining the impact of these ecological factors on human psychology by further specifying the mechanisms and developing better measures for those theories.
Highlights
Democracy requires the freedom to publicly express one’s views without fear of retribution
Climato-economic theory [7] and parasite stress theory [8], two prominent ecological theories, have been invoked to explain between-country differences in institutional repression of media freedom [8,9]. The former theory posits an interaction effect of local climate demands and wealth, while the latter focuses on the effect of local levels of parasite stress
Because there was no evidence for between-state variances in the outcome measure for Test 1, χ2 = 1.41, p = .24, the effects of ecological variables were not assessed
Summary
Democracy requires the freedom to publicly express one’s views without fear of retribution. Climato-economic theory [7] and parasite stress theory [8], two prominent ecological theories, have been invoked to explain between-country differences in institutional repression of media freedom [8,9] The former theory posits an interaction effect of local climate demands and wealth, while the latter focuses on the effect of local levels of parasite stress. Another important ecological theory, life history theory [10], has been used to explain individual and cross-cultural differences in political orientation [11] and religiosity [12], both of which predict censorship attitudes (see above). The present study filled this void in the literature by testing the predictions of climato-economic, parasite stress, and life history theories on U.S citizens’ attitudes toward press- and speech freedom, two core components of freedom of expression
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