American Attitudes Research Articles

코로나19 시기에 따른 자연 기반 관광의 건강 신념 지각 차이 연구

Due to the prolonged COVID-19, most tourism and leisure industries are in unprecedented crisis; however, nature-based tourism has proliferated unexpectedly. The first purpose of this study is to identify the structural relationship of health beliefs on nature-based tourism, and then test the developed model by establishing an integrated model of the extended health belief model and the theory of planned behavior for Americans during the pandemic in two time periods in 2020 and 2021. Second, it is to confirm the changes in perception of health beliefs between the two time periods. Data for American adults were collected via an online survey in July 2020 and March 2021, and a total of 576 valid samples were analyzed. The results showed that the integrated model's explanatory power was high, confirming its validity, and structural equation modeling revealed that the path of perception of health beliefs was derived to be somewhat different from the hypotheses. Furthermore, the average of each component of the health belief model was higher in 2021 than in 2020, and the majority of them were statistically significant. It was also discovered to be partially significant in changing attitudes of Americans toward nature-based tourism over time. The study's findings have both academic and practical implications for tourism marketers and leisure policymakers in determining when, how, and what restrictions should be addressed.

Influence of Political Ideology on Coping and Personal Protection Practices During the Early Days of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Even prior to COVID-19, it was clear that political ideology was defining experiences and attitudes of Americans. Responses to the societal repercussions brought about by the pandemic quickly seemed to follow the same pattern of difference across the spectrum of political beliefs. This study explores the relationship of political ideology to personal responses to COVID. The present article reports on the results of an online survey in the USA conducted in June 2020 that explored the impact of personal political ideology on individual responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that political ideology was related to the likelihood of respondents following government guidance on personal protective practices. Ideological identification was not a significant predictor of the likelihood to specifically follow guidance from state officials, specifically, when satisfaction with state and federal leaders were controlled for. Differences in responses to COVID, including use of personal protection strategies and coping mechanisms are related to political ideology. Practice and policy should be responsive to these differences.

Editors' Introduction

Editors' Introduction

Bonds and barriers: Mental health, service provision, and Middle Eastern/North African cultural identity in the U.S.

This exploratory study examined the intersections of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) American cultural identity and attitudes towards mental health and mental health services. Fifteen in-depth narrative interviews with participants of MENA descent in the United States were analyzed using qualitative thematic content analysis, revealing five primary themes within these data: denial, lack of awareness, stigma/shame, collective identity, and resistance. These results indicate cultural identity plays a unique and significant role in how this population understands and responds to mental health and substance use challenges, in a way that often creates barriers to social service provision and success. Implications and suggestions for how these findings might be used to develop more culturally competent and effective social work interventions for MENA communities are discussed.

American National Identity and Portrayal of the Russian Empire in The New York Times in the Late Nineteenth Century

This article seeks to identify how U.S. media in the late nineteenth century sought to portray the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth century. The primary focus is on the “newspaper of record” The New York Times, which reflected to a certain degree the attitudes of the American people, but more so reflected the stance of the “powers that be” in the United States – the government and the business class. The main goal of this article is not to make conjecture about what nineteenth century Americans believed, or to state that there was an agenda against the Russian Empire. Rather, the goal of this article is to demonstrate that American attitudes reflected in U.S. media towards the Russian Empire were shaped by the media, and that the portrayal of the Russian Empire was not entirely positive or negative, although followed a negative trend over time for various reasons. The reasons for negative portrayal of the Russian Empire in The New York Times were arguably connected to various tsars in power and their personalities and a shift in world alliances bringing the United States closer to Great Britain. The portrayal of the Russian Empire in U.S. media as well as the reasons for its eventual negative stance, led Russia to be a suitable “other” in American national identity formation as the twentieth century unfolded.

American and Chinese public opinion in an era of great power competition: Ingroup bias and threat perceptions

ABSTRACT As the US-China great power competition intensifies, public opinion polling may help gauge internal drivers of foreign policy decision-making. Using Pew Research Center data, the authors analyzed how American and Chinese respondents viewed their own and each other’s countries between 2008–2016. They further examined how American attitudes towards China varied by political affiliation between 2008–2019. Both Americans and the Chinese displayed ingroup bias (i.e. rating their own country more positively than the other) and viewed China as a challenger to US hegemony. However, while the Chinese exhibited higher levels of ingroup bias overall, there was no evidence of increasing bias over time. Meanwhile, Americans showed increasing ingroup bias, primarily due to their souring evaluations of China, a tendency that was strongest among Republicans.

Not That Innocent: Teaching Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever”

Abstract Teaching Edith Wharton’s fiction inevitably leads to discussion of the institution of marriage itself. A perennial student favorite, her short story “Roman Fever” (1934) provokes thought on a variety of American attitudes, in particular the role of women in traditional American marriages—how it has both changed and remained somewhat the same over time. The later works shed light on the consistency of Wharton’s insistence on the complexity of women and her frustration with the nation’s gendered assumptions. With her novels as well as her short fiction, Wharton instantiates her critique of the custom of the country. Nearly a century after its publication, readers consistently react to the moment one student of mine dubbed the “mic drop” at the end of “Roman Fever.” The brevity of the story gives room for students to read primary and secondary sources, and each class finds new complexities in a seemingly simple work of short fiction.

The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt)

The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt)

Economic shocks and clinging

AbstractWe test whether the economic effects of globalization change the social and political attitudes of white Americans. Specifically, we examine the effect of a local labor market's exposure to import competition brought about by the rapid changes in the Chinese economy from 1990 to 2007 on perceptions of immigrants, minorities, religion and guns. We do not find meaningful changes in aggregate attitudes. Instead, using detailed information from the General Social Survey, we find evidence of significant hardening of existing attitudes or “clinging” to long‐standing beliefs.

EMPLOYEE’S USE OF SOURCES OF GUIDANCE AT WORK: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND BRAZIL

Purpose – The objective of this research was to statistically compare employee’s use of sources of guidance (SOGs) at work in the United States and Brazil and discuss results in the light of differences concerning national cultural characteristics. Method – 220 employees from a Brazilian university and 166 employees from an American university filled out a paper-and-pencil questionnaire. Pearson correlation tests (r) and Student t tests were run in order to investigate statistically significant differences between the two samples, which were discussed in the light of national cultural characteristics.Main results – Americans presented significant higher means than Brazilians on Informal Rules and People Outside Organization, and Brazilians presented significant higher mean than Americans on Formal Rules and Procedures. The discussion showed that some of these differences are compatible with national culture characteristics.Relevance/Originality – Recognizing the importance and the role of national cultures on individual’s attitudes and behavior within the organizational environment is fundamental in the search for effective and contextualized management practices.Theoretical/methodological contributions – Up until 2020, only 12 theoretical-empirical studies about SOGs were developed. Hence, the present study theoretically and empirically contributes to knowledge about this very important work-related construct.Social/management contributions – The results suggest to managers, human resource professionals, and psychologists important differences in the attitudes of American and Brazilian employees with respect to the use of sources of guidance at work, contributing, for instance, to recruitment and selection processes in multinationals.

Population density, cosmopolitanism, and undocumented immigrants in the United States

AbstractMost research on attitudes towards immigrants and immigration problematically conflates the documented and the undocumented. Previous studies also largely ignore the autonomous role of population density. Based on data drawn from two nationally representative surveys, this paper focuses on contemporary American attitudes towards undocumented immigration and immigrants. Contra the dominant view, we find that education and income have no effect. More important, population density, measured at the county level, significantly predicts favorable attitudes, controlling for factors often erroneously conflated with density: race, income, education, political affiliation, age, gender, and interaction with immigrants. In fact, interaction tends to decrease favorable attitudes. We explain these findings by proposing a novel account of cosmopolitanism, using favorable attitudes towards undocumented immigrants and immigration as an empirical indicator. Those who live in places with higher density are more used to see and be seen in everyday life by countless people with whom they share the same spaces without necessarily interacting with them. As a result, they are more likely to consider all them, including undocumented immigrants, in a superficial yet egalitarian way as generalized others to be ignored. It is this tolerance based on general indifference that is the basis of cosmopolitanism.

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

The United States Position on the Military Assistance to Great Britain at the Beginning of the World War II (1939 – 1941)

The article examines the problem of relations between the two leading countries of the world – Great Britain and the United States, which had a significant impact on the international political situation in the world in 1939–1941, and still have nowadays. As a vector of research, the author used the factor of American military aid to the British governments of N. Chamberlain and W. Churchill to fight against Nazi Germany. According to this, the author aimed to conduct a comprehensive analysis and his own assessment of the United States’ position on providing Britain with the necessary weapons and ammunition at the beginning of World War II.
 During the research the author used a comparative-historical method to analyze various factors influencing the US position on military assistance to London, a problem-chronological method to present the material in chronological order, and a statistical – to analyze the attitude of ordinary Americans on important decisions of the Roosevelt administration. That allowed the author to analyze and rethink the evolution of the United States’ position on Britain in the problem of providing military aid regarding the current geopolitical situation.
 The author works out that under the necessity of supporting London with various types of weapons, armament and ammunition to fight against Hitler’s regime the United States significantly changed the principles of its foreign policy – from “isolationism” in 1939 to its cancellation in the late 1941. At the same time, according to the author, this process was caused by a number of factors, including both the “isolationist” opposition in Congress and the Roosevelt administration’s gradual understanding of the Nazi regime threat to the security of the United States.

Financial vulnerability and the impact of COVID-19 on American households.

In May 2020, Westat, in partnership with Stanford University School of Medicine, conducted a nationally-representative household survey of American attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19. In this article, we examine what the Coronavirus Attitudes and Behaviors Survey tells us about the impact of COVID-19 on financial status and how this impact varies by demographic characteristics, the presence of health risk factors, and financial status (including employment factors). The survey reveals significant inequality in financial impact, as those who were most financially vulnerable prior to the pandemic found themselves under greater financial strain, while those who were more financially secure have experienced a neutral or even positive impact of the pandemic on household finances. These findings have important implications for public policy as policymakers seek to target aid to those who need it most.

Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel

Recent scholarship has established that a majority of Americans will support the use of nuclear weapons and violate the principle of noncombatant immunity when American lives are on the line. Some scholars contend, however, that these hawkish American attitudes are an outlier and that other Western democratic publics have more fully internalized the nuclear taboo, as well as the prohibition on deliberately killing civilians. To investigate cross-national attitudes on these important norms, we conducted a survey experiment of American, British, French, and Israeli citizens. We find that American attitudes are not exceptional. Rather, Israeli respondents display the most hawkish preferences; French and American citizens are roughly equally hawkish; and the British public is consistently the least supportive of nuclear use or targeting civilians. Categorical prohibitions—against nuclear use and targeting civilians—do little to shape public opinion in these four countries. Instead, public opinion in each state follows the same consequentialist logic: a majority or near majority of respondents are willing to support using nuclear weapons when they are more effective than conventional options, but support declines when collateral civilian deaths rise. Respondents’ preferences for compatriots over foreign civilians and respondents’ retributiveness help explain individual-level variation in attitudes.

Nationalising foreigners: The making of American national identity

AbstractWhereas the literature asks whether immigrants and their descendants come to resemble the ‘mainstream’, this paper places the acquisition of a new national identity at the centre of attention, contending that the views of ethnic outsiders provide strategic leverage in identifying any underlying consensus regarding the bounds of the nation and the means by which those bounds should be implemented. We contend that becoming ‘American’ entails adopting American attitudes towards persons beyond the territorial divide, a population that includes nationals of one's country of origin or ancestry. The paper develops a conceptual framework to understand how attachment to the people of the state of emigration gets transformed into attachment to the people of the state of immigration. The paper provides a demonstration of that process, focusing on Mexican immigrants and their descendants and using a variety of data sources to highlight and unpack different dimensions of Americanisation.

Federal Pleading Standards in State Court

Most state courts cannot follow both their state constitutions and federal pleading standards. Even if they could, policy considerations unique to states compel state courts to reject federal pleading standards. This is because federal courts have changed pleading standards to allow judges to make factual determinations on a motion to dismiss and to require more factual detail in complaints. While scholars have vigorously debated whether these changes are wise, just, and permissible under the federal rules and the Constitution, they have ignored the even more important questions of whether state courts can and should adopt those pleading standards. The oversight is particularly worrisome because so many state courts are currently struggling with those questions while hearing fifty times as many cases a year as federal courts do. Indeed, questions about pleading standards that deserve the most scholarly attention have received the least. This Article answers these questions with a definitive “no.” First, federal pleading standards violate the “inviolate” right to a jury trial contained in most state constitutions. This Article describes states as generally falling into one of four categories as it relates to the scope of their jury trial rights: (1) those following English common law practice from when the United States became an independent nation, (2) those whose constitutions enshrine distinctively American attitudes toward juries prevalent during the eighteenth century, (3) those who codified the right to a jury trial at the same time they wrote the first civil procedure codes in the nineteenth century, and (4) hybrids. It demonstrates that in all four cases, federal pleading standards are unconstitutional because they allow judges to decide factual questions that must be left to a jury. In some cases, the requirement to provide heightened factual detail is a constitutionally impermissible procedural barrier between a litigant and a jury. Furthermore, this Article makes the original claim that states should reject federal pleading standards for different reasons than those typically invoked by critics of changes in federal pleading standards. Instead of treating state courts as satellites revolving around federal courts, this Article puts state courts at the center of the debate. It explains that states must consider different policy concerns than federal courts do when formulating pleading standards. First, states generally guarantee litigants the right to a remedy and that their courts will be open to all who wish to remediate an injury. Second, states claim to make it easier than it is in federal courts for litigants to get a jury trial and are supposed to and do hear the vast majority of cases in this country. Third, states elect judges, which necessitates juries serving as a check on politicized decisionmaking. Fourth, states should not consider pleading standards in a vacuum. They should consider their own pleading standards in light of how federal pleading standards threaten to close the courthouse door on many vulnerable litigants. If state courts use the same pleading standards as federal courts now do, those litigants will have nowhere to go and will be shut out of court entirely. These policy concerns do not just justify states using different pleading standards than federal courts do; they require states to do so.

A New and Worrisome Predictor of Attitudes Toward Suicide: Self-Rated Health

Do people have the right to end their own lives? The General Social Survey has monitored the attitudes of Americans towards suicide since 1977 using four questions: Do you think a person has the right to end his or her own life if this person has an incurable disease, has gone bankrupt, has dishonored his or her family, or is tired of living and ready to die? These four responses can be combined into a reliable index representing an individual’s attitude toward suicide. As average population education levels have increased and religiosity has fallen, attitudes favoring the right to suicide have increased across the population. This research project introduces a previously understudied predictor of attitudes toward suicide: self-rated health. Using logistic and ordinal logistic regression, and controlling for age, education level, religiosity, marital status, survey year, race, and sex, I find that, over time, self-rated health has become a significant predictor of attitudes toward suicide. Since 2002, respondents who perceived themselves to be in poor health are significantly more likely to favor the right to end one’s life, especially if the individual has an incurable disease. After stratifying by age and race, I find that the relationship between self-rated health and attitudes toward suicide is strongest among individuals in the mid-life and is equally significant as a predictor for White and Black Americans after 2010. These findings provide further evidence that mental health screening is an increasingly vital component of physician/patient interactions and highlight the importance of continuity of care.

"Defenders of the Russian Nation": Slovak American Attitudes towards the Russian Empire, 1905-1918

The journal Historica Olomucensia, The Collection of History Works has been published since 2009. It follows the long-time tradition of series Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis. Facultas philosophica.Historica, The Collection of History Works, which started to be published in 1960. Since April 2015 the journal has been included in the prestigious European database of scientific journals ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences). Since 2009 it has been on the list of peer-reviewed, non-impacted journals published in the Czech Republic.

Welcome to Vienna: The Story of Austria as Reflected in the British and American Versions of the Soldier’s Guides to Austria

Abstract This article discusses and analyzes British and American perceptions, postwar planning aims, and stereotypes about Austria and its future restoration–post World War II. The article uses the concept of “militourist gaze” in order to compare differences and similarities between the British and the American attitudes reflected in their military handbooks for Austria. Through comparative research and close reading of Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, with other Second World War II soldier’s guides that were published by the British and the Americans respectively, we can conclude that it was the British and not the Americans who published the booklet Austria—A Soldier’s Guide. Furthermore, a typeset titled “A Short Guide to Austria,” found in the British National Archives, reveals the American version of the soldier’s guide to Austria, although this version was never published and both armies distributed the British guide to their troops. Using the militourist gaze in our interpretation of the soldier’s guide(s) to Austria we can better understand how British and American military media used prewar stereotypes on Austrians and Austria in order to rebuild Austrian nationhood vis-a-vis Germany. In this sense the British Austria—A Soldier’s Guide holds a special place since it is intended not only for army indoctrination of troops and their mission in Austria, but also as a means of national propaganda for the Austrians themselves, both by using the Moscow Declaration as subtext in the guide and by voicing prewar Austrian self-understanding from the interwar period.