TY - JOUR
T1 - The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania
AU - Ionescu, Amalia
AU - Furdui, Raluca
AU - Gavreliuc, Alin
AU - Greenfield, Patricia M.
AU - Weinstock, Michael
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Ionescu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2023/3/1
Y1 - 2023/3/1
N2 - When people experience abrupt social change, from less education to more, from less technology use to more, from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous social environment, can their epistemic thinking adapt? When divergent opinions suddenly come to be valued, does epistemic thinking shift from absolute to more relativistic? We investigate whether and how these sociocultural shifts have produced changes in epistemic thinking in Romania, a country that fell from communism and started democracy in 1989. Our 147 participants were from Timisoara and fell into three groups, each experiencing the shift at a different point in their development: (i) born in 1989 or later, experiencing capitalism and democracy throughout life (N = 51); (ii) 15- to 25-years-old in 1989 when communism fell (N = 52); (iii) 45 or older in 1989 when communism fell (N = 44). As hypothesized, absolutist thinking was less frequent and evaluativist thinking, a relativistic epistemological mode, was more frequent the earlier in life a cohort was exposed to the post-communist environment in Romania. As predicted, younger cohorts experienced greater exposure to education, social media, and international travel. Greater exposure to education and social media were significant factors in the decline of absolutist thinking and the rise of evaluativist thinking across the generations.
AB - When people experience abrupt social change, from less education to more, from less technology use to more, from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous social environment, can their epistemic thinking adapt? When divergent opinions suddenly come to be valued, does epistemic thinking shift from absolute to more relativistic? We investigate whether and how these sociocultural shifts have produced changes in epistemic thinking in Romania, a country that fell from communism and started democracy in 1989. Our 147 participants were from Timisoara and fell into three groups, each experiencing the shift at a different point in their development: (i) born in 1989 or later, experiencing capitalism and democracy throughout life (N = 51); (ii) 15- to 25-years-old in 1989 when communism fell (N = 52); (iii) 45 or older in 1989 when communism fell (N = 44). As hypothesized, absolutist thinking was less frequent and evaluativist thinking, a relativistic epistemological mode, was more frequent the earlier in life a cohort was exposed to the post-communist environment in Romania. As predicted, younger cohorts experienced greater exposure to education, social media, and international travel. Greater exposure to education and social media were significant factors in the decline of absolutist thinking and the rise of evaluativist thinking across the generations.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85149801938&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0281785
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0281785
M3 - Article
C2 - 36888571
AN - SCOPUS:85149801938
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 3 March
M1 - e0281785
ER -