Three essays on moral culture

The goal of this dissertation is to examine empirically the role that morality plays in social life. The first two chapters use data from the National Study of Youth and Religion to investigate the role that different understandings of good and bad, right and wrong, play in shaping the lives of U.S. teenagers. The first chapter advances a new theoretical model for understanding the role that moral cultures play in shaping action. Drawing on sociological practice theories and work in cognitive science, it outlines a dual process theory of culture in action, which holds that most cultural motivation operates at an unconscious level. Consistent with this model, the data analysis shows that individualist moralities tend to foster both more drug use and less civic engagement even though evidence from in-depth suggests that teenagers are largely unable to articulate these moral differences. The second chapter explores how different moral understandings shape social interaction over time. An analyses of ego network data between 2002 and 2005 demonstrates that teenagers with different moral understandings develop friendship networks with different proportions of drug users, those who frequently get in trouble, and regular volunteers. Once again, there is evidence that individualist moralities tend to promote more association with deviant peers and less association with civically engaged peers. The final chapter uses data from Benjamin Zablocki’s Urban Communes Project to explore the relationship between shared moral worldview and community. An analysis of data from 50 urban communes collected in 1974 shows that shared moral order is the best predictor of the degree to which a group’s participants experience it as a true community. Further analyses using fuzzy set methods, however, show that shared moral order must work together with specific structural arrangements in order to ensure the experience of community. Taken together, these studies suggest that morality is a vital dimension of social life that deserves further investigation by sociologists

Helping Relationships and Genetic Propensities: A Combinatoric Study of DRD2, Mentoring, and Educational Continuation

Abstract From conception to death, helping relationships promote positive development and enable people to surmount challenges in their lives. Is it the case that the negative consequences of a genetic propensity for risky behaviors can be attenuated by helping relationships (a G × E)? But is it also the case that people with such a genetic propensity are less likely to have helping relationships compared to people without such a propensity (a rGE)? We illustrate this complex pattern of gene–environment interplay by drawing on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and a combinatoric analytic strategy. We focus on a gene associated with dopamine receptor type 2 (DRD2 TaqIA), student–mentor relationships, and educational continuation beyond secondary school. Results reveal that, for both white and black males, DRD2 A1+ (A1A1 and A1A2 genotypes) is associated with a decreased likelihood of school continuation compared to their counterparts with DRD2 A1–; mentors who are teachers compensate for this negative association (a G × E); and youth with DRD2 A1+ are less likely to have a mentor who is a teacher than their counterparts with DRD2 A1– (a rGE)

Gender differential effect of college on political orientation over the last 40 years in the U.S.—A propensity score weighting approach

It is well-known that the more educated people are, the more liberal views they tend to express. However, it is unclear whether this is due to college attendance itself or because those who go to college differ from those who do not in ways (directly or indirectly) related to their later political identification. In this paper, we therefore attempt to estimate the effect of college on political identification net of people’s tendencies to select into college using an inverse probability of treatment weighting approach. Based on data from the General Social Survey, we analyze how this effect has changed over time and whether college affects the political identification of women in the same ways as that of men. We find evidence consistent with the argument that college attendance politicizes both men and women. Moreover, we show that not only the general, but also the gender specific effects change markedly across the decades. This raises questions about the different mechanisms at play in how college mobilizes men and women politically

The Old One-Two: Preserving Analytical Dualism in Psychological Sociology

We argue that an important item on the agenda for the ongoing dialogue between cognitive scientists and microsociologists is how to replace Cartesian mind-body dualism. Although we agree that strict mind-body dualism should be laid to rest, we believe that replacing this dichotomy with a holistic theory risks making it harder for researchers to see analytic distinctions that make a real difference. We use examples from Loic Wacquant's Body and Soul to illustrate our argument that sociologists should replace the old dualism with a new, improved one that incorporates cognitive science regarding differences between habitual, embodied cognition and intentional, discursive cognition. This will help microsociologists and cognitive scientists be in the best possible position to understand, enrich, and improve each other’s work

Opinions on hard-to-discuss topics change more via cohort replacement

Cohort replacement – the replacement in a population of older cohorts by their successors who developed under different conditions – is an important process behind cultural change. Research on public opinion indicates that a large proportion of aggregate change is the result of cohort replacement rather than of individuals changing their minds. However, some publicly salient issues, like gay rights, appear to be exceptions. Why different issues show different patterns of change is not well understood. In this paper, we investigate whether opinions on sensitive – that is, hard to discuss – issues might change differently than opinions on less sensitive issues. We use data from the 1981–2020 World Values Surveys and newly collected data on the sensitivity of survey items to compare aggregate changes in public opinion on 56 survey items in eight countries. Our key finding is that survey items on more sensitive issues seem to change more through cohort replacement

fuzzy: A program for performing qualitative comparative analyses (QCA) in Stata

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is an increasingly popular analytic strategy, with applications to numerous empirical fields. This article briefly discusses the substantive motivation and technical details of QCA, as well as fuzzy-set QCA, followed by an in-depth discussion of how the new program fuzzy performs these techniques in Stata. An empirical example is presented that demonstrates the full suite of tools contained within fuzzy, including creating configurations, performing a series of statistical tests of the configurations, and reducing the identified configurations

fuzzy: A program for performing qualitative comparative analyses (QCA) in Stata

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is an increasingly popular analytic strategy, with applications to numerous empirical fields. This article briefly discusses the substantive motivation and technical details of QCA, as well as fuzzy-set QCA, followed by an in-depth discussion of how the new program fuzzy performs these techniques in Stata. An empirical example is presented that demonstrates the full suite of tools contained within fuzzy, including creating configurations, performing a series of statistical tests of the configurations, and reducing the identified configurations. Copyright 2008 by StataCorp LP.fuzzy, cmvom, cnfgen, coincid, coverage, fzplot, mavmb, re- duce, setgen, suffnec, truthtab, yavyb, yvn, yvo, yvv, yvy, qualitative comparative analysis, QCA, fuzzy sets, Boolean logic, Boolean data, postestimation command