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The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania
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...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9994674/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36888571 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281785 |
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author | Ionescu, Amalia Furdui, Raluca Gavreliuc, Alin Greenfield, Patricia M. Weinstock, Michael |
author_facet | Ionescu, Amalia Furdui, Raluca Gavreliuc, Alin Greenfield, Patricia M. Weinstock, Michael |
author_sort | Ionescu, Amalia |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9994674 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99946742023-03-09 The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania Ionescu, Amalia Furdui, Raluca Gavreliuc, Alin Greenfield, Patricia M. Weinstock, Michael PLoS One Research Article 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. Public Library of Science 2023-03-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9994674/ /pubmed/36888571 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281785 Text en © 2023 Ionescu et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Ionescu, Amalia Furdui, Raluca Gavreliuc, Alin Greenfield, Patricia M. Weinstock, Michael The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania |
title | The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania |
title_full | The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania |
title_fullStr | The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania |
title_full_unstemmed | The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania |
title_short | The effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in Romania |
title_sort | effects of sociocultural changes on epistemic thinking across three generations in romania |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9994674/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36888571 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281785 |
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