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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...

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Autores principales: Ionescu, Amalia, Furdui, Raluca, Gavreliuc, Alin, Greenfield, Patricia M., Weinstock, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
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.
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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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