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Distribution and Characteristics of Symbolic Universes Over the European Societies

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Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis

Abstract

This chapter reports the analysis of the distribution and characteristics of the segments of people associated with the symbolic universes. Analyses comprise seven countries are in Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom. The aim of these analysis is to understand if and to what extent socio-demographic and psycho-social factors that could play a role in moderating the impact of policies are associated with specific symbolic universes. Main findings: (a) the distribution of the different cultural segments differs quite a lot across countries, though the Niche of belongingness cultural segment appear as the most or one of the most frequent in all countries under analysis; (b) as to the socio-demographic profiles of the cultural segments, niche of belongingness and othersworld—i.e. the cultural segments characterized for the most negative worldviews—are associated with worse living conditions—low level of education, high unemployment or low quality of employment; negative self-evaluation of own health; moreover, they present a low level of (self-evaluated) positive personality traits, a low sense of interpersonal and community linkages, negative attitude towards foreigners. Conversely, ordered universe and interpersonal bond have a rather similar profile, characterized by young, highly educated people having a high quality occupational status and satisfaction with their health; moreover, these two cultural segments present positive personality characteristics as well as high level in the psycho-social capacity to valorise and make interpersonal and community life meaningful.

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Correspondence to Sergio Salvatore .

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Annex 1: Characteristics of Cultural Segments. Output of Statistical Analyses

Annex 1: Characteristics of Cultural Segments. Output of Statistical Analyses

1.1 Preliminary Factorial Analyses

See Tables 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3.

Table 4.1 Principal component analysis of the brief sense of community scale
Table 4.2 Principal component analysis of the multidimensional scale of perceived social support
Table 4.3 Principal component analysis applied to the prejudice scale

1.2 Comparisons Among Symbolic Universes on Socio-demographic Characteristics

See Tables 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 and 4.9.

Table 4.4 Symbolic universes * gender
Table 4.5 Symbolic universes * age
Table 4.6 Symbolic universes * education
Table 4.7 Symbolic universes *  occupation
Table 4.8 Symbolic universes * self-evaluated health condition
Table 4.9 Symbolic universes * nationality

1.3 Comparisons Among Symbolic Universes on Psycho-social Characteristics

See Tables 4.10, 4.11, 4.12 and 4.13.

Table 4.10 Psycho-social characteristics. Descriptive statistics
Table 4.11 Levene’s test of homogeneity of variance
Table 4.12 Comparisons among symbolic universes (Kruskal-Wallis’ test)
Table 4.13 Post-hoc multiple comparisons among symbolic universes (Tamhane test)

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Salvatore, S. et al. (2019). Distribution and Characteristics of Symbolic Universes Over the European Societies. In: Salvatore, S., Fini, V., Mannarini, T., Valsiner, J., Veltri, G. (eds) Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis. Culture in Policy Making: The Symbolic Universes of Social Action. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19497-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19497-0_4

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