Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Predictors of patriotism

I was interested in predicting patriotism. GSS participants were asked how close they feel to America. I recoded the variable so that "close" and "very close" equal 1 and "not very close" and "not close at all" equal 0.  Here are the logistic regression coefficients:

Logistic regression coefficients (sample size = 2,441)

Male .49
Age .03
Black -.86
Other race -.29
Born in America .37
Jewish 1.45
Church attendance .09
Mid-Atlantic resident -.32

All of the relationships are statistically significant except for those of some other race. Keep in mind that the coefficients are unstandardized so they cannot be compared for size. Age, race, gender, and church attendance have the strongest impact. The profile of a person who loves America goes like this: white, male, older, native-born, Jewish, religious, and does not live in the Mid-Atlantic region (NY, NJ, PA). (Education, income, IQ, job prestige, and political orientation were found to be unrelated to feeling close to the country).

4 comments:

  1. someguy6:49 AM

    Why are women more religious and men more patriotic?

    ReplyDelete
  2. NY/NJ/PA would probably be the most Jewish part of the country, interestingly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did you check any of the other regions of the country?

    Women more religious and men more patriotic? That actually makes perfect sense. One thing Ron's found a few times is a positive correlation between A and B, and B and C, but a negative correlation between A and C. It's an interesting counterintuitive case.

    A lot of Jews old enough to remember the Holocaust are quite happy to be in the USA!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Women=religious, emotional. Spiritual.

    Men=patriotic, tribal. Sports.

    It works.

    ReplyDelete

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