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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31241 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Good news everyone! We now have a formal, scientific scale for measuring wokeness! You can find the related preprint here.

Finland's newspaper of record, Helsingin Sanomat (HS) summarizes the meaning of "wokeness" (it's called "woke" in Finnish too, using the untranslated term - of course, it's an Anglo concept, after all).

In Finnish, woke means being awake, but it could also be translated as awareness.

Its supporters think it's relevant, and opponents think it's too sensitive to see things like racism, sexism and discrimination against gender minorities around.

There are two other English terms associated with the phenomenon: cancel and callout culture. Both mean actively intervening in the politically questionable activities or writings of others, for example on social media. Cancellation takes the interference up to a boycott of the person.

UNIVERSITY OF TURKU psychology researcher Oskari Lahtinen has developed a psychological meter that can be used to study the prevalence of woke attitudes. In his research, he calls them attitudes of social justice.

The research is now in a peer-reviewed scientific publication. You can read the preview version on the Psyarxiv service .

"I have been interested in how common such attitudes are in Finland," says Lahtinen.

"I take a small risk when I study the woke phenomenon, because people have really strongly differing opinions and strong feelings about it."

Later on some unsurprising results:

Lahtinen was not surprised that the strongest woke attitudes were in the humanities and social sciences, but the rise of psychology in his own field came as a nice surprise.

Among the students, the highest woke scores were obtained by psychology and social sciences students.

Natural science students, on the other hand, got the lowest scores on the scale. On average, they pretty clearly disagree with the woke claims.

AMONG THE UNIVERSITY staff, clearly the highest woke scores were in the humanities. Business scholars received the lowest scores. Those in the fields of natural sciences and medicine ranked in the middle, but they also disagreed with the woke claims on average.

Some other fields had so few respondents that the results are not reliable, according to Lahtinen.

It also turned out that in the entire material, women had stronger social justice attitudes than men based on the measure.

THE PARTICIPANTS also answered questions measuring anxiety, depression and happiness.

Those with high woke scores had more anxiety and depression than others. They were also less happy.

"It was interesting because this was the case regardless of whether the person had experiences of being oppressed themselves. The mere fact that you have such a worldview meant that you were also more depressed and anxious," says Lahtinen.

The differences in well-being were really big. Students with high wake scores had 71 percent more anxiety, 39 percent more depression, and almost seven percent less happiness than those with low wake scores.

HS has used this study to create an (intentionally facile) wokeness test. I'm linking to the original Finnish version, Google Translate couldn't get it to work. It's below the researcher guy's picture, clicking "Näytä lisää" will expand it. "Täysin samaa mieltä" means "Fully agree", "Jokseenkin samaa mieltä" means "Somewhat agree", "Jokseenkin eri mieltä" is "Somewhat disagree" and "Täysin eri mieltä" means "Fully disagree". The max score is 30.

The claims are:

  1. Human species has two biological genders.

  2. Trans women are women.

  3. It is not right to limit a privileged person's right to speech.

  4. Trans women in Olympics do not advance women's rights.

  5. One should not say things that might offend a disadvantaged person's feelings.

  6. We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin.

  7. University reading lists should include fewer white and European authors.

  8. The police are by definition a racist institution.

  9. If white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it is because of oppression.

  10. A white person cannot understand how a black person feels.

That seems like a completely facile test indeed. I would give the "non-woke" answer on 100% of those questions, which I'm sure would place me somewhere interesting on the political spectrum, and completely disconnected from where I actually am.

Of course the test has all the usual disadvantages of requiring binary answers to complicated questions.

How would the test misclassify you? Your role in this community seems completely consistent with a wokeness score of 0%.

Someone who infers "anti-woke" somehow means republican or right-wing in any way is wrong, but that's not a problem with the test.

How would the test misclassify you? Your role in this community seems completely consistent with a wokeness score of 0%.

I don't know about that - I am sometimes willing to steelman woke positions, and I am what passes as a liberal hereabouts. Which is the problem with that test: my answers and those of bonafide right-wing white nationalist would be indistinguishable. While the truly woke and the typical sneerclubber might consider that accurate, I think not.

I'm not sure a white nationalist and a classical liberal would be indistinguishable on 6.

I am not exactly sure if that is the case. Question: We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin.

  1. Yes, I believe in MLK colorblindness and we should talk less.

  2. No, we should talk more specifically about phasing out things like affirmative action

  3. Yes, the current level of talk including affirmative action and some woke stuff feels to me just about right

  4. No, we should talk more about racialist policies such as Kendi's Department of Anti-racism

  5. No, we should talk about white replacement and unsustainable immigration

For instance 1. and 2. to me seems stemming from similar sentiment but it gets you different questionnaire answer. And of course 5. and 6. are polar opposites on "wokeness scale" although the have the same questionnaire answer. The questionnaire is weird in this way.

Yes, the 4-1-5 horseshoe was exactly my point. 2 feels like a failure of test taking ability in the context of an anti-woke test, phasing out AA is more naturally a "talk less about race than currently" option. 3 is possible, though it is a fairly noncommittal stance and the original test was on a 4-point scale.

On a Venn diagram of wokeness right-wingers would be fully enclosed in a non-woke circle, with left-wingers straddling between woke and non-woke.

That's why any wokeness test wholly focused on wokeness can't distinguish between them.

Which is the problem with that test: my answers and those of bonafide right-wing white nationalist would be indistinguishable.

I don't think the test is meant to distinguish between those, though. It's not a generic political-position test, it's just a test for wokeness. As someone who is also a liberal myself (I don't know if I "pass" for one hereabouts, but I identify as one), I would classify myself as 100% anti-woke and I would expect an accurate test for wokeness to classify me as such, in a way that's indistinguishable from, say, a MAGA Republican. Because regardless of our differences, a MAGA Republican and I both are completely anti-woke.

Must be semantics then. I don't use the word "woke" to mean "generic socially left wing" but I guess if other people do then some peoples' test scores will make them look bad.

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