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Empirical Correlates of Cosmopolitan Orientation: Etiology and Functions in a Worldwide Representative Sample
Author(s) -
Liu James H.,
Zhang Robert Jiqi,
Leung Angela K.Y.,
Gil de Zúñiga Homero,
GastardoConaco Cecilia,
Vasiutynskyi Vadym,
KusHarbord Larissa
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/pops.12644
Subject(s) - cosmopolitanism , social dominance orientation , openness to experience , biology and political orientation , big five personality traits , social psychology , personality , agreeableness , immigration , psychology , empirical evidence , socioemotional selectivity theory , politics , sociology , political science , developmental psychology , epistemology , authoritarianism , democracy , extraversion and introversion , law , philosophy
Psychology has begun contributing to social theory by providing empirical measures of actually existing cosmopolitanism that complements more purely theoretical conceptions of the construct common in philosophy and sociology. Drawing from two waves of research on representative adult samples from 19 countries ( N = 8740), metric invariance was found for the three factors of cosmopolitan orientation (COS): cultural openness (CO), global prosociality (GP), and respect for cultural diversity (RCD). In terms of etiology, among Wave 1 measures, the personality factor of agreeableness was the best predictor of the cosmopolitan factors of GP and RCD at Wave 2, whereas openness of personality best predicted CO. Wave 1 measures of education, political liberalism, and self‐reported social status independently also explained a small amount of variance in COS. Functionally, COS was shown to predict less prejudice against immigrants, and more support for global civil society, even after controlling for social dominance orientation. All three COS factors independently predicted better attitudes towards immigrants. GP was the best predictor of trust in the United Nations, whereas RCD was the best predictor of support for environmental protection. The three‐factor model of COS appears well‐calibrated for assessing actually existing cosmopolitanism across cultures.