The FINANCIAL — Every culture has a wide variety of traits that can describe it, and every week this column discusses which traits can be gleaned from GORBI data.
The FINANCIAL — Every culture has a wide variety of traits that can describe it, and every week this column discusses which traits can be gleaned from GORBI data. Usually these traits are affirmative, but this week we’ll be looking to see of what and whom Georgians disapprove in an attempt to find some overarching trends. The primary concept we’ll discuss is an old sociological favorite: social capital.
In the most recent wave of the European Values Survey, Georgian Opinion Research Business International asked respondents questions meant to gauge their aversion to certain activities or peoples. We first presented a list various groups of people to respondents and asked them to “sort out any that [they] would not like to have as neighbors?”
Unacceptable Neighbours
Christians 4%
Large families 7%
Right wing extremists 14%
Left wing extremists 16%
Jews 18%
Different race 23%
Immigrants 28%
Gypsies 34%
Muslims 39%
People who have AIDS 69%
Emotionally unstable 74%
Ex Criminals 81%
Heavy drinkers 84%
Homosexuals 87%
Drug addicts 91%
Not surprisingly, almost no one said they were averse to Christians (4%) or large families (7%) as neighbors, if only because finding such a neighborhood in Georgia would be like capturing a unicorn. Your Georgian neighbors also don’t care too much about your extreme political views, your race, or immigrant status. Even when naming specific “outsider” groups, Georgians were generally accepting: most did not have a problem living near Jews (18%), Gypsies (34%), or Muslims (39%).
Georgians seem the most opposed to living near alcoholics, criminals, and drug addicts, which is common in most places. Less commonly, Georgians have a strong aversion to homosexual neighbors, over whom Georgians would apparently choose criminals and the emotionally unstable – in fact, everyone but drug addicts. For the most part, though, it’s personal behavior that precludes Georgians from welcoming new neighbors.
We also asked respondents their attitudes toward a variety of controversial actions. We read them a list of these possible actions and asked them, on a 1-10 scale, whether the action could always be justified (10), never be justified (1), or something in between.
Topping the charts on this list is divorce: Georgians were relatively accepting of the concept, placing it squarely in the “sometimes justifiable” range (4). Even abortion scored relatively high in justifiability with a 3. Every other action was less justifiable, the majority falling below a 2. Before you think that Georgians are all stuffed shirts, let me quickly describe a general tendency in “justifiability” questions.
Justifiability
Divorce 4.0
In-vitro fertilization 4.0
Abortion 3.0
Euthanasia 2.4
Falsely claiming state benefits 2.1
Cheating on taxes 2.1
Avoiding fares 1.9
Human embryo experiments 1.8
Having casual sex 1.7
Adultery 1.6
Death penalty 1.6
Accepting bribes 1.5
Genetic manipulation of food 1.5
Prostitution 1.2
Suicide 1.2
Smoking Marijuana 1.1
Homosexuality 1.1
When asking questions like this, low scores are typical regardless of country. On a 1-10 scale, it’s quite rare for an even slightly controversial topic to score above a 5 or 6, there are always groups who say “that’s just not right.” Because of this, these numbers can only serve as a relative description: I had a good laugh when I saw the justifiability of “avoiding fare on public transport.” Georgians said, in total, that it was virtually unacceptable (1.9). Taking the bus every day, I can promise you that more than a small fraction of people “strategize” their payments, waiting until they see a yellow shirt to swipe their card.
Surveys of this size have margins of error of around 3% with 95% confidence. Visit our website at gorbi.com
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