Profiles of an Ideal Society: The Utopian Visions of Ordinary People

Throughout history, people have expressed the desire for an ideal society—a utopia. These imagined societies have motivated action for social change. Recent research has demonstrated this motivational effect among ordinary people in English-speaking countries, but we know little about the specific content of ordinary people’s utopian visions in different cultures. Here we report that a majority of samples from four countries—Australia, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States—converge on a small number of utopian visions: a Modern Green utopia, a Primitivist utopia, a Futurist utopia, and a Religious utopia. Although the prevalence of these utopia profiles differed across countries, there was a cross-cultural convergence in utopian visions. These shared visions may provide common ground for conversations about how to achieve a better future across cultural borders.

Cultures of conflict: Protests, violent repression, and community values

What are the cultural origins of societal conflicts that revolve around democratization, women's rights, and modern libertarian values? We propose that deep‐seated differences in community‐based collective values (at the micro‐level) may be related to why people support anti‐government protest and why they support repression of such protests (at the macro‐level). The hypothesis was examined among residents of Turkey (N = 500). Cultural values, measured at the individual level and community level with the community collectivism scale, correlated with political orientation and emotions, as well as with subsequent support for anti‐governmental protest or its repression. The main conclusions are that both support for protest and support for repression are related to the cultural values people hold and their subsequent political orientations and emotions. Micro‐level cultural values in local communities may thus play a role in explaining macro‐level socio‐political divides.