Change and Decay

Marco Rubio got a lot of attention for repeating a talking point during Saturday's debate, but few people seem to have noticed how feeble the talking point was (although Ross Douthat acknowledged that it was 'not all that great to begin with').  The obvious flaws are that Barack Obama is not going to be a candidate in November and that all of the other Republican candidates have been critical of him too.  But it did make me wonder how Americans feel about "change" in general--there's a long tradition holding that we're attracted to change and novelty.  That reminded me that the World Values Survey asked people to place their own views on a ten-point scale running from "ideas that have stood the test of time are generally best" to "new ideas are generally better than old ones."  I wondered how the United States ranked on that question.  I took the 1995-6 wave, which was the last time it was asked in a wide range of nations.  The ranking of nations, with high numbers indicating more support for new ideas:

Colombia        8.21

Bangladesh 8.09

Dominican Rep. 6.19

Macedonia 6.12

El Salvador    6.05

Bosnia         6.01

Puerto Rico 5.95

Peru           5.92

Chile          5.86

Mexico         5.76

Spain          5.59

Norway         5.58

Sweden         5.54

Germany        5.51

Uruguay        5.47

Philippines 5.46

Venezuela 5.43

Croatia        5.42

South Africa 5.38

Romania        5.32

Bulgaria 5.31

Turkey         5.29

Argentina 5.23

New Zealand 5.20

China          5.16

Albania        5.12

Australia 5.08

South Korea 5.07

Poland         5.03

Finland        5.01

United States 4.97

Armenia        4.94

Estonia        4.92

Switzerland 4.84

Slovenia 4.80

Latvia         4.79

Moldova        4.78

Nigeria        4.72

Slovakia 4.62

Serbia         4.61

Lithuania 4.56

Czech Rep. 4.52

Hungary        4.43

Belarus        4.37

Georgia        4.37

India          4.22

Ukraine        4.21

Japan          4.16

Taiwan         4.15

Russia         4.11

Montenegro 4.11

Azerbaijan 3.77

The United States is in the middle, although a bit more towards the traditionalist side.  Beyond that, it seems like poorer nations tend to be more favorable towards new ideas, while nations of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe give more support to tradition.  But nothing is very clear, which might be why the WVS dropped the question.  

I also ranked the nations by standard deviation:

Turkey          3.53

El Salvador 3.41

India           3.36

China           3.33

Nigeria       3.29

Venezuela 3.25

Moldova         3.09

South Africa 3.08

Peru         3.06

Dominican Rep. 3.04

Azerbaijan 3.00

Serbia         2.92

Puerto Rico 2.91

Montenegro 2.90

Macedonia 2.88

Georgia         2.88

Romania         2.80

Lithuania 2.74

Ukraine         2.73

Philippines 2.72

Bulgaria 2.70

Belarus         2.70

Bangladesh 2.67

Argentina 2.66

Mexico         2.65

Russia         2.60

Uruguay         2.59

Armenia         2.56

Chile         2.54

Slovakia 2.52

Latvia         2.50

Bosnia         2.49

Poland         2.47

Slovenia 2.47

Albania         2.45

Hungary         2.41

Croatia         2.38

Estonia         2.35

Spain         2.34

Switzerland 2.34

South Korea     2.27

Colombia 2.20

Czech Rep. 2.20

United States 2.19

Taiwan         2.15

Finland         2.11

Australia 2.06

New Zealand 2.03

Germany         1.97

Norway         1.86

Japan         1.85

Sweden         1.81

Now there's a very clear pattern:  affluent nations, including the United States, have less variation.  The highest-ranking nations have a bimodal distribution in which the most popular choices are 1 and 10.  In the United States, the most popular choice is 5, followed by 6 and 4.