Progressive politics from a half hour farther from everything else in northern Virginia

Friday, September 25, 2009

Hummer Drivers' Moral High Ground

You know, you have to love science sometimes. Like when they do controlled studies of personal behavior and attitudes like this.

Hummer Owners Claim Moral High Ground To Excuse Overconsumption, Study Finds

Hummer drivers believe they are defending America's frontier lifestyle against anti-American critics, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
...
The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the "rugged individual," and the "boundless frontier" to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.

"Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American," write the authors. "The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals." - ScienceDaily
So, basically, if you don't drive a Hummer the Socialists/Communists/Terrorists/French win. Nevermind the fact that Hummer itself will soon be a communist company.

1 comments:

James Young said...

All you need to know about the biases of the authors is encapsulated in the dismissal of America's founding principles as "American foundational myths."