Globalization and folk theory of social change: How globalization relates to societal perceptions about the past and future

Abstract

Folk theory of social change (FTSC) is a generic knowledge structure that frames societal perceptions. According to FTSC, society develops from a traditional community where people are trustworthy though unsophisticated to a more sophisticated, but less warm-hearted modern society. People make future forecast about society within this generic structure while flexibly incorporating particular information about the past history and the present social trend. We report evidence for the proposition that globalization provides particular information that people incorporate in forming their future societal perceptions. We take an intranational perspective by examining people's beliefs about globali..