How come today’s conservatives are more liberal than yesterday’s liberals? Why has the public opinion in large parts of the world shifted so rapidly in favor of gay and lesbian rights, but been virtually unchanged on other contested issues such as abortion rights? And is it possible to create a scientific model that can predict public opinion changes on moral issues?
Absolutely, it is precisely such a model that Pontus Strimling and Irina Vartanova, researchers at the Institute for Futures Studies along with Fredrik Jansson and Kimmo Eriksson at Stockholm University have created. The groundbreaking model has recently been publiched in Nature Human Behaviour.
The researchers have studied 74 issues. Use the tool below to see the researcher’s prediction on how opinion will change in each issue.
