Public Attitudes toward Social Problems: The Impact of Shared Life Experiences in the Community of Residence

The present research addresses the question of why various segments of the public disagree about the causes of social problems. Past research has differentiated individualistic from structural causes and inferred they are associated with certain types of individuals. Middle-income Protestants, for example, have been seen as more apt to attribute poverty to the personal weaknesses and failures of poor people, low-income blacks to see it as generated by such structural forces as economic exploitation and racial discrimination. This line of inquiry has supplied invaluable insights into public opinions about social problems but has not provided a more comprehensive explanation of them. In this study we analyze data from a community survey and show that, in addition to such background characteristics as race, income and education, community of residence is a crucial variable influencing opinions about the causes of social problems. We argue that social processes within individuals' local communities of residence condition their responses to social problems, as well as to other aspects of social life. The main implication discussed is that community of residence should be viewed as an independent moral order acting as a mediating symbolic mechanism through which individuals categorize and try to understand the larger society and the causal forces at work within it.