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Originally Posted by Cowboy89
Okay, now that we have confirmed that any quantitative analysis based on where Calgary lies in the spectrum basically comes right out of thin air, Could this be another example of confirmational bias? Seems to me that if you're seeking out sexism, racism, et al you can find it pretty much anywhere you look whether that be Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver or Calgary.
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Bang on. It's pretty much how many people form their opinion of Calgary/Alberta in the media and across Canada.
...Calgary is an oil city. Therefore it
must have the same politics, additudes, culture, religious makeup of Texas.
...Calgary has a famous rodeo for 10 days, so therefore everyone must be a redneck cowboy.
...Calgary hosted Ann Coulter and the city is 'conservative' so therefore it must have given her a "big welcome" and
everyone agreed with her.
And so on.
I'm continually amazed how skewed people's perceptions are of the place. If you try and explain to someone from outside the city that in fact these stereotypes actually have very little basis, or you present a fact that doesn't neatly fit into their image of the place, you meet a lot of resistence.
People want to confirm preconceived notions of things. It gives one psychological satisfaction. This is even more true when that confirmation of a bias makes someone feel superior about their own situation (in this case, their home).
A Definition of the Confirmation Bias
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Confirmation bias (or myside bias) is a tendency for people to prefer information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses, independently of whether they are true. People can reinforce their existing attitudes by selectively collecting new evidence, by interpreting evidence in a biased way or by selectively recalling information from memory.
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The media definitely plays off of this psychological tendancy. People have a coloured view of Alberta/Calgary - it's sort of a favourite whipping boy of Canada, along with say places like Toronto. It's no wonder that the only 'stories' that filter their way out of the province are those stories that tend to confirm those stereotypes of those crazy Albertans.
A story about Ann Coulter coming to Calgary became a headline in the G & M of
"Spurned in Ottawa, Calgary gets a big welcome from Calgary". This headline is before she has even landed in the city! Half the comments are to the effect of "It's Calgary, should we be surprised?" It's the paper's most popular story for like 2 days and has like 1500 reader comments.
George Bush makes his first post-presidential Canadian appearance in Calgary. The stories and perception is basically that Calgary's the
only place in Canada that would even host this war criminal! A month later, a sell out crowd in Toronto.
Anti-racism group holds a rally, 2 skinheads show up, and suddenly Calgary is a hotbed of neo-nazis.
These are just recent examples.
To me Calgary is a decidedly moderate and essentially non-ideologically driven place. Further, it has an ambivailant live and let-live social attitude. It's not a place where you find much progressive or conservative social activism. For instance, you wouldn't (and didn't) find people marching in the streets for gay rights, but you also wouldn't see people marching in the streets against.
Canada is by and large a post-national state driven by immigrants. Calgary in a way epitomizes and is a microcosm of that element of Canadian society, because it's basically a city of outsiders - now one of the most ethnically diverse places in the country. There's nothing entrenched or deeply rooted based on culture, ethnicity, religion, language or whatever. It's therefore an inherently welcoming place - moreso than say, Quebec City.
If you further examine how we govern ourselves, our politics is not driven by religious beliefs, or even any sort of strong ideological bent. Federally, I think we elect "conservatives" because of a strong reaction against the regionalism of the liberal party (and past misgivings) and because from a regional sense, the conservatives are more the 'home team'. Provincially, I think one of the reasons why parties rule for so long is that they are essentially
pragmatic governing parties. On actual issues, we are more stereotypically Canadian than we probably acknowledge. Alberta spends more and supports public healthcare more than anyone else. We also have by far the best
public education system in the country and one of the best on the planet. In civic governemnt, we actually tend to vote in more centre-left mayors and councils.
/end rant