Exploring “wokeness” in Sweden: psychological implications

We investigated in two surveys if and how a cluster of factors derived from intersectionality, feminist, critical race, postcolonial, queer and class theory would predict woke attitudes in Sweden. In Study 1, index variables corresponding to these factors were entered into a hierarchical regression together with variables measuring ingroup identification and political orientation. All indexes were found to be reliable and correlated with self-assessed wokeness. Indexes related to feminist and queer theory were highly important, while intersectionality, critical race theory, and class theory were less important in predicting self-assessed wokeness. Measures of ingroup identification and political orientation were also found to be important. In Study 2, testing the same factors in a full model largely replicated these findings. A more parsimonious model suggested that feminist and queer theory were the most important predictors of self-assessed wokeness. In addition, while measures of social-domination orientation and right-wing authoritarianism had no unique effects, affective polarization was a strong predictor in predicting self-assessed wokeness in Sweden.