Suchergebnisse

Eighteen national Gallup & NORC surveys from the years 1959-1985 are used to test the assumptions that elders exhibit increasingly conservative attitudes or rigidification of attitudes. Trend analysis tests show that each of four cohorts queried over that time period generally became increasingly conservative regarding gun control, the courts, & capital punishment. In all cases where there is change, trends toward conservatism occurred during the same time periods for each cohort & were no more pronounced for the older cohorts. Sex & education composition effects were then controlled, & the three younger cohorts were each compared separately with the oldest cohort. Analyses of the adjusted % differences in general show either cyclical trends regarding which cohort was more conservative (gun control & courts) or no differences in attitude (capital punishment). In no case do the results support the notion that growing old makes one more conservative or rigidifies one's thinking. With respect to law & order issues, the tendency toward conservatism is not confined to elders. 4 Tables, 3 Figures, 48 References. AA

Prevailing stereotypes of older people hold that their attitudes are inflexible or that aging tends to promote increasing conservatism in sociopolitical outlook. In spite of mounting scientific evidence demonstrating that learning, adaptation, and reassessment are behaviors in which older people can and do engage, the stereotype persists. We use U.S. General Social Survey data from 25 surveys between 1972 and 2004 to formally assess the magnitude and direction of changes in attitudes that occur within cohorts at different stages of the life course. We decompose changes in sociopolitical attitudes into the proportions attributable to cohort succession and intracohort aging for three categories of items: attitudes toward historically subordinate groups, civil liberties, and privacy. We find that significant intracohort change in attitudes occurs in cohorts-inlater- stages (age 60 and older) as well as cohorts-in-earlier-stages (ages 18 to 39), that the change for cohorts-in-later-stages is frequently greater than that for cohorts-inearlier-stages, and that the direction of change is most often toward increased tolerance rather than increased conservatism. These findings are discussed within the context of population aging and development.