Journal ArticleDOI
The Structuring Principle: Political Socialization and Belief Systems
TLDR
This article assessed the theoretical significance of data on childhood political learning and found no or little association between childhood orientations and the later learning of specific beliefs about the most important political issues of the day.Abstract:
This paper assesses the theoretical significance of data on childhood political learning. Two socialization models are involved. Each confers relevance on childhood learning by linking it with political outcomes. The first is an allocative politics model, which seeks a linkage with policy outputs. The other is a system persistence model, looking toward the stability and continued existence of political systems. Each model incorporates the following assumptions: (a) the primacy principle: childhood learning is relatively enduring throughout life; (b) the structuring principle: basic orientations acquired during childhood structure the later learning of specific issue beliefs.It is this structuring principle which we examined and tested in the present paper. The data show no or little association between childhood orientations and the later learning of specific beliefs about the most important political issues of the day. Our evidence suggests a need to carefully reexamine the basic assumptions and directions of current political socialization research.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted
TL;DR: The authors combine relevant findings in behavioral genetics with their own analysis of data on a large sample of twins to test the hypothesis that, contrary to the assumptions embedded in political science research, political attitudes have genetic as well as environmental causes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood
TL;DR: In this article, a developmental theory of voter turnout is proposed, based on the observation that most young citizens start their political lives as habitual nonvoters but they vary in how long it takes to develop into habitual voters.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response
TL;DR: In this article, a model of the survey response is proposed which takes account of the vagueness in opinion survey questions and in response categories, and it is shown that nearly all the inconsistency is the result of the ambiguity of the questions rather than of any failure by the respondents.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evidence of the Long-Term Persistence of Adults' Political Predispositions
David O. Sears,Carolyn L. Funk +1 more
TL;DR: The persistence hypothesis holds that core political predispositions tend to be highly stable through the life span as mentioned in this paper, and it has rarely been tested directly, given the scarcity of long-term, large-sample longitudinal studies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Politics Matters: Political Events as Catalysts for Preadult Socialization
TL;DR: This paper found that the pre-adolescent socialization of longstanding, stable predispositions is catalyzed by exogenous political events; such events socialize attitudes selectively, only in the specific domains they make salient; and so longstanding predisposition tend to be socialized episodically rather than incrementally.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The American Voter
Book
A framework for political analysis
TL;DR: The work of as mentioned in this paper is the second in a projected tetralogy on empirically oriented political theory, and it is based on The Political System, which is the most important work in the history of political theory.
Journal ArticleDOI
Consensus and Ideology in American Politics
TL;DR: The belief that consensus is a prerequisite of democracy has, since deTocqueville, so often been taken for granted that it is refreshing to find the notion now being challenged as mentioned in this paper.