Download week_9_2015_PO political socialization.pptx

11/23/15
•  Announcements
▫  First draft of your seminar paper is due next week
–  Make sure you follow the required structure as you write
the paper
•  The plan for today
▫  How do citizens acquire their political attitudes?
–  Political socialization
–  Political socialization and attitudes towards the EU
–  Discussion
Political socialization
• = the process by which people acquire
relatively enduring orientations toward
politics in general and towards their
own particular political systems.
• Sources of political socialization?
▫  Socialization agents
– Family, schools, peers, news media
Childhood socialization
•  What do young children tend to think about
politics?
▫  Benevolent leader imagery = typical among young
children; having a positive attitude towards
political leaders (or the political offices)
▫  Malevolent leader imagery – among children from
disadvantaged regions
Parental influence
•  How did researchers study parental influence on
children’s political attitudes?
•  What did they find?
▫  Party identification – most likely to be shared
between parents and children
▫  Political trust (trust in the political regime)
– low congruence between parents and children
(children were more trusting)
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•  Do children adopt more/less of parents'
attitudes if political matters are discussed often
in the family?
•  Do children adopt more/less of parents'
attitudes if parents' attitudes are stable?
▫  Hint: Check Figure 2.1 in Clawson and Oxley
Work in groups of 4-5
Do pre-adult attitudes persist into
adulthood?
•  Attitudes are most likely to change in early
adulthood (18-26 years of age)
•  Do you think support for the European Union is
transmitted between generations (from parents
to their children)?
•  Why? Why not?
▫  Impressionable years
▫  See Figure 2-2 from Clawson and Oxley.
•  After 26 years of age, attitudes tend to be more
stable.
▫  Life cycle effect
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What does it mean attitudes are
related to age?
•  Life cycle effect
▫  Attitudes change as the individual ages
▫  Examples: As an individual gets older, he/she has less
trust in the political system.; As the individual gets
older, he/she has more right-wing ideology.
•  Cohort (generational) effect
▫  Different context during early life political
socialization à lasting effect on the entire generation
–  Generations differ from each other
–  Examples: Pre-1960s generations put more
emphasis on materialist values while post-1960s
generations emphasize post-materialist values.;
More recent generation has more European identity
One more time-related effect…
• Period effect
▫  The effect of the “nature of the times”
–  Affects all generations
–  Examples: All individuals have higher
support for the president in a time of
international crisis (such as the 9/11
attacks).; At a time of an immigration crisis,
all generations become more concerned
about immigration.
Work in groups of 4-5
• Answer the following questions about the
two articles you read (Lutz et al. 2006;
Down and Wilson 2013)
▫  What is the authors’ argument?
▫  What do the articles predict about support
for the EU in the future?
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Fresh news from recent research…
• Does growing up in the the European
Union result in more affective support for
the EU?
▫  (versus growing up in a country that was
not part of European integration)
▫  Not really. Individuals can develop affective
support for the EU equally well if the grew
up outside the integrating Europe.
•  Assumption
•  = “to think that something is true, although you
do not have definite proof” (ldoceonline.com)
•  = presuppose = “to depend on something that is
believed to exist or to be true” (ldoceonline.com)
•  something we take as true and then we build our
argument on this assumption (assuming that
this is true)
•  Usually no evidence is provided for assumptions
•  Often assumptions are not listed by the authors
(you will need to think about them yourself)
Feedback on the paper outline
•  Argument vs. assumption
•  Argument
▫  = the answer to the research question, takes the
make points of the empirical findings and relates
them to the broader topic.
▫  Based on the empirical data presented in the
article
▫  Usually begins with something like “we argue
that...; we find that…; this paper shows that…”
▫  Usually about a causal relationship (this
independent variable has this effect on the
dependent variable)
Assumptions - examples
•  Collected data on attitudes are meaningful (they
are not nonattitudes)
•  Explanations based on self-interest: Assume that
people are able to realize what is in their interest
•  Observational studies: correlation means
causation
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