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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) 1 11/23/15 • 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 2 11/23/15 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? 3 11/23/15 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 4