Political Socialization

Political socialization is the conscious and unconscious transmission of political culture and values from one generation to another. It is the process by which people learn political information, organize political knowledge, and develop political values. Socialization is not a onetime event; it occurs continuously. The transmission of knowledge as a part of political socialization is a means of teaching one generation the lessons of its predecessors, ideally leading to social stability and better decision-making.

Research demonstrates that learning during childhood and adolescence affects adult political behavior;24 we must therefore examine very carefully the process by which people learn about politics. Factors that influence the acquisition of political facts and the formation of values are called agents of political socialization. Let’s examine six such agents: family, school, peers and community, religion, the media, and events.

Family

Children learn a wide range of social, moral, religious, economic, and political values from their families, and what they learn can dramatically shape their opinions. When parents are interested in politics, they tend to influence their children to become more politically interested and informed, because children often try to copy the behavior of loved ones.25 For this reason, families are a very important agent of socialization, serving as an intermediary between children and society.

Observing how parents react to different situations can affect values that are learned and beliefs that are developed. For example, how parents react to the police can set the stage for how children will view authority. Parents’ views of poverty can affect the attitudes of their children about welfare and social services. Parents are often most influential in transmitting party identification to their children, especially when both parents are of the same political party. If children do not adopt their parents’ political party, they are more likely to define themselves as independents than to align with the opposite party.26

Researchers have shown that parents are especially influential in teaching gender roles and racial attitudes. Children who are raised by mothers who work outside the home for wages, for example, tend to have more progressive views of gender. Girls who are encouraged by a parent to be more assertive tend to be more independent and to have more independent careers.27 Prejudiced parents are more likely to have prejudiced children. Children learn bigotry directly (from parental attitudes and comments) and indirectly (from watching parental interactions with others). Once children are exposed to different factors in adolescence, however, the relationship between parental intolerance and children’s bigotry diminishes.28 Parental influence wanes when children mature and other factors increase in importance.

Recent research concerning the influence of the family on political values has been mixed, finding that the actual levels of influence depend on a number of factors. Families with strong relationships and strong mutual ties tend to be the most likely to transmit values. As the nature of the family changes, we will need to continue examining its influence in shaping the development of children’s values. Children today are more likely to be home alone and less likely to spend time with their parents, for example, and the number of families eating together has steadily declined. Moreover, the number of children living in single-parent homes has increased. In 1970, for example, 50 percent of all households were married couples with children; today that number has declined to only 20 percent. In 2013, 20.53 million children under 18 lived with a single parent (up from 5.83 million in 1970).29 It’s not hard to see that these changes in family structure and interaction may affect the role families will play in influencing children in the future.

School

Schools teach political knowledge, the value of political participation, and the acceptance of democratic principles. Their effectiveness in doing so, however, is debated. Schools seem to be more effective in transmitting basic political knowledge than in creating politically engaged citizens.

Elementary schools introduce children to authority figures outside the family, such as the teacher, the principal, and police officers, while also teaching about the hierarchical nature of power. In doing so, the schools prepare children to accept social order, to follow rules, and to learn the importance of obedience. Children learn that good citizens obey the laws (just as good children obey the rules of the schools and of their parents). School elections for student council and mock presidential elections teach students important democratic principles and procedures, such as the notion of campaigning, voting, and majority rule. Most children emerge from elementary school with a strong sense of nationalism and an idealized notion of American government, thus building a general sense of goodwill for the political system that lays the foundation for future learning.30 As they mature, children start to see their place in the political community and gain a sense of civic responsibility.

High schools continue building “good citizens” through activities and curriculum. Field trips to the state legislature and classes with explicit political content can result in a greater awareness of the political process and the people involved in it. The school curriculum teaches political facts, while the school atmosphere can affect political values. Students with positive experiences in school, who develop trust in school leaders, faith in the system, and a sense of worthiness are more likely to show higher levels of support for the national political system. Students who feel they are treated fairly by school officials tend to have more trust in officials and feel less alienated from their government.31 Civics classes in high school are a potentially good mechanism for encouraging student engagement in politics. Researchers have found that the simple existence of such classes is not enough to produce civically engaged students; the dynamic of the class is also important. Civics classes that are taught by people who generally like the subject matter and who themselves are politically engaged are far more successful in positively socializing students. On the whole, however, high school seniors are not very well-informed about politics, are not very interested in politics, and have only moderate levels of support for democratic practices.32

Research consistently demonstrates that a college education has a liberalizing effect concerning noneconomic issues. Adults with college experience tend to be more liberal on social issues than adults with less education. Several explanations have been put forward to account for this phenomenon. College tends to make individuals aware of differences between people and allows them to see the complexity of public policy issues. In classes such as the one you are now in, students are exposed to controversies in our society and learn that the issues are far more complicated than previously thought. Moreover, they learn that intelligent people can disagree. Therefore, they tend to be more supportive of changing opinions and less supportive of the status quo. College students often meet a wider range of people than they had contact with in high school, giving them evidence to reject some social stereotypes and prejudices and to accept more diversity. Also, college faculty members are significantly more liberal than their students—and more liberal than most people in society. Notwithstanding individual differences among faculty, those in the liberal arts and the sciences tend to be the most liberal.33 This disparity leads some conservatives to hypothesize that liberal college faculty indoctrinate students, causing them to become more liberal. Whatever the explanation, people with a college education are generally more liberal on social issues than those who haven not been to college.

Peers and Community

Community and peers are also agents of political socialization. Your community consists of the people, of all ages, with whom you come in contact through work, school, or your neighborhood. Peers are friends, classmates, and coworkers who tend to be around the same age as you and who live in your community. Peer influence tends to be weaker than that of school and family, but our companions do affect us. Differences of opinions and preferences between generations are likely due to peer influence (especially regarding tastes in music, entertainment, clothing, hairstyle, and speech). Peers generally serve to reinforce one another, as people tend to socialize with those like themselves. Research shows that in heterogeneous communities, political participation tends to be higher, with more hotly contested and more competitive elections and more political debate, than in homogeneous environments. People are more likely to participate and pay attention to politics if they believe their vote counts, as is the case when there are a variety of views or disagreements and the election is closely contested.34

Politically diverse environments are also more likely to provide interesting stimuli and often result in a greater sense that one can have an effect on government.35 Minorities living in racially diverse environments tend to have higher political efficacy than minorities living in segregated environments. Researchers found that African Americans living in predominantly black communities generally do not experience political socialization in a manner that encourages political participation and civic engagement.36 Racial segregation tends to develop a sense of isolation and disinterest in the political system. Areas with high voter turnout, with politically engaged adult role models, and with racial diversity appear to be the best environments to raise politically aware and knowledgeable children who have a sense that their voice can count.

Religion

Religions and religious leaders are important instructors, particularly with respect to issues of morality, self-sacrifice, and altruism, and they are important factors in the development of personal identity. Individuals raised in religious households tend to be socialized to contribute to society and to get involved in their communities.37 Conservative denominations and religions (such as Southern Baptist, traditionalist Catholics, and evangelicals) tend to impart more conservative attitudes (especially regarding abortion and other issues involving personal morality and sexuality) than more liberal churches do.38 As we saw in Table 10.1, different religious faiths have different opinions on capital punishment (as they do of other social issues). Those raised in religiously diverse communities are more likely to be engaged in politics and have higher levels of political participation.39 Religion can act as a reinforcing mechanism of community and family values on a wide array of moral and political issues.

The Media

The media are an important agent of political socialization, with varied effects on public opinion. Many authorities believe that the effect of the media on political values and opinions has increased in the past several decades. Today, American children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend more than approximately 53 hours using entertainment media per week (averaging out to nearly 2,800 hours per year).40 If we add to that the time spent listening to music, reading magazines, and watching movies and music videos, it becomes obvious that entertainment may have a big role in influencing values.

Entertainment media often present behavior at odds with what is approved in the family, schools, and places of worship. Promiscuous sex, drug use, and materialism are common in contemporary programming, with little attention paid to potential consequences. By the time a typical child reaches 18, he or she will have seen 150,000 violent acts on television.41 What can result is a competition for influence between media, parents, schools, and religion. Many analysts worry that this focus on negativity can adversely affect political efficacy and trust in government.42

However, recent research demonstrates that people do learn valid political information from the media, although great variation exists. A 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 40 percent of the American public could correctly identify the majority party in Congress.43 However, differences existed in knowledge levels depending upon the source of media regularly consumed. Regular consumers of the New Yorker and Atlantic, NPR (national public radio), and Hardball were the best informed, while audiences of religious radio programs, the Weather Channel, CBS News, Access Hollywood, and the National Enquirer had the lowest levels of political knowledge. Interestingly, differences were also found in levels of political knowledge among audiences of late-night television programs. The best informed were fans of The Colbert Report, followed by fans of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, with the least politically knowledgeable audiences favoring Letterman and Leno. All of these scores are above the national average, although it should be noted that viewers of the Colbert Report and Daily Show are more educated and more affluent than most, explaining some of the variation.44

Events

No event of recent decades has had a more dramatic impact on Americans than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In response to the attacks, the United States embarked upon two, initially popular though increasingly contentious, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the short term, these events altered public opinion in two ways. First, the public has become more aware of the danger of terrorism. Before the terrorist attacks, many Americans did not believe that our country was vulnerable to terrorist threats. Americans often viewed terrorism as a problem that occurred in other countries (with the clear exception of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995). Following the 9/11 attacks, the number of Americans who expressed confidence that our government could keep us safe declined significantly. The second observed short-term change was a surge in patriotism and a sense of uniting in battle, especially in the years immediately following the attacks. As time has passed, the urgency of terrorism has diminished, as has the popularity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a general sense of fear remains higher than before the attacks.

Research shows that important events can affect the socialization process, because significant events focus national attention. By examining other events in our nation’s past that were of great political importance—the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the Watergate scandal are all examples—we can see how shocking events can alter politics.