political socialization reflective essay

6.1 Political Socialization: The Ways People Become Political

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define political socialization.
• Describe the main influences on a person’s political socialization.
• Analyze the ways social media has affected political socialization.
• Discuss the factors that determine which influences will have the greatest impact on a person’s political socialization.

Do you consider yourself to have a political identity? Do you belong to or identify with a political party? Do you have a political ideology, such as conservative, libertarian, liberal, or populist? Are you apolitical (indifferent to politics), or are you deeply engaged in political action? Whatever your answers are, there is a chance—but a rather small one—that you deliberately and thoughtfully made these choices at a single moment by analytically comparing the various alternatives. It’s more likely that your choices gradually emerged over time through a complex combination of environmental and social influences interacting with your own personal biological and psychological makeup.

It is not entirely clear how Greta Thunberg became a climate change activist, for example, although her father Svante was named after his grandfather, a Nobel Prize–winning scientist who identified the link between increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and higher global temperatures. 5 She grew up in Sweden, a country with a strong ethic of environmentalism (by some measures, it is ranked as the most environmentally friendly country in the world). 6 She reports learning about climate change by age eight and credits the American student activists who protested gun laws after the Parkland, Florida, school shootings with inspiring her to act. 7

The gradual process of developing values and beliefs, of people becoming who they are as adults, is socialization , and the slow development of who a person becomes as a political being is political socialization . 8 Through political socialization, people develop their political ideology in the broadest sense. This includes not only their values and attitudes regarding the role of citizens and the government, but also regarding issues such as social justice or climate change. Socialization also influences whether a person is likely to have any interest in politics at all.

Political socialization is neither premeditated nor preordained, although there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that there are genetic links to political predispositions. 9 As an infant, you did not choose who you would become as an adult. As you grew, you were subject to a wide variety of forces that shaped your personality. Some of these forces were present in your physical environment, such as your home (Was there lead paint on the walls?), your neighborhood (Was it safe?), 10 and your school (Was it a place you looked forward to going to?). 11 As your physical environment shapes your learning, it also influences your views and attitudes, even if you are unaware of these influences.

The line from your social and physical environment to your political personality may be indirect. If you grew up in a heavily policed neighborhood, attended a deteriorating school, and lacked safe drinking water, your attitudes about government are likely to differ from an otherwise identical individual who lived in a comfortable home with safe drinking water and attended a well-resourced school in an affluent neighborhood. Humans are complicated, and it would be unwise to conclude that all those growing up in privilege are identically socialized or that those raised lacking such privilege all have the same political personalities. Your social and physical environments do not determine your political personality, but they can have an important influence.

The Role of the Family

The family is usually considered the most important influence on both a person’s overall socialization and their political socialization . Families profoundly affect people’s views about religion, work, and education. 12 People gradually develop these preferences, attitudes, and behaviors as they grow from infants to adolescents to adults. The impact families have on people’s lives does not vanish when they become adults. It is likely to persist over their lifetimes. The influence need not always flow from the parents to the child. Greta Thunberg ’s activism led her parents to reconsider their own environmental attitudes, and research suggests that children often affect their parents’ views on the environment. 13

Your family is likely to exert a substantial influence on your political views. 14 In some political settings in which a child’s identity is defined by religion, ethnicity, and place, their political views may seem almost predetermined. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, the three main groups tend to be divided by ethnicity and religion, which largely define their political affiliations. Ethnic Bosniaks tend to be Muslim, Croats tend to be Roman Catholic, and Serbs are mainly Orthodox Christians. These differing ethnic and religious groups largely determine individuals’ political affiliations: there is little political intermingling across ethnic and religious lines. 15

In most places around the world, if parents raise their children in a particular religious faith, those children are more likely than not to adopt that faith as they become adults (or, if the children are raised in no faith, they are less likely to have religious connections as adults). 16 The same is true for almost any other important facet of life: social attitudes, beliefs about the role of the family, and yes, political beliefs. This is not to say that beliefs are automatically transmitted: young people have agency and may accept, reject, or simply question what their parents believe. 17

THE CHANGING POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

The changing family.

Families play a key role in political socialization, and family structure is evolving in different ways around the world. One fundamental change is family size; fertility rates have dropped in virtually every country in the past century.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides an extreme example. When the PRC was established in 1949, the government encouraged families to have children to create additional workers, and by the 1960s the typical Chinese family had six children. At that point political leaders became worried about rapid population growth, and so in 1980 they instituted a one-child policy strictly enforced through a combination of benefits and often-harsh penalties. The policy dramatically slowed population growth, and it substantially increased both the age of and the percentage of males in the population. Under this policy, a cultural preference for male children led to sex-selective abortions and female infanticide. Believing that they had gone too far, the Chinese government lifted the one-child policy in 2016. 18

What It Was Like to Grow Up under China’s One-Child Policy

In this TED talk, Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang describes her experiences as a child growing up under China’s one-child policy and as an adult making a documentary about people’s experiences under the policy.

Family structure involves not only how many children are in a family, but where they live when they effectively become adults. As of 2016, a higher percentage (52 percent) of 18-to-29-year-olds in the United States were living with their parents than at any time since 1900. 19 Among wealthy countries, the percentage of 15-to-29 year-olds living with their parents varied from about 80 percent in Italy to 30 percent in Canada. 20

Given what we already know about how family members can influence each other’s political attitudes and beliefs, it will be interesting to see how these changing family structures and living conditions impact political socialization .

Your parents’ political leanings and your broader family environment affect your political views. For example, who is expected to take responsibility for caring for parents as they age varies from country to country. In China, caring for one’s parents is a sacred duty; in Norway, it is more often seen as an obligation of the government. Germans and Italians are more than twice as likely as Americans to say that the government, rather than the family, has the main responsibility for caring for the elderly. 21

Note that these statements, like other generalizations, are not true for every person in every circumstance everywhere. Some children of devout worshippers become atheists, some people raised as capitalists become communists, and some of the children of political, social, and cultural liberals become ardent conservatives.

When making these generalizations, this chapter uses words like “generally” or “tend” to suggest that the statements are accurate for the bulk of the group or characteristic being discussed. For example, in the United States, about 7 out of 10 teenagers have political ideologies and partisan affiliations similar to their parents: liberal teens tend to have liberal parents, and conservative youth generally have conservative parents. Still, about one-third of US teenagers adopt different political ideologies from those they were raised with. 22

Bernie Sanders Says His Childhood Shaped His Political Views

In a 60 Minutes interview, Senator Bernie Sanders describes how his childhood experiences helped shape his political views.

The identities of a young person’s parent(s) affect that person’s political socialization . If parental engagement in politics is high and party identification is strong, children are more likely to adopt those attitudes and behaviors than if parental political engagement is low and their partisanship indifferent. 23 Family structure—whether a child is living with two parents or a single parent, and whether parents are married, divorced, or cohabitating, for example—raises complex issues for political socialization that are not well understood. 24 Moreover, the impact of the family on socialization is not limited to children. Family dynamics also impact the political socialization of adults. 25

Your living situation growing up largely determines what influences you will encounter as you mature. Your school can influence your political socialization, as different schools have differing teaching philosophies, student bodies, and political activities. Likewise, your place of worship may have a profound influence on who you become. When you are young, your parents or guardians probably choose your school and religion; however, as people grow older, many of them spend less time with their parents or guardians and more time with their peers, including friends at school, work, community, and play. You may change your language, clothing, and interests to fit in with those in your group. And as you grow older, you are increasingly able to make your own decisions.

It is less clear whether your peers will have a lasting impact on your political socialization. Like many things when you are growing up, your choice of peers is not entirely in your control. Most children don't pick where they live and where they attend primary school, and those two factors play a big part in determining the pool of people from which individuals can choose friends. In short, your parents’ life circumstances and choices shape who your peers are likely to be. Still, context is important. Before the advent of social media, parental decisions would almost entirely determine your pool of peers. Now, given internet access, young people can find their peer groups virtually anywhere.

Increasingly, young people rely on social media to learn about the world and connect with others. Political scientists are still trying to decipher what this means for political socialization. In the past, a young person’s peers tended to be local: other members of the clan, the village, or the church. Today, a young person’s peers can be almost anywhere in the world, assuming they understand the same language, and thus young people (and adults) can more easily choose their peers based on common interests and beliefs than they could in the past. To the extent that young people, and indeed all individuals, can choose their social networks rather than being placed in them by virtue of their location, it is more likely that peer networks will reinforce existing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors rather than change them. The ability of individuals to choose their social networks leads to “echo chambers,” which Chapter 12: The Media will examine further.

Other Affiliations

Your family and peers greatly influence your political opinions, attitudes, values, and behaviors, but there are other important influences. How much these other influences affect a person’s political socialization depends, in part, on how important they are to the person’s identity and daily life.

What Does Being Indigenous Mean?

In this clip, Indigenous people in Canada explain what it means to them to be Indigenous.

Consider ethnicity. The dominant ethnic group within a country—the White British within the United Kingdom, for example—may not perceive their ethnicity as having much of an influence on their political socialization, but its impact is likely to be profound. Members of ethnic majorities may be more likely to assume that politics and government should favor their interests as a matter of course because they may (naively) believe that what is good for them is good for everyone. Ethnic minorities, in contrast, may be socialized to feel the sting of discrimination and to view the government as no friend. One’s ethnic identity is likely to be more salient if that identity signifies one as an outsider. 26

If you were raised in a devout family, that family’s religion may have an important influence on your political socialization. 27 In the United States, for example, those individuals identifying as evangelicals are much more likely than the rest of the population to favor socially conservative public policies such as prohibiting same sex marriage or curtailing abortion rights, and they are much more likely to support the Republican Party. At the opposite end of the spectrum, those raised as atheists are more likely to believe that governmental policy should not be based on religious principles. 28

Gender roles and gender identification can influence an individual’s political socialization. Socialization into “traditional” gender roles may discourage women from developing interest or participating in politics, while in countries with women in leadership positions, young women may be socialized to become more politically aware and active. 29 The impact of gender identification and sexual orientation on political socialization is not well understood, but it seems likely that the greater the importance a person places on these attributes and the more intense the formative experiences they have regarding these attributes, the greater the influence these attributes will have on that person’s political socialization. 30

Even though young people spend a lot of time in school, the impact of schooling on political socialization appears to be modest. Why? The schools children attend often reflect the choices and environment of their parents, so they have little independent influence on socialization. For example, if you come from a religious home and your family has the means to do so, your parents might choose to send you to religious school; this reinforces the influence of the family’s religion on socialization. More broadly, the schools young people attend are likely to reflect the conditions and values that already exist in their environment.

People are socialized as individuals, and they are socialized in groups, including their family, peers, and others in their social environments. As people are socialized, they become part of larger groupings of individuals with common characteristics. The next sections discuss these larger groupings.

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• Authors: Mark Carl Rom, Masaki Hidaka, Rachel Bzostek Walker
• Publisher/website: OpenStax
• Book title: Introduction to Political Science
• Publication date: May 18, 2022
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-political-science/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-political-science/pages/6-1-political-socialization-the-ways-people-become-political

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10.2: Political Socialization and Public Opinion

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• Page ID 135875

• Dino Bozonelos, Julia Wendt, Charlotte Lee, Jessica Scarffe, Masahiro Omae, Josh Franco, Byran Martin, & Stefan Veldhuis
• Victor Valley College, Berkeley City College, Allan Hancock College, San Diego City College, Cuyamaca College, Houston Community College, and Long Beach City College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Remember the definition of political socialization
• Understand how political socialization and public opinion interact
• Analyze how political socialization is discussed in contemporary comparative public opinion research

Public Opinion

When we say public opinion we are collectively referring to the views and opinions of the public at large. In the context of political science, we focus on inherent political questions about views regarding elected officials or public figures, political institutions, policy preferences, or the nature of democracy itself. Some examples include, but of course are not limited to, ‘whether or not you approve of the U.S. President’s job approval’, ‘support for nationwide mask or vaccine mandates’, ‘support for a border wall’, or ‘beliefs in the legitimacy of one home country’s elections’. But the public can have mass opinions on different sorts of subjects, and it does not have to be restricted to politics, such as sports. But over the past few years, even with something like sports, we have seen the politicization of things that used to not be political. Knowing the public’s opinion, however, is valuable knowledge and something elected officials need and should take into account when determining what issues to focus on, and how to go about solving problems. In addition, if public officials seeking re-election continually ignore his or her constituents’, then there is the possibility for a negative backlash or electoral defeat in their next election. So, public officials need to know what their constituency thinks of them and the issues themselves if they want to serve their constituencies’ wills and have a better shot at winning re-election (Herrick, 2013). But, also knowing the public’s view is valuable knowledge for political scientists or other types of academic scholars. There are entire fields within political science that primarily use public opinion as a data source, and study the impact(s) public opinion has on the polity. Finally, knowing the public’s opinion allows the media to inform us regarding the views of others and gives us the ability to self-evaluate our own views relative to our own community.

Where do our opinions come from?

Where do our opinions come from? Most people derive their opinions (and in this case political opinions) from their beliefs and attitudes, which form in early childhood (Key, 1966). Beliefs are our core views and values that guide us in how we make decisions or interpret the world. For example, one may believe in a higher power or God. Having that belief in God will inform them on what they observe in the world and how to interpret it. Someone may have a strong belief in equality. Having that belief in equality will help them interpret if specific policy is having its desired outcome. Or perhaps we may collectively have a belief that American football is the greatest sport ever invented, especially if we grew up watching Big 12 or SEC football.

Attitudes also impact our opinions. Attitudes are made up of our personal beliefs and our life experiences. For example, someone who has never had a good experience at the DMV, may develop a bad attitude regarding government employees or civil servants. Or, someone who has had negative experiences with the police may have a suspicious attitude regarding law enforcement. Conversely, someone who has had good experience with the police may have a positive attitude or trust law enforcement. As our beliefs and attitudes take shape during childhood development, we are also being socialized, that is, learning how to respond to the world around us, either in thought or action.

Political Socialization

We are socialized into believing all sorts of things and having a variety of different views, and many if not most of these views stay with us throughout our lives (Zaller 1992). Some things we are taught, and other things we learn from our experiences and those around us. As defined in Chapter Six, political socialization is the process in which our political beliefs are formed over time. For example, my favorite college athletic team growing up was (and still is) the University of Mississippi. But I was living in a city approximately an hour east of Los Angeles, CA. So why would a Southern Californian kid pull for a college program 2000 miles away when there are multiple local colleges with prestigious (at least according to their fan basis’) athletic programs to pull for?

It's because my father raised me to pull for Ole Miss. So, one could say I was taught to be an Ole Miss fan by my father. Yet, all my favorite professional teams are from Southern California. So, in terms of professional sports preferences it appears the community outside my family had a greater influence. Perhaps through my experiences as a resident sport fan (going to games, etc.) gravitated me towards pulling for the hometown teams in this instance. So, the same can be said about the nature of our political beliefs. Some beliefs we are taught, and some are based on our life experiences.

There are different agents to socialization , that is, different factors that have helped mold who we are today, and our political views. Since our socialization begins in early childhood, for most individuals, family will be the dominant influence (Davies 1965). Parents and siblings are our largest sources of information throughout early childhood and are still quite dominant well into our early adulthood. For example, children who grow up in households where voting is expected would likely take a greater interest in voting themselves. If one’s parents are politically active in a particular political party that child would also be exposed to the same information sources in which his or her parents base their views; and if one looks upon their parents or siblings as a trusted authority figure, they will likely share, at least at an early age, and hold many of the same beliefs their family has.

Outside the family, another impactful agent is education (Mayer 2011). This can begin at pre-school and evolve well into college. Education is an impactful agent because of both what was learned in an academic environment (i.e., the classroom), but also the exposure to other classmates, friends, and fellow students. If someone grows up in a predominately Evangelical Christian community, they may not meet someone who is Muslim or of a different faith until they go to school. Or, if someone lives in a community that is overwhelmingly white, they may not encounter racial or ethnic diversity until they go to school. These new experiences with others, and the education they receive, can help inform someone’s politics.

Someone’s faith or religion is another impactful agent (Lockerbie 2013). This may not necessarily be the faith someone was baptized in, however, but rather their religiosity, or how often they attend church. After all, if someone is lapsed in their faith or left their faith due to the doctrine, they may not be impacted as nearly as much by that religion. With this said, the faith I was baptized in when I was eight years old (although I haven’t attended in over two decades) was a big part of my upbringing, and I find myself still adhering to some of the principles of that faith, but not nearly to the extent I would if I still attended service regularly. If someone attends church regularly, they are more likely to agree with what’s said from the bully pulpit or that church’s doctrine, and that faith will more actively inform their political points of view.

There are other, and in some cases less impactful, agents of socialization that could also help shape our views. One’s race, gender, or age will no doubt play a role in someone’s political socialization. Anyone who lived through the terrorist attacks on 9/11 still remembers how watching those events influenced their views (Hall and Ross 2015); so, monumental historical events can shape someone’s world outlook. Someone’s career choice, whether or not they served in the military, as well as where someone currently lives or grew up can also play a role. Finally, the media and opinion makers also play a distinct role in shaping our political opinions. By choosing to focus on certain issues, the media can help us define what’s important (Cook et al., 1983), in addition to other forms of media bias giving us a certain perspective of the world. Also, if there are opinion makers’ who people listen to or watch regularly, and trust their analysis, they may hold off on forming an opinion about a political issue until they have heard that commentators take on the subject.

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Political Socialization and the Making of Citizens

Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Nottingham

Senior Lecturer in Politics (Quantitative Methods) Department of Political Science and International Relations University of London

• Published: 06 February 2017
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Political socialization describes the process by which citizens crystalize political identities, values and behavior that remain relatively persistent throughout later life. This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the scholarly debate on political socialization, posing a number of questions that arise in the study of political socialization and the making of citizens. First, what is it about early life experiences that makes them matter for political attitudes, political engagement, and political behavior? Second, what age is crucial in the development of citizens’ political outlook? Third, who and what influences political orientations and behavior in early life, and how are cohorts colored by the nature of time when they come of age? Fourth, how do political preferences and behavior develop after the impressionable years? The chapter further provides an outlook of the challenges and opportunities for the field of political socialization.

Introduction

Observing the regularity and continuity of individuals’ patterns of political behavior over time, already in the 1950s scholars were drawing attention to the need to study processes of early political socialization. Hyman (1959 , 25) defined political socialization as an individual’s “learning of social patterns corresponding to his societal position as mediated through various agencies of society.” It is a process of largely informal learning that almost everyone experiences throughout life as a consequence of interactions with parents, family, friends, neighbors, peers, colleagues, and so forth. Merelman (1986 , 279; emphasis added) further describes political socialization as “the process by which people acquire relatively enduring orientations toward politics in general and toward their own political system.”

Early life experiences are generally considered to form the basis for political attitudes (e.g., political values and identity), political engagement (e.g., political interest and political efficacy), and ultimately political behaviors (e.g., conventional and unconventional forms of political participation). Young citizens, it is believed, are not yet set in their political ways and are subsequently more easily influenced by external factors. Yet today there is no agreement on how enduring these early socialization experiences are. Some argue for lifelong plasticity, based on the idea that citizens update their preferences and behavior as they go through the life span and experience important life events ( Alwin and Krosnick 1991 ). Others argue that basic orientations acquired early in life structure later political orientations and beliefs, and that these orientations and beliefs tend to be enduring and persistent ( Easton and Dennis 1969 ).

This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the scholarly debate on political socialization, posing a number of questions that arise in the study of political socialization and the making of citizens. First, what is it about early life experiences that makes them matter for political attitudes, political engagement, and political behavior? Second, what age is crucial in the development of citizens’ political outlook? Third, who and what influences political orientations and behavior in early life, and how are cohorts colored by the nature of time when they come of age? Fourth, how do political preferences and behavior develop after the impressionable years?

The first section of this chapter discusses the development of the field of political socialization and its quest for the origin and development of political preferences and behaviors. We address the impressionable years and the mechanisms behind the socialization approach. Then we discuss the influence of socializing agents. An important factor that has often been overlooked in the literature is how the political, economic, and social contexts in which people grow up color the political views of entire generations, leading to potential societal changes. In connection to this we also discuss the idea of generational change. The third section describes the long-term dynamics of socialization through an overview of the age, period, and cohort (APC) approach. In the final section we provide an overview of the theoretical and methodological challenges and opportunities for the study of political socialization.

Political Socialization: History and Key Concepts

Early empirical socialization studies mainly focused on political orientations and behaviors of young children, as it was believed that political attitudes were acquired very early in life (see, e.g., Easton and Dennis 1969 ). This early research was driven by two assumptions. First, it was assumed that what is learned earliest in life is most important, as early experiences serve as a value basis for future attitudes and behaviors ( Niemi and Hepburn 1995 ). Second, it was presumed that attitudes and behaviors acquired prior to adulthood remained unchanged in later life. A large volume of research on the formation of political attitudes and behavior assessed these two assumptions (cf. Dennis and McCrone 1970 ; Jennings and Niemi 1974 ; Sears and Valentino 1997 ), and the classical example of an enduring attitude is the concept of party identification, studied in detail in the seminal work The American Voter by Campbell et al. (1960) .

However, later research showed that the persistence of preferences and behaviors developed in early life had been overestimated ( Searing, Wright, and Rabinowitz 1976 ), and it became evident that political ideas developed during childhood were revised later in life ( Searing, Schwartz, and Lind, 1973 ). In fact, a decade later Kinder and Sears (1985 , 724) concluded that a more plausible view of the development of political preferences and behavior is one that combines the impressionable years and persistence hypotheses with the possibility of small but still noticeable levels of change in later life. The focus of scientific discussion at this point shifted from early political socialization to more in-depth studies of aging. Especially Marsh’s (1971) critique of the early studies of political socialization changed the understanding of “what, when and how people learn political behaviour and attitudes” ( Hepburn 1995 , 5). Marsh challenged in particular the assumption that “adult opinions are in a large part the end product of political socialisation” (1971, 455). Such persistence, Marsh concluded, applies only to important personality variables, whereas the enduring nature of political attitudes remains uncertain.

Research accordingly shifted focus from attitude stability to the conceptualization of socialization as an individual political development and a process of learning. Party identification is a central concept in the study of political science and served as the main battlefield for the advocates of different views. Party identification was originally conceptualized as an identity, that is, something that could be developed without the cognitive skills to fully understand the political world. Later scholars proposed to think of partisanship less as an identity—being stable over the life cycle—and more of an attitude that arises as a function of informed reactions to the performance of governments and opposition parties in a number of policy areas, most notably the economy (cf. Ordeshook 1976 ; Fiorina 1981 ; Page and Jones 1979 ; Franklin and Jackson 1983 ; MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson 1989 ). Because governments and economic good times are never permanent, an individual’s affiliation with a political party is always subject to “rational updating.” Hence this research tries to uncover how the nature of the current time affects the direction and strength of certain political attitudes such as partisanship.

The focus on performance-based evaluations of government and their impact on party identification diminished the importance of early political socialization. This explains why political socialization disappeared from the academic agenda for a period of time between the 1970s and 1990s, before re-emerging as important and salient in the early 2000s.

The Impressionable Years: When and What

The general consensus after decades of research thus appears to be that political learning is a lifelong process, starting at an early age ( Easton and Dennis 1969 ; Jennings and Niemi 1981 ; van Deth et al. 2007 ). The “impressionable or formative years” between childhood and adulthood are generally believed to be a crucial period during which citizens form the basis of political attitudes and behaviors (see, e.g., Jennings 1979 ; Strate et al. 1989 ; Highton and Wolfinger 2001 ; Kinder 2006 ). Young citizens have not yet developed political habits and are therefore more easily influenced by external factors ( Alwin and Krosnick 1991 ; Flanagan and Sherod 1998 ; Sears and Levy 2003 ). Personal, social, cultural, political, and historical changes affect young citizens disproportionately, thus creating generational differences in patterns of political attitudes and behavior.

The crucial impressionable years are traditionally between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five ( Jennings and Niemi 1981 ). For example, when examining macro-partisan trends among adults, Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson (2002) found that political events had the largest impact at ages eighteen and nineteen. Nonetheless, both a clear definition and operationalization of the impressionable years are lacking, and political learning is certainly not confined to these adolescent and early adulthood years. Moving away from predefining the boundaries of the impressionable years, recent studies have found that children in their first year of primary school, who are not yet literate or numerate, can recognize political problems and issues and already show consistent, structured political orientations ( van Deth, Abendschön, and Vollmar 2011 ). Bartels and Jackman (2014) , in their study of political learning, as expected found evidence for a period of heightened sensitivity to political events during adolescence, but the peak period of sensitivity was found to be between the ages of seven and seventeen. Ghitza and Gelman (n.d.) , following up on the work by Bartels and Jackman, likewise present empirical estimates of the formative years. Based on their estimation, the height of formative experiences is between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, with two peaks: one at fifteen to sixteen years and another at twenty-one to twenty-two years.

Recent research therefore suggests that children may be socialized into politics at a very young age. This implies that the lower age band of the impressionable years should be brought down. At the same time there is also evidence that the period of political learning nowadays is extended. Research by Bhatti and Hansen (2012b) , for example, suggests that turnout drops after the first voting experience at the age of eighteen, and that only around the age of thirty-five do citizens bounce back to their first-time turnout levels. This can be linked to the theoretical expectation that life-cycle events experienced during early adulthood influence the development of political interest and political participation ( Neundorf, Smets, and García Albacete 2013 ). Delays in the transition to adulthood imply that defining the impressionable years too narrowly entails missing out on a number of important life-cycle changes ( Iacovou 2002 ; Council of Europe 2005 ; Smets 2016 ). Boundaries of the impressionable years may, moreover, be context dependent.

How Does Socialization Work?

If political socialization processes start at a young age, what are the mechanisms through which children learn about politics? First, children learn directly or indirectly about social and political issues from various socializing agents. Such agencies can be diverse: family, peers, school, mass media, and even the political context. There is also a mobilizing element to political socialization, as those around us can influence, encourage, or discourage our behavior. We address these two mechanisms in more detail in the next section.

Thinking about the mechanisms of political socialization, let us make an analogy to describe the idea of socialization as forming relatively stable political preferences. Imagine that we each have a finite bookshelf that holds our political values, identities, and behavior, which is empty when we are born. During our childhood and adolescence these shelves are slowly filled with stories that we receive from the various agents of socialization and our own experiences. We learn about the political world and are exposed to (biased) information about political ideas. Each experience, conversation, and piece of information gets stored on our mental bookshelves. But at some point there is no more space on the shelves, and we start to have pretty definite ideas about politics and our own opinions. If asked what we think about political issues or how we should behave politically, we go to our mental shelves and take out the books that contain information and experiences related to this topic. The problem, however, is that as one’s shelf fills up, it is more and more difficult for new information to be considered, as this implies that old books need to be disregarded. New books might pile up somewhere on the floor, but they will not be stored as considerations in our set of beliefs and values. This idea of predispositions that are quite fundamental in a person’s belief system and that come from socialization processes goes back to the work of John Zaller (1992) .

Another viewpoint on political socialization is the idea of habit formation, a mechanism that has mostly been researched in relation to individual level voter turnout, that is, a citizen’s decision to vote or abstain from voting in elections. In the political learning approach to political behavior, it is argued that citizens learn the habit of either voting or nonvoting in the early stages of their adult lives, and that past behavior predicts present behavior ( Green and Shachar 2000 ; Kanazawa 2000 ; Bendor, Diermeier, and Ting 2003 ; Gerber, Green, and Shachar 2003 ; Aldrich, Montgomery, and Wood 2011 ; Dinas 2012 ). Plutzer (2002 , 44) explains the political learning perspective with the example of someone aged forty with a higher than average income. Based on this information we would expect this man or woman to have an above average level of political participation. What if a couple of years later the person loses his or her job and has to take on one that pays an average wage? Thinking of voting as a habit, a change in income is not likely to influence levels of political participation, even though the possibility of disruptions in the habit of voting can never be completely excluded ( Plutzer 2002 ; Strate et al. 1989 ).

The large impact of past turnout on current turnout decisions observed in the literature is explained through various mechanisms (see, e.g., Cutts, Fieldhouse, and John 2009 ; Aldrich, Montgomery, and Wood 2011 ; Dinas 2012 for overviews). First, turnout is caused by a set of factors such as political interest or partisanship that are relatively stable over the life span ( Prior 2010 ; Neundorf, Smets, and García Albacete 2013 ). These factors may therefore influence the starting level of political participation (i.e., whether someone will vote at his or her first opportunity) but not so much the subsequent levels of political participation over the life span ( Plutzer 2002 ). Second, the act of voting is self-reinforcing, as it increases positive attitudes toward voting and alters one’s self-image to the extent that voting contributes to that image. Third, once voters have been to the polls they face lower information barriers and can make use of their hands-on experience and knowledge of the political system during subsequent elections. Despite a fair amount of empirical evidence for the existence of a habitual voting effect, the literature is not yet settled on the cause of repeated behavior. Whether other forms of political behavior are also habitual is also yet to be determined.

Socialization Agents: Family, Schools, and Beyond

The previous section addressed the importance of the impressionable years as well as the concepts of political learning and habit formation. The question we have not yet answered is who and what influences young people’s political perceptions and behaviors during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood years. With political learning already taking place at a very young age, it comes as no surprise that much of the literature has focused on the influence that parents have on their children. Likewise, the influence of education, or more specifically civic education, has received ample attention in the literature. Some newer research also investigates the role of other socialization agents: peers, (conventional and social) media, and even political events. Socializing agents either directly or indirectly teach children about politics but also have a mobilizing function as they influence, encourage, or discourage young people’s political preferences and political action.

Parents as Socialization Agents

Scholars have emphasized the impact of the family as one of the main socialization agents in the transmission of basic political orientations ( Dalton 1980 ; Jennings and Niemi 1968 , 1981; Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers 2009 ). The determinant influence of parental socialization has mostly been stressed in conjunction with the development of party identification ( Taylor, Peplau, and Sears 1994 ; Campbell et al. 1960 ; Jennings and Niemi 1974 ; Kroh and Selb 2009 ), political ideology ( Percheron and Jennings 1981 ), and political participation ( Beck and Jennings 1982 ; Verba, Schlozman, and Burns 2005 ).

Parents are considered to influence the development of their children’s political orientations in at least two ways. First, parents influence their children’s levels of political awareness through the explicit political characteristics of family life ( Jennings and Niemi 1968 ; Beck and Jennings 1982 ). Highly politicized parents may foster positive civic orientations that stimulate engagement in politics ( Beck and Jennings 1982 , 98). Moreover, Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers (2009) offer evidence that successful parent-child transmissions occur more often when the family environment is more politicized, arguing that in this case parents provide consistent signals about where they stand politically. The presence of role models, parents in particular, may lead to imitation and subsequently even adoption of behaviors and attitudes (see, e.g., Kandel and Andrews 1987 and Dryer 1998 for more on imitation and socialization).

The second way in which parents influence their children is through parental socioeconomic status (SES). Parental SES can contribute to political involvement due to a direct effect on children’s SES. Parents with higher SES have children who are more likely to have high levels of education. Children’s levels of education, in turn, influence levels of political interest and knowledge. Parental SES, moreover, can contribute to the development of class-specific political orientations as well as encourage civic attitudes and involvement ( Beck and Jennings 1982 , 96–97; Verba, Schlozman, and Burns 2005 , 97; Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers 2009 , 790).

However, Westholm (1999) shows that parent-child socialization is not just a two-step process whereby children create an image of where parents stand politically and subsequently adapt their own behavior and thinking to this. Instead, the image that children have of their parents’ political views serves as an intervening rather than as a conditioning factor. Moreover, the relationship between children’s own views and the image they have of their parents’ views is reciprocal. Substituting children’s image of their parents’ views for actual parent data obscures some of the socialization mechanisms. Westholm (1999 , 542, 548) thus warns that the use of children’s subjective images of their parents’ political views should be avoided in favor of studies based on multiple sources of parental political preferences (i.e., using both children and parents as sources).

Newer research on the influence of parents on their offspring has challenged the idea that children to a large extent adopt the views of their parents. Dinas (2014) shows that parent-child correspondence in party identification is dependent on parental politicization. Those with politically interested and involved parents are indeed most likely to adopt their parents’ party identification as adolescents but are also more likely to revise their party affiliation in (early) adulthood, because “those who are politically engaged are most likely to be exposed to new political stimuli in early adulthood” ( Dinas, 2014 , 827). Also researching the imperfections of parental transmissions, Wolak (2009) found that both the personality of adolescents and their wider political environment mediated parent-child transmission in party identification. Like Dinas, Wolak (2009 , 581) finds that amore inquisitive adolescents and those who are more attentive to political news tend to have more volatile party preferences and thus are more likely to challenge their parents’ political views.

The Influence of School

Besides parent-child transmission of political attitudes and behaviors, the influence of school on the development of political engagement has been the focus of much research. Education itself is highly correlated with political knowledge, interest, voter turnout, and other forms of political participation. Yet it has been repeatedly suggested that this connection might exist largely because education serves as a proxy for social class or cognitive ability, or that education simply serves as a sorting mechanism that divides the population into higher and lower statuses ( Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry 1996 ; Denny and Doyle 2008 ; Campbell 2009 ). These and similar questions about the effects of education mean, in David Campbell’s words, that “we know relatively little about the civic development of adolescents. Specifically, we have a limited understanding of how schools do, or do not, foster political engagement among their adolescent students” ( Campbell 2009 , 438).

With respect to the influence of civic education, the uncertainty is even greater. For a long time it was argued that civic education and the curriculum more broadly had almost no influence at all on students’ attitudes ( Langton and Jennings 1968 ). That proposition has been under fire for almost two decades ( Niemi and Junn 1998 ; Nie and Hillygus 2001 ). Still, the precise way in which schooling influences students is unclear. One possibility is that civics instruction itself—the classes students take that teach about one’s government and one’s role as a citizen—is the causal agent. Even then, the influence may stem from specific features of the class: whether it consists mostly of lectures, incorporates class discussions, involves students in group projects, and so forth. Another possibility, which has found support from a major cross-national study, is that the climate of the classroom—how free students feel to express their opinions and have them discussed and respected—underlies student attitudes, political engagement, and even political knowledge ( Torney-Purta 2002 ). Community service, which may or may not be a part of formal classroom instruction, is yet another factor that may influence youths’ feelings and actions about civic and political participation ( Finlay, Wray-Lake, and Flanagan 2010 ).

The role of civic education in mobilization and political participation has not only been explored in Western democracies. Based on research in the Dominican Republic and South Africa, Finkel (2002) finds that civic education also mobilizes citizens in developing democracies, but that the impact depends on citizens’ levels of political resources. Civic education and other mobilizing processes are complementary, which implies that civic education alone cannot overcome the unequal distribution of politically relevant resources in developing democracies.

More recent work on civic education has attempted to gauge the relative influence of multiple socializing agents. For example, Neundorf, Niemi, and Smets (2016) study the combined effect of parental socialization and civic education. As discussed previously, the political environment in the parental home has a strong impact on the political development of children. However, many young people do not come from political families and hence are disadvantaged in developing political preferences and being mobilized into politics. Neundorf, Niemi, and Smets (2016) hence investigate whether civic education in school can compensate for missing parental socialization. Their findings are based on panel data and suggest that civics training in schools indeed compensates for inequalities in family socialization with respect to political engagement. This conclusion holds for two very different countries (the United States and Belgium), at very different points in time (the 1960s and the 2000s), and for a varying length of observation (youth to old age and impressionable years only).

Peers and (Social) Media

School is one of the first environments in which children have contact with other people who are not parents, siblings, or other family members. Not only are children mobilized by their peers, they also discuss sociopolitical issues together, share popular culture, and develop (common or opposing) sets of values ( Langton 1967 ; Tedin 1980 ). Peer groups also introduce social norms; moreover, being part of a social network establishes useful democratic and economic principles such as the exchange of goods, services, and information ( Cochran and Brassard 1979 ).

Peer cultures are also transmitted via (social) media. Wattenberg (2008) argues that media nowadays socialize young people in a different way than they did in previous generations. Commercialization of the media has had consequences for both the content and form of all items broadcast. As a consequence, young people are less likely to be exposed to political information and more likely to be exposed to entertainment (see also Prior 2005 ). This in turn has led to a growing lack of interest in politics as well as lower levels of political knowledge among young people.

Of course nowadays citizens spend an increasingly larger portion of their time online. One of the questions that has garnered a lot of scholarly interest is whether such new media forms foster interaction with people with different views or rather tend to be echo chambers in which citizens interact with like-minded people only. Work on the mobilizing effects of new social media shows that these networks tend to be homophilic and that citizens mostly interact with people who have similar ideological preferences and political views ( Barberá et al. 2015 ). These findings open up avenues for new ways of using big data collected through social media websites. For example, Barberá (2015) shows how social network activity—such as the use of Twitter—can be used to estimate citizens’ ideological positions.

Political Events

The political context in which citizens grow up has often been overlooked as a socializing agent. In his contribution on turnout in established democracies and the learning effect of voting, Mark Franklin argues that the way in which young voters react to the character of an election is crucial to this incoming cohort’s future turnout levels (2004, 65). Short-term characteristics of elections influence younger citizens’ turnout decisions but have much less impact on the decisions of older voters, who have already established a habit of voting or abstaining ( Franklin 2004 , 80). Electoral competition is especially important in this respect.

As Smets and Neundorf (2014) demonstrate, high-stakes elections tend to attract more voters than elections in which the outcome is a foregone conclusion. This mobilization effect is strongest for young voters. Cohorts that grew up in a highly politicized context have a higher propensity to turn out to vote in later life. However, using data from the US General Social Survey, Smets and Neundorf show that those coming of age in a highly polarized political context are less likely to vote in later life. In a two-party system like the United States, large ideological distances may imply that voters have to choose between two parties that do not represent their views ( Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope 2004 ). This is especially the case for voters placing themselves in the center ( Callander and Wilson 2007 ). Hence, in the US setting large ideological distances are more likely to have a negative effect on individual level turnout.

Schuman and Corning (2012 , 25) research the impact of critical periods that occur in the lives of citizens from adolescence onward and show that the experience of a transformative event during the critical years of later childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, as well as the experience of an event after the critical years, can contribute to generation-defining memories. The role of political context in political socialization is certainly not confined to the role of elections and electoral behavior. Dinas (2013) , for example, shows how the Watergate scandal disproportionately affected young people’s (negative) evaluations of President Richard Nixon. Another example by Erickson and Stoker (2011) demonstrates how the Vietnam War impacted political attitudes related to partisanship and international intervention among young Americans affected by the draft, a selective service system applied by the US military in 1969 and 1971. The idea of critical events influencing behavior has also been addressed outside the realm of political science. Malmendier and Nagel (2011) , for example, show that experiencing macroeconomic shocks leads to lower levels of financial risk-taking in later life.

The Dynamics of Socialization: Age, Period, and Cohorts

The previous sections focused mainly on the impressionable years and what triggers political learning in early life. Another key question is whether early socialization experiences persist in later life or are overwritten and updated by newer experiences. For this we turn to the dynamics of socialization through a discussion of APC effects.

Defining APC Effects

Research into the question of how an individual develops specific political attitudes or behaviors will usually hold three different—but highly related—factors accountable: aging, enduring intercohort experiences, and time. The idea behind the life-cycle or age approach is that people’s patterns of political behavior change as they age, and that the relationship between age and political behavior is curvilinear: people are most active in middle life and least active in the earliest and latest stages of the life cycle. While the curvilinear relationship with age does not seem to hold for all modes of political participation (see, e.g., Stolle and Hooghe 2011 ), there is ample evidence that the relationship between age and voter turnout can indeed be described with an inverted U-shape. However, it is not the number of candles on one’s birthday cake, but the life experiences that accompany the transition to different life stages, that matter for political participation.

According to the life-cycle argument, young people participate less in politics given their low attachment to civic life, a characteristic that is fueled by young people still going through education, being occupied with finding a partner, establishing a career, having higher mobility, dealing with the psychological transformation into adulthood, and so forth. These characteristics lead young people to be politically inexperienced and to have little interest in politics, low levels of knowledge, and fewer skills (i.e., to have few political resources). This in turn makes political participation both more difficult and less meaningful in this first stage of the life cycle ( Strate et al. 1989 ; Jankowski and Strate 1995 ).

In middle life participation rates are thought to stabilize at a higher level as people experience life-cycle events that mark the transition to adulthood. Such events include leaving the parental home, starting a full-time job, cohabiting or getting married, buying a house, starting a family, settling down in a community, and so forth ( Vogel 2001 ; Billari 2005 ). Even though many of these processes put a demand on time, they are associated with activities (involvement in organizations, associations, the community, etc.) that tend to enhance political participation due to increased mobilization, skills, and pressure ( Strate et al. 1989 , 444; Lane 1959 , 218; Kinder 2006 ). As stakeholders, homeowners are more likely to be interested in property tax and mortgages. To those with (full-time) jobs, issues such as pensions and income tax become relevant ( Flanagan et al. 2012 ). As a result the transition to adulthood increases attention to and familiarity with parties’ and candidates’ positions, which in turn fosters party attachment and other forms of political engagement. All in all, the middle aged seem to have the best cards to understand politics and their part in it ( Jankowski and Strate 1995 , 91), which is most likely the reason that this stage of the political life cycle is often used as a base against which to compare the political participation levels of younger and older citizens ( Braungart and Braungart 1986 , 210).

Participation rates among older age groups, finally, tend to drop under the influence of, for example, health problems, the loss of a politically active spouse, retirement, and declining family income. To summarize, the more general disengagement from social life leads to a lower attachment to political life ( Cutler and Bengtson 1974 , 163).

Focusing on individuals’ life experiences, the political life-cycle or age approach neglects the fact that social, cultural, and historical events can impact political attitudes and political participation. This is how the cohort or generation approach entered the spotlight of socialization research. Common within these cohort and generation approaches is the idea that it is not so much the dynamics of biological aging that make one grow into political life, but rather social, cultural, and historical factors that shape the political participatory patterns of a cohort or generation ( De Graaf 1999 ; Braungart and Braungart 1986 ). Historical differences and social change are thus considered to be the driving factors behind age differences in political preferences and behavior.

The resulting cohort effects or, as they are sometimes called, generation effects , are defined to be “enduring intercohort distinctions that are attributable to the common ‘imprinting’ of cohort members. With regard to attitudinal dependent variables, generation effects are often presumed to be the result of cohort members having shared similar socialising experiences, especially during late adolescence and early adulthood” ( Markus 1983 , 718; cf. Mannheim 1952 ; Ryder 1965 ).

A cohort is very generally defined as a “number of individuals who have some characteristics in common” ( Glenn 2005 , 2). This common characteristic is often the year of birth. Usually cohorts are divided into equal time periods (e.g., five- or ten-year birth year periods), whereby the span of years for each cohort may be dictated by theoretical concerns or data constraints. But cohorts may also be defined with reference to other variables of interest (e.g., persons who came of age at the same time or individuals who finished high school in a particular year). 1

Finally, specific observed attitudes or behavior may be a function of the current political, economic, or societal situation, as well as idiosyncratic events that produce fluctuations over time. These period effects are therefore major events, such as the presence of war or economic downturn, that affect the population as a whole, not just certain age, regional, gender, education, or income groups ( De Graaf 1999 , 261; Norris 2003 , 9; Cutler and Bengtson 1974 , 165; Alwin, Hofer, and McCammon 2006 , 21).

Conover (1991 , 130) argues that life-cycle and cohort effects are interwoven, as “people change in political orientations throughout their life, (but) generations respond differently to the same events.” In his famous studies on value change ( Inglehart 1977 ; Abramson and Inglehart 1995 ), Inglehart also argues that later learning must overcome the inertia of preexisting orientations. Jennings (1989 , 347) summarizes these considerations:

Young adulthood is the time of identity formation. It is at this age that political history can have a critical impact on a cohort’s political make-up in a direct, experiential fashion…. The political significance of the crystallisation process lies in the content of that which is crystallising, the social, political, and historical materials that are being worked over and experienced by the young during these formative years. For it is this content that colours the cohort. If the colour differs appreciably from that attached to past cohorts, we have the making of a political generation.

In another work he adds that “what each cohort brings into political maturity has a good deal of continuity and provides a certain degree of stability in terms of what that cohort is likely to draw on as it moves through the rest of the life cycle” ( Jennings 1996 , 249). But as Niemi and Sobieszek (1977 , 228) pointed out twenty years earlier: “Sorting out the relative impact of life cycle, generational, and period effects will no doubt prove to be extraordinarily complicated.” Disentangling these various effects was and remains one of the central challenges of socialization research.

Generational Change and Generational Replacement

Political research on socialization processes has accumulated a vast body of valuable insights into how citizens acquire their political attitudes. Nevertheless, we still know relatively little about whether these socialization experiences lead to true generational differences in how citizens perceive and evaluate politics or behave in the political arena. Taking into account constantly changing societies, it is important to understand generational features of the electorate in order to make predictions for the future.

Figure 1 illustrates the interrelationship of period and cohort effects by plotting the annual averages of attitudes against interracial marriage for four different birth cohorts from the United States between 1972 and 2004. 2 While same-sex marriage may have now replaced interracial marriage as a salient political issue, the example illustrates the idea of generational replacement by focusing on a concrete political attitude. Figure 1 allows us to explore whether birth cohorts differ in their racial attitudes. The oldest cohort—born before 1930—was still socialized in a highly racially divided country, whereas the cohort born after 1970 grew up after the turbulent times of the civil rights movement in the 1950 and 1960s, when racial discrimination was legally abolished. 3 These changing historical legacies during the formative years of these four cohorts are assumed to have shaped racial attitudes and “colored”—as Jennings would put it—each group in a different way.

Illustration of Cohort Differences on Anti-Interracial Marital Attitudes

According to figure 1 , the cohort born before 1930 consistently exhibits the highest anti-interracial attitudes, with as many as 50% of the respondents advocating laws against interracial marriage in the mid-1970s. Each cohort born and socialized later in time is less averse to interracial marriage. This simple graph reveals three findings. First, we observe a period effect, as all cohorts seem to become less racially intolerant over time. Second, the declining parallel lines of each cohort confirm that clear differences exist regarding racial attitudes depending on the time a respondent was born and hence socialized. Third, figure 1 further illustrates what some people call generational replacement . The thick solid line plots the overall trend in anti-interracial statements, which is declining. From the mid-1990s the overall trend is lower than the average attitude among the cohorts born before 1950. The issue of interracial marriage becomes less salient over time; the explanation for this observation is simply that the weight of “older” cohorts in the overall population is declining. The absolute number of members dwindles as the members of the two cohorts born before 1950 age. To use Ryder’s (1965) words: “Cohort succession, aging, and period-specific historical events provide accounts of social and demographic change” (cited in Smith 2008 , 287). The importance of cohort effects remains manifest today. Using longitudinal data, Watson (2015) shows how interaction with welfare state programs influences cohorts’ patterns of democratic engagement.

Bartels and Jackman (2014) propose a new model of political learning and how to think about these dynamics. They conceptualize two interrelated factors that capture the dynamics of political preferences: (1) period-specific “shocks” that reflect the distinctive political events of a given time period and (2) age-specific “weights” that reflect the extent to which these shocks are internalized by individuals at various points in the life cycle. Generational patterns of political change arise endogenously from the interaction of these basic elements. This model is a critique of the classic “running tally” model by Fiorina (1981) and Achen (1992) , who assume that the age-specific “weights” are equal. This posits that political scandals; presidential or government approval rates; natural disasters; economic crises; and any other political, economic, or social events impact each citizen equally no matter where a person is in the life cycle.

Challenges and Opportunities for the Study of Political Socialization

This chapter has discussed four main questions that arise in the study of political socialization and the making of citizens. First, what is it about early life experiences that makes them matter for political attitudes and behavior in later life? Second, what age is crucial in the development of citizens’ political outlooks? Third, who and what influences political behavior in early life, and how are cohorts colored by the nature of the times when they come of age? Fourth, how do political preferences and behavior develop after the impressionable years?

The problem in finding answers to these questions is usually of an empirical nature. Previous studies have often used inappropriate data (e.g., cross-sectional data) or methods (e.g., macro correlations over time) to answer questions about attitudinal and behavioral dynamics. More recently, researchers have used multiwave panel studies that follow the same individuals over time to study the stability or volatility of political preferences (see, e.g., Clarke and McCutcheon 2009 ; Prior 2010 ; Neundorf, Stegmueller, and Scotto 2011 ; Neundorf, Smets, and García Albacete 2013 ). These studies provide convincing evidence that the impressionable years are indeed important for the development of political orientations, and that there is a great deal of stability in citizens’ political identities and engagement in later life. There are, however, limitations to these studies, which rely mainly on household panel studies. Not designed by political scientists, the indicators available in these data sets are limited to just a few political variables: often only partisanship and political interest. It is both important and interesting to investigate attitude stability for other more policy-oriented preferences as well. Such preferences are, however, usually only included in election panel studies that span just a few years.

New Internet-based panel studies might provide an exciting new avenue for this type of research. For example, the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS), based on a probability sample, includes a wide range of questions on political preferences and behavior. The more than eight thousand respondents have been interviewed annually since 2007. A similar online panel study, the German Internet Panel (GIP), which includes numerous political variables, was initiated in Germany in 2012. 4 These studies have the potential to provide data to test remaining questions about the dynamics of political preferences. Unfortunately, comparable data collection efforts have not yet been initiated in the United States or the United Kingdom.

As better data sources and better statistical methods become available, more fine-grained theoretical questions can be tackled. Recent research, for example, focuses on the interaction of different socializing agents (see, e.g., Neundorf, Niemi, and Smets 2016 ), as well as on more complex household dynamics (see, e.g., Dinas 2014 ). Other work seeks to understand whether socialization processes known to exist in Western democracies can be extended to new and emerging democracies (see, e.g., Finkel 2002 for work on the impact of civic education on political participation in emerging democracies; Neundorf 2010 for work on the legacy of post-communist and post-authoritarian regimes; and Lupu and Peisakhin n.d. for a study of the long-term impact of political violence on parental transmission of political views in post-Soviet states). Potentially heterogeneous political socialization processes have also recently gained scholarly attention. As Ghitza and Gelman (n.d.) demonstrate, socialization patterns are different for people from different ethnic backgrounds.

With regard to the timing of the formative or impressionable years, shifting away from predefining the age boundaries of this crucial period, recent studies point to socialization processes starting at a much younger age than previously assumed. Both van Deth, Abendschön, and Vollmar (2011) and Bartels and Jackman (2014) suggest that the impressionable years are in late childhood and early adolescence, not only in late adolescence and early adulthood. The study by van Deth, Abendschön, and Vollmar (2011) only includes young children and does not follow them growing up. It is therefore not clear whether these early imprints have a long-lasting impact. On the other hand the study by Bartels and Jackman (2014) relies on a mathematical estimation of the formative years. These results, again, have not yet been fully put to the test. Both studies, however, point to the importance of including in panel studies younger respondents who can then be followed as they grow older.

The timing of the formative years is important for studying the making of political generations. If we want to understand which are the factors that shape such generations, we need to make important assumptions about when citizens are most receptive to external influences. Hence, the timing of political, economic, and social circumstances needs to be determined based on the age when citizens are socialized. However, the scientific debates of APC effects on the one hand, and the origins of political attitudes and behavior on the other, are often unconnected. 5 We see, however, an enormous opportunity in the study of cohorts and the making of citizens. Cohort analysis, for example as done by Dinas and Stoker (2014) and Smets and Neundorf (2014) , provides us with a tool to understand social changes. Based on new and innovative statistical methods, 6 these studies allow testing of the impact of factors such as the political, economic, and social environment during a cohort’s formative years on long-term political preferences and behavior. These APC cohort studies thus allow us to gain insights into the socialization processes and what colors whole generations or what makes political citizens.

By definition, studying socialization processes focuses on the impact of the personal and social environment of an individual on his or her values, attitudes, and behavior. This ignores the potential impact of biology. The last decade has seen fascinating new opportunities in studying the link between genetics and political attitudes, demonstrating that “nature” or inheritance can have a strong impact on a person’s political beliefs (Hatemi et al. 2007 , 2009a , 2009b , 2010 ; Oxley et al. 2008 ; Smith et al. 2011 ). Questions about which factors and contexts can enhance or weaken certain genetic predispositions are still unexplored. There is still very little research on the interplay between genetics and environmental factors and how these interact over the life span (with the exception of Hatemi et al. 2009a , 2009b ), which is an exciting new avenue for future research in the field of political socialization.

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The terms cohort and generation are often used interchangeably. Generations are characterized by some common historical event such as the Great Depression ( Elder 1974 ). The distinction between generations is therefore not necessarily as strict as for cohorts. A common way to distinguish between generations in Western democracies is the following: prewar generation (born before 1944), the baby boomers (1945–1959), the 1960s generation (1960–1969), the 1970s generation (1970–1979), and the post-1970s generation (born in 1980 or later) (see, e.g., Bhatti and Hansen 2012a ; Blais et al. 2004 ; Wass 2007 ).

The exact wording reads as follows: “Do you think there should be laws against marriages between Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans and whites?—Yes or No.” Figure 1 plots the percentages of those agreeing with the statement. The data were taken from the US General Social Survey, which was administered annually or biannually between 1972 and 2010. The question on interracial marriage, however, was not included after 2004.

Most important for the abolition of discrimination in public life was the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

For more information on the LISS, see http://www.lissdata.nl/lissdata/Home, and for the GIP : http://reforms.uni-mannheim.de/internet_panel/home/ .

Examples of studies that explicitly focus on APC analysis are Baker (1978) ; Abramson (1979) ; Claggett (1981) ; Markus (1983) ; Miller (1992) ; Tilley (2002) and Tilley and Evans (2011) —partisanship; Klecka (1971) ; Lyons and Alexander (2000) ; Franklin, Lyons, and Marsh (2004) ; Bhatti and Hansen (2012a) ; Smets and Neundorf (2014) —turnout; Cutler and Kaufman (1975) —ideology; Jennings (1996) —political knowledge; Jennings and Stoker (2004) —civic engagement; Down and Wilson (2013) —support for the European Union; Mishler and Rose (2007) and Neundorf (2010) —democratic attitudes. This list is by no means comprehensive.

Neundorf and Niemi (2014) , for example, present a series of articles in a special issue of Electoral Studies on methods of age, period, and cohort analysis.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Political Socialization — Political Socialization And Development Of Political Identity

Political Socialization and Development of Political Identity

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What Is Political Socialization? Definition and Examples

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Political socialization is the learning process by which people develop an understanding of their political identities, opinions, and behavior. Through various agents of socialization, such as parents, peers, and schools, the lifelong experiences of political socialization play a key role in developing the traits of patriotism and good citizenship.

Key Takeaways: Political Socialization

• Political Socialization is the process by which people develop their political knowledge, values, and ideology.
• The process of political socialization begins in childhood and continues throughout one’s lifetime.
• Politically socialized people are more likely to actively participate in the political process.
• In the United States, political socialization tends to develop a belief in the virtues of democracy.
• The main sources or agents of political socialization in people’s lives are family, school, peers, and the media. 

Political Socialization Definition

Political scientists have concluded that political beliefs and behavior are not genetically inherited. Instead, individuals decide throughout their lifetimes where and how they fit into the political values and processes of their country through the process of political socialization. It is through this learning process that the standards and behaviors that contribute to a smoothly and peacefully functioning political system are passed between generations. Perhaps most visibly, it how people determine their political orientation— conservative or liberal , for example.

Beginning in childhood, the process of political socialization continues throughout a person’s lifetime. Even people who have shown no interest in politics for years can become highly politically active as older citizens. Suddenly in need of health care and other benefits, they may be motivated to support candidates sympathetic to their cause and to join senior advocacy groups such as the Gray Panthers.

Younger children tend to first associate politics and government with highly recognizable individuals such as the president of the United States and police officers. Unlike children of past generations who generally admired government leaders, modern young people tend to develop a more negative or distrustful view of politicians. This is to some extent due to the increased media coverage of political scandals.

While young people usually learn about the political process from older people, they often develop their views and can eventually influence the political behavior of adults. For example, many adult Americans were swayed to changed their political orientation as a result of young peoples’ protests to the Vietnam War .

In the United States, political socialization often imparts a shared belief in the virtues of democracy . School children begin to grasp the concept of patriotism through daily rituals, such as reciting the Pledge of Allegiance . By age 21, most Americans have come to associate the virtues of democracy with the need to vote. This has led some scholars to criticize political socialization in the United States as a form of forced indoctrination that discourages independent thought. However, political socialization does not always result in support for democratic political institutions. Especially during later adolescence, some people adopt political values that vary greatly from those held by the majority.

The ultimate goal of political socialization is to ensure the survival of the democratic political system even during times of extreme stress, such as economic depression or war. Stable political systems are characterized by regularly held elections conducted according to legally established procedures, and that the people accept the results as legitimate. For example, when the outcome of the tumultuous 2000 U.S. presidential election was finally decided by the Supreme Court, most Americans quickly accepted George W. Bush as the winner. Instead of violent protests, the country moved on with politics as usual.

It is during the political socialization process that people typically develop their levels of belief in the legitimacy of the political system and their level of political efficacy, or power, to influence that system. 

Political Legitimacy

Political legitimacy describes people’s level of belief in the validity, honesty, and fairness of their country’s political processes, such as elections. People are far more likely to be confident that a highly legitimate political process will result in honest leaders who respond to their needs while rarely abusing their governmental powers. People trust that elected leaders who overstep their authority or engage in illegal activity will be held accountable through processes such as impeachment . Highly legitimate political systems are more likely to survive crises and to implement new policies effectively.

Political Efficacy

Political efficacy refers to individuals’ level of trust that by participating in the political process they can bring about change in the government. People who feel a high level of political efficacy are confident that have the knowledge and resources necessary to take part in the political process and that the government will respond to their efforts. People who feel politically effective also believe strongly in the legitimacy of the political system and are thus more likely to participate in it. People who trust that their vote will be fairly counted and will matter are more likely to go to the polls. People who feel politically effective are also more likely to take strong stands on government policy issues. For example, in the 2010 U.S. midterm elections , many people dissatisfied with what they considered to be excessive government spending supported the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement . Of the 138 Republican candidates for Congress identified as getting significant Tea Party support, 50% were elected to the Senate and 31% were elected to the House.

Agents of Socialization

While political socialization can take place almost anywhere at any time, from early childhood on, people’s political perceptions and behaviors are directly or indirectly shaped by various socializing agents, such as family, school and peers, and the media. Not only do these agents of socialization teach young people about the political system, they can also influence people’s political preferences and level of desire to take part in the political process.

Many scholars consider the family to be the earliest and most-impactful agent of political socialization. Especially in families that are highly politically active, the influence of parents in the future political orientation of their children is most pronounced in the areas of party affiliation, political ideology, and level of participation. For example, children of highly politically active parents tend to develop an interest in civics making them more likely to become politically active as adolescents and adults. Similarly, since politics is often discussed in “dinner table” family settings, children often first imitate and may grow up to embrace the political party preferences and ideologies of their parents.

Research has also shown that the future political involvement of children is often influenced by the socioeconomic status of their parents. Children of affluent parents are more likely to attain college-level educations, which tend to develop higher levels of political knowledge and interest. Parental socioeconomic status also tends to plays a role in the development of class-oriented and special-interest political affiliations and levels of civic involvement.  

Children, however, do not always continue to embrace the political orientation and practices of their parents. While they are more likely to adopt their parents’ views as teenagers, children of politically involved parents are also more likely to change their party affiliation during early adulthood as they become exposed to new political points-of-view.

The effects of the family on political socialization are far from static, changing as family structure changes in different ways around the world. One fundamental change is family size, with fertility rates dropping in virtually every country over the past century.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides an extreme example. When established in 1949, the PRC government encouraged families to have children to create additional workers. By the 1960s the typical Chinese family had six children. At that point political leaders became worried about rapid population growth, so in 1980 they instituted a one-child policy strictly enforced through a combination of economic benefits and harsh penalties. While this policy dramatically slowed population growth, it substantially increased both the age of and the percentage of males in the population. Under the one-child policy, a cultural preference for male children evolved, resulting in sex-selective abortions and female infanticide. Fearing that they had gone too far in the wrong direction, the Chinese government lifted the one-child policy in 2016.

Family structure involves not only how many children are in a family, but where they live when they effectively become adults. As of 2016, about 52% of 18-to-29-year-olds in the United States were living with their parents, a higher percentage than at any time since 1900. Among affluent countries, the percentage of 15-to-29 year-olds living with their parents varied from about 80% in Italy to 30% in Canada.

Considering how family members can influence each other’s political attitudes and beliefs, it is not surprising to see how changing family structures and living conditions might impact political socialization. 

For example, who is expected to take responsibility for caring for aging parents varies from country to country. In China, caring for parents is a sacred duty. In Norway, it is more often seen as an obligation of the government. Germans and Italians are more than twice as likely as Americans to say that the government, rather than the family, has the main responsibility for caring for the elderly.

Like other hard-to-quantify generalizations, these statements are not true for every person in every circumstance everywhere. Some children of devout worshippers become atheists, some people raised as capitalists become communists or socialists , and some of the children of political, social, and cultural liberals become ardent conservatives .

School and Peer Groups

In conjunction with the parental transfer of political attitudes and behaviors to their children, the influence of school on political socialization has been the subject of much research and debate. It has been established that level of education is closely related to interest in politics, voter turnout, and overall political participation.

Starting in grade school, children are taught the basics of elections, voting, and the ideology of democracy by choosing class officers. In high school, more sophisticated elections teach the fundamentals of campaigning and the influence of popular opinion. College-level courses in American history, civics, and political science encourage students to examine government institutions and processes.

However, it has often been suggested that higher education can divide the population into higher and lower classes, thus giving the better-educated upper classes an unequal level of influence over the political system. In this and other ways, the actual effect of education remains unclear. In the words of David Campbell, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, “Specifically, we have a limited understanding of how schools do, or do not, foster political engagement among their adolescent students.”

School is also one of the first settings in which young people develop intellectual relationships with peers—people other than their parents or siblings. Research indicates that children often have their first opinion-sharing discussions about politics with their peers. Peer groups, often acting as social networks, also teach valuable democratic and economic principles such as information sharing and the equitable exchange of goods and services.

Most people look to the media—newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the internet—for political information. Despite growing dependence on the internet, television remains the dominant information source, especially with the proliferation of 24-hour all-news cable channels. Not only does the media influence public opinion by providing news, analysis, and a diversity of opinion, it exposes people to modern sociopolitical issues, such as drug abuse, abortion, and racial discrimination.

Quickly eclipsing conventional media in importance, the internet now serves as a source of political information. Most major television and print news outlets now have websites and bloggers also offer a wide range of political information, analysis, and opinion. Increasingly, peer groups, politicians, and government agencies utilize social media websites such as Twitter to share and disseminate political information and commentary. 

As people spend more of their time online, however, many scholars question whether these internet forums encourage a healthy sharing of different sociopolitical views or simply serve as “echo chambers” in which the same perspectives and opinions are shared only among like-minded people. This has resulted in some of these online sources being accused of spreading extremist ideologies, often supported by disinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories.   

• Neundorf, Anja and Smets, Kaat. “Political Socialization and the Making of Citizens.” Oxford Handbooks Online , 2017, https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935307.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935307-e-98.
• Alwin, D. F., Ronald L. Cohen, and Theodore M. Newcomb. “Political Attitudes Over the Life Span.” University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0-299-13014-5.
• Conover, P. J., “Political Socialization: Where’s the Politics?” Northwestern University Press, 1991,
• Greenstein, F. I. “Children and Politics.” Yale University Press, 1970, ISBN-10: 0300013205.
• Madestam, Andreas. “Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence from the Tea Party Movement.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics , November 1, 2013, https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/do-political-protests-matter-evidence-tea-party-movement.
• Verba, Sidney. “Family Ties: Understanding the Intergenerational Transmission of Political Participation.” Russell Sage Foundation , 2003, https://www.russellsage.org/research/reports/family-ties.
• Campbell, David E. “Civic Engagement and Education: An Empirical Test of the Sorting Model.” American Journal of Political Science , October 2009, https://davidecampbell.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/6-ajps_sorting.pdf. 
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Home / Essay Samples / Government / Politics / Political Socialization

Political Socialization Essay Examples

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