Sears (1990) Whither Political Socialization Research? The Question of Persistence

THE EARLY YEARS (of political socialization persistence research)
Greenstein, Hyman, Easton and Dennis etc. all emphasized the lasting effects of early experiences

CURRENT STATUS
in the 80s the discipline went through an era of stagflation... Sears argues that is on account of changing conventional wisdom; whereas before, early experiences were shown to have lasting effects, in the wake of instability of attitudes work, and more so by Searing and colleagues, who said the primacy principle had been overstated, CW moved to the effect of "children's political attitudes are not very strong and not very persistent" (73).
The psychological tradition bemoans the enthusiastic endorsement of the primacy principle as well, and most agree, "humans have the capacity to change across the entire life span" (p76, from Brim & Kagan 1980). Current conditions (like the economy) or technology are likely to sway opinions and change minds.
Evenso, during the ambush of political socialization effects, scholarly work was still being produced by Jennings and Markus, among others. They found political ideology to be stable, as well as racial prejudice.

The debate, then, is over whenther adults form opinions based upon their longstanding presidpositions, or upon their current informational environments (is their processing "data-driven" or "theory-driven"?).

PERSISTENCE:
if the debate is about the extent to which longstanding predispositions determine attitudes, it becomes a matter of early attitude/experience persistence.

I. Models of persistence
Three Viewpoints:
Persistence: early socialization is immune to change in later years (the revisionist perspective is less stubborn, but still takes a similar perspective).
Life cycle: at different points in our life, we are more suceptible to certain ideas.
Impressionable years: predispositions are always vulnerable to change, especially in light of high salient movements, or events.

II. Pressure to change versus resistance to change
attitude change results when the pressure outweighs the resistance. stability, then, relfects either strong resistance, or simply a lack of pressure. Thus change, or the lack of it, cannot be used as the sole index of the strength of the underlying disposition.

III. Symbolic pre-dispositions and Non-attitudes
dates back to Converse (!964). Converse found individuals to express non-attitudes, on account of teir inconsistent responses. Yet, "the question of persistence is largely moot for attitudes at the "non-attitude" [or what psychologists term] low ego-involvement end of this dimension, since attitudes are mainly extremely malleable. The question becomes interesting only for attitudes at the high ego-involvement end of this continuum" (79). high ego-involved attitudes are those that are conditions to particular symbols, like America, Blacks, Democrat, Communism (Sears calls them symbolic pre-dispositions). Thus the strength of the emotional attachment is key (79). But important as well is that symbolic predispositions:
-get the most attention form the media and in ordinary conversation
-reflect the most rife and controversial issues
-help people organize the ongoing flow of information (political and scial issues)

ASSESSING PERSISTENCE
Five general paradigms that assess persistence:
(1) Retrospective judgments
-memories predict attitudes in later life
(2) The "Structuring Principle"
presumed residues of early socialization influence attitudes toward new political events, candidate and issues
(3) Cohort Analysis
test attitudes for two cohorts at time one and two
(4) Longitudinal studies
estimate the stability of individuals' attitudes over time (Jennings and Neimi)
(5) Natural Experiments
pool results from several approaches (personal experiences, changes in social location, and poltiical events and communications).
-personal experiences:direct personal experiences, according to most psychological theories, ought to have a special potential for eroding the residues of preadult socialization. (not a lot of work on the issue, though--Jennings and Markus 1977 report on high school grads who subsequently went to vietnam, which found predispositions to be strong (er? than vietnam experience)). But for the most part, personal experiences are those such as tax hikes, or having children, and then those children go to school (thus self-interest may override predispositions). yet work by Sears finds self-interest to have remarkably little effect on policy attitudes and on voting, suggesting that adult's basic attitude are, most of teh time, unresponsive to their self-interest.
-changes in social location: when a person moves from one social environment to another, where the norms are contrary to priors, do attitudes shift? Newcomb et al (1967) found attitudes to express continuity across environments/social locations. Similar findings from more rigorous data found by Miller and Sears (1986).
-political events and communication: minimal effects model, supported

Although it seems that early experience and exposure is longstanding, Sears concludes that a combination of the persisenece and imporessionalbe-uears notes best describe the life course of poiticla and social attitudes that are most impportant. Yet it is still difficult to untangle if the persistence of predispositions (largely derived from early socialization) is on account of high resistance to change, or little pressure to change).