Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:56:27.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Socialization: the Implicit Assumptions Questioned

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

David Marsh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There is a tendency for quantitative research to be undertaken without sufficient consideration being given to its theoretical justification. An interesting field reveals itself, a hypothesis is generated, a means of testing it is devised and then the research begins. Unfortunately research in political socialization has often been of this type. We need to view political socialization in a wider context, to ask, why do we study political socialization? Unless we can answer this question then it is difficult to judge the validity of work done in the field. Such work must be analyzed in the light of its broader purpose.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , October 1971 , pp. 453 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 We are concerned with the justification given for the interest in political socialization not the actual stimuli which provoked that interest. The area has become a very popular one and this in itself directs many towards it. Sigel, R., ed., Learning About Politics (New York: Random House, 1970)Google Scholar is concerned with the policy implications of political socialization and therefore must assume that political socialization can effect the operation of the political system.

2 Froman, L., ‘Personality and Political Socialisation’, Journal of Politics, 23 (1961), 341–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, says for example: ‘The primary question in political socialisation is “how do we learn politically relevant attitudes and behaviour”?’ He does not consider the effect of the resultant behaviour on the political system.

3 Dennis, J. et al. , ‘Support for Nation and Government Among English Children’, British Journal of Political Science, I (1971), 25–48.Google Scholar

4 For example, Greenstein, F., entry, ‘Political Socialisation’, International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), vol. 14, pp. 551–5Google Scholar, says: ‘political learning has effects on the later behaviour of the individuals exposed to socialising influence and, by extension, on the political system.’ p. 555.Easton, D. and Dennis, J., Children and the Political System: Origins of Political Legitimacy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969)Google Scholar, concur: ‘[This book] addresses itself to one major condition socialisation – that contributes to the capacity of a political system to persist in a world either of stability or change’ p. 4.

5 The process is however usually studied in a superficial way. What is studied is the degree of influence of various agents not the processes by which they influence.

6 Greenberg, E. S., ‘Consensus and Dissent Trends in Political Socialisation Research’ in Greenberg, , ed., Political Socialisation (New York: Atherton Press, 1970), pp. 1–10.Google Scholar

7 The importance of adult socialization is never explicitly denied but it is largely ignored when it comes to assembling quantifiable evidence.

8 Behaviour is mentioned in almost all definitions of political socialization but it is rarely studied. Hess, R. and Torney, J., The Development of Political Attitudes in Children (Chicago: Aldine, 1967)Google Scholar, conclude when referring back to quantitative material: ‘[this book has been] an attempt to chart and document the growth of political behaviour’, p. 212. However their work hardly justifies this conclusion. They present just two tables on discussion, the wearing of buttons, and distributing of leaflets as behaviour dimensions, pp. 10 and 88, and the evidence regarding those behaviours was based on recall data collected at the same time as the attitudinal data.

9 Easton, and Dennis, , Children and the Political System, p. 9.Google Scholar Other authors have made similar statements, thus, Hess, and Torney, , The Development of Political Attitudes, p. 7Google Scholar: ‘The argument for the importance of childhood learning for the political behaviour of adults appears to have considerable validity’ and Sigel, R., ‘Assumptions about the Learning of Political Values’, Annals, 361 (09 1965), pp. 1–9Google Scholar, ‘Having once internalised the society's norms it will presumably not be difficult for the individual to act in congruence with them’ p. 1.

10 Greenberg, , ‘Consensus and Dissent’, p.6Google Scholar, My insertion in brackets.

11 Only Greenberg and to a lesser extent, Dawson, R. and Prewitt, K., Political Socialisation (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1969)Google Scholar, see especially pp. 41–80, acknowledge their assumptions and neither bring direct quantitive evidence to demonstrate their validity.

12 Brim, O. and Wheeler, S., Socialisation After Childhood: Two Essays (New York: Wiley, 1966), p. 18.Google Scholar

13 Jennings, M. Kent and Niemi, R. G., ‘Patterns of Political Learning’, Harvard Educational Review, 38 (1968), 443–67, p. 466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 The suggestion that adult socialization is more important than is often claimed is supported by data in Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar They found that freedom to express oneself and influence decisions in the work atmosphere was more highly correlated with political efficacy than were similar feelings of freedom with regard to home or school environment, see p. 363.

15 See — Froman, , ‘Personality and Political Socialisation’, and F. Greenstein, ‘Personality and Political Socialisation: The Theories of Authoritarian and Democratic Character’, Annals (September 1965), p. 81.Google Scholar

16 Tuddenham, R. D., ‘The Constancy of Personality Ratings Over Two Decades’, Genetic Psychological Monographs, 60 (1959), 3–29.Google ScholarPubMed

17 Kagan, J. and Moss, M., From Birth to Maturity (New York: Wiley, 1962).Google Scholar There are a number of methodological criticisms which can be directed at this work, see Elder, G., ‘Adolescent Socialisation and Development’, pp. 239–369Google Scholar in Borgatta, E. and Lambert, W., eds., The Handbook of Personality Theory and Research (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), p. 245, Footnote 2.Google Scholar The five age periods are: birth to three, three to six, six to ten, ten to fourteen, and nineteen to twenty-nine.

18 Bloom, B. S., Stability and Change in Human Characteristics (New York: Wiley, 1964).Google Scholar

19 There has been some work done on the consistency of attitude elements one with another, i.e. the consistency of the cognitive, affective and conative elements of an attitude. This is however a different problem. See esp. Kirkpatrick, S. A., ‘Political Attitudes and Behaviour: Some Consequences of Attitude Ordering’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, XIV (1970), 1—24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 This is usually studied by means of recall data which are highly suspect.

21 Butler, D. and Stokes, D., Political Change in Britain (London: MacMillan, 1969), p. 294, Table 13.1.Google Scholar See esp. chap. 13, ‘Patterns in Change ’.

22 Benewick, R. J. et al. , ‘The Floating Voter and The Liberal View of Representation’, Political Studies, XVII (1969), 177–95, P.188, Table 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The 1955 vote is based on recall, which is likely to slightly inflate the number who voted consistently.

23 Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change, pp. 193–214, esp.Google Scholar Table 199. The two political attitude questions were: (i) should more industries be nationalized? and (ii) should Britain give up the bomb?

24 Converse, P., ‘The Nature of Belief Systems’ in Apter, D., ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), 206–61, p. 239, see also pp. 238–46.Google Scholar

25 Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems’, Arkoff, A. and Meredith, C. M., ‘Consistency in Attitudes Towards Civil Liberties’, Journal of Social Psychology, 70 (1966), 265–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarMcclosky, H., ‘Consensus and Ideology in American Polities’, American Political Science Review, LVIII (1964), pp. 361–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 The only person to directly attack this problem is Froman, L., ‘Learning Political Attitudes’, Western Political Quarterly, 15 (1962), pp. 304–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar, though the distinction between the cognitive, affective and evaluative aspects of attitude are often referred to. See Dennis, J., ‘Major Problem of Political Socialisation Research’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, (1968), p. 85.Google Scholar

27 The whole problem of the connection between attitudes and related concepts and between the cognitive, evaluative and conative aspects of attitude is an important and unclear area. See Kirkpatrick, ‘Political Attitudes’. His work however does not make clear the measures which were used to test the cognitive, affective and conative aspects of an attitude.

28 This area is especially well reviewed by Wicker, A., ‘Attitudes Versus Actions: The Relationship of Verbal and Overt Behavioural Responses to Attitude Objects’, Journal of Social Issues, 25 (1969), 41–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Deutscher, I., ‘Words and Deeds: Social Science and Social Policy’, Social Problem, 13 (1966), 235–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This article besides reviewing relevant literature sets the problem in a significant historical perspective.

29 Lapiere, R. T., ‘Attitudes Versus Actions’, Social Forces, 1934, 230–7.Google Scholar

30 Defleur, M. L. and Westie, R. F., ‘Verbal Attitudes and Overt Acts: An Experiment on the Saliency of Attitudes’, American Sociological Review, 23 (1958), 667–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 The seven uses were: (1) laboratory use to be seen only by professional sociologists, (2) publication in a technical journal read only by professional sociologists, (3) laboratory use to be seen by a few dozen students, (4) as a teaching aid to be seen by hundreds of sociology students, (5) publication in the student newspaper in a story on the research, (6) publication in the student's home town paper, (7) use in a nation-wide publicity campaign advocating racial integration.

32 This work was replicated with methodological changes by Linn, L. S., ‘Verbal Attitudes and Overt Behaviour: A Study of Racial Discrimination’, Social Forces, 43 (1965), 353–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar He found that the mean number of release levels signed on the questionnaire was 4·9 compared with 2·8 in the behaviour situation. Attitude/behaviour discrepancy of two or more levels on the 7·point photograph release scale were shown by 59% of the sample.

33 Corey, S. M., ‘Professed Attitudes and Actual Behaviour’, Journal of Educational Psychology, 28 (1937), 271–80, p. 278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This research was more recently replicated by Freeman, L. C., and Aaton, T., ‘Invalidity of Indirect and Direct Measures of Attitude Towards Cheating’, Journal of Personality (1960), 443–7.Google Scholar They found that none of their verbal measures was significantly related to cheating behaviour.

34 See Wicker, , ‘Attitudes versus Actions’, pp. 47–66Google Scholar, esp. Table 1, pp. 49–51, and Deutscher, , ‘Words and Deeds’, pp. 245–7.Google Scholar

35 ‘Attitudes versus Actions’, pp. 64–5.

36 Campbell, A., Converse, P., Miller, W. E. and Stokes, D. E., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960), pp. 64–88.Google Scholar The scale was composed of: (a) attitude to party candidate, (b) attitude to Democratic party, (c) attitude to Republican party, (d), attitude to party's position on domestic affairs, (e) attitude to party's position on foreign issues.

37 Wicker, ‘Attitudes versus Actions’, says: ‘Systematic research examining both personal and situational influences in overt behaviour has shown that predictions of overt behaviour can be made more accurately from a knowledge of the situation than from a knowledge of individual differences. Intra-personal variables become important as predictors when their interaction with situational factors are considered’, p. 69.

38 Warner, L. C. and Defleur, M. L., ‘Attitude as an Interactional Concept: Social Constraint and Social Distance as Intervening Variables Between Attitudes and Actions’, American Sociological Review, 34 (1969), 153–69, pp. 166–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Fishbein, M., ‘The Relationship Between Beliefs, Attitudes and Behaviour’, in Feldman, S., ed., Cognitive Consistency (New York: Academic, 1966).Google Scholar

40 Wicker, , ‘Attitudes versus Actions’, deals with this problem at more length, pp. 65–74.Google Scholar

41 Mills, C. Wright, ‘Methodological Consequences of the Sociology of Knowledge’, in Horowitz, L., ed., Power Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright-Mills (New York: Ballantine Books, 1963), p. 467.Google Scholar

42 See, in the social psychology literature, Fishbein, M., ‘Attitude and the Prediction of Behaviour’ in Fishbein, , ed., Readings in Attitude Theory and Measurement (New York: Wiley, 1967).Google ScholarIn the sociology literature, Arnold, Rose, in ‘Intergroup Relations vs Prejudice: Pertinent Theory for the Study of Social Change’, Social Problems, (1956), has developed an interesting symbolic interactionist argument regarding the theoretical independence of attitudes and behaviour.Google Scholar

43 Lapiere, , ‘Attitudes versus Actions’, p. 237.Google Scholar

44 See Eulau, H. et al. , ‘The Political Socialisation of American State Legislations’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, 3 (05, 1959), 188–206;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHedland, R. D., ‘Legislative Socialisation and Role Orientation’, The Laboratory for Political Research, University of Iowa, Report no. 11, (10, 1967);Google ScholarKornberg, A. et al. , ‘Some Differences in the Political Socialisation Patterns of Canadian and American Party Officials’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 2 (03, 1969), 64–88;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPrewitt, K. et al. , ‘Political Socialisation and Political Roles’, Public Opinion Quarterly, XXX (1966–7); 569–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar