The Family and Partisan Socialization in Red and Blue America

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Abstract

How do competing social influences shape individual partisanship over the course of the life cycle? People enter and exit a host of environments over the course of the lifespan, and these environments provide social pressures that can conflict or reinforce early socialized attitudes. Socialization could be an agent for either opinion change or opinion stability. Using the Youth-Parent Socialization Study and constructing partisan environmental measures at the county level, I explore this question. The findings demonstrate that environments exert significant socializing influence over the lifespan, moderating the persistence of early forces. This helps us understand when early socialized pressures persist and when they do not. When environments throughout life provide reinforcing social pressures, parental influence endures over time. However, when early socialized influence is challenged over time by the political environment that citizens reside in, the influence of early parental socialization is offset and nullified.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)297-312
Number of pages16
JournalPolitical Psychology
Volume38
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Apr 2017

Keywords

  • context
  • partisanship
  • social influence
  • socialization

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