hey there and welcome back to heimlich's
history now i've been going through unit
4 of the ap government curriculum and in
this video that means it's time to talk
about how our political beliefs change
as a result of generational and life
cycle effects so if you're ready to get
them brain cows milked then let's get to
it so in this video here is what we're
trying to do explain how cultural
factors influence political attitudes
and socialization if you saw the last
video we talked about the six main
factors that influenced the way we come
to hold differing political opinions and
the term for that is political
socialization and we mentioned families
schools peers media civic and religious
organizations and globalization all of
those factors affect the kinds of
political opinions that we hold so now
let's talk about another factor that
influences political ideology namely a
person's generation and we'll talk about
life cycle effects which can cause a
person to change or modify his or her
political opinions so let's begin with
generational effects this basically
means that a person's voting behavior
and political ideology is very much
influenced by the generation into which
they're born so let's briefly consider
four major generations that are
consistently analyzed by political
scientists namely the silent generation
baby boomers generation x and
millennials now before i get into it i
should mention that everything i'm about
to say here is a generalization and that
in reality there is great variance of
voting behavior and political ideology
in each generation but here we're only
focusing on generalizations that can be
made so let's start with the silent
generation and this includes folks that
were born before 1945. they came of age
during the great depression in world war
ii and many of them were young adults
during the age of conformity during the
1950s and as such they tend to have a
high value on religious belief in church
attendance furthermore many folks of the
silent generation adhered to a social
order that attached rigid gender roles
to men and women thus the folks in this
generation are generally conservative so
this leaning led some of them to oppose
the great cultural upheaval in the 1960s
with the counter-culture movement of the
women's rights movement and the gay
liberation movement after all these
movements tore apart the cultural fabric
which these silence grew up with now
when it comes to foreign policy these
people grew up in the midst of the cold
war and thus generally supported
american intervention abroad in order to
stop the spread of communism notably in
the vietnam war also in general the
silent generation consistently votes for
candidates who style themselves as tough
on crime and terrorist which is
generally a conservative position and
one thing this generation can very much
not understand is the push to legalize
marijuana now why on god's green earth
would you hippies want to legalize that
wacky tobacco anyway as a group senior
citizens vote in higher numbers than any
other group okay now let's shift and
talk about baby boomers these are folks
who were born after world war ii up till
about the mid-60s the prosperity of the
50s combined with men and women
returning home from war meant that
people were making babies like mad and
so this is a huge generation they came
of age during the tumultuous 60s and
thus they learned to appreciate the
changes better than their parents and
that meant they were slightly more
liberal as a whole than the silent
generation though they still reliably
voted conservative then came generation
x who were born between the mid 60s and
1980s these were folks who grew up with
lots of divorce and were the first to
really use the internet as a generation
as a group they were slightly more
liberal than their parents in the baby
boomer generation partly because they're
more ethnically diverse than either of
the two previous generations that i've
spoken about then we get to the
millennials who were born in the period
1981 to 1986 and this group is even more
liberal than any of the previous
generations that i've mentioned
millennials are more ethnically diverse
than exers were which is to say
according to pew research about 40 of
this group is not white which is huge
compared to the silent generation which
was 79 white as a result of this
millennials have leaned hard into the
liberal policies of the democratic party
and they're more likely than not to
believe that racial discrimination plays
a big role in society they're more
favorable towards immigrants than the
previous generation and in general they
are more favorable towards what could be
considered more socialist policies with
significant government intervention now
i spent all that time explaining some of
these generational characteristics to
you to make this point the four
generations of today's adults fit into a
pretty tidy political pattern the older
you are the more likely you are
conservative and the younger you are the
more likely you are liberal since the
silent generation each succeeding
generation has become more liberal than
their parents and a good example of this
is a poll from pew research that
compared each generation's opinion on
conservative president donald trump's
performance you can see here that 46
percent of the conservative silent
generation approved 44 of boomers 36
percent of extras and 20 of millennials
said that trump was doing a good job so
classified into groups the four adult
generations range from conservative to
liberal and depending on what generation
you find yourself in you are more likely
than not to agree with this group's
political affinities so all that to say
generational effects can determine how
you think about politics but there are
also life cycle effects that contribute
to political socialization as well and
the idea here is that whatever stage of
life a person is in will contribute to
their political beliefs and behavior for
example if you were 18 years old and
casting your first vote during the 2020
presidential primaries you might have
been very attracted to a candidate like
bernie sanders who ran on a platform of
free college tuition at that stage in
your life that matters a lot to you
especially since college has gotten so
expensive and you're not interested in
paying for your ceramics degree until
you're 73 but those in the silent
generation who are not going to college
and have adult children and
grandchildren they don't care as much
about that and they're thinking like
yeah somebody has to pay for all of that
so they would in general be less
attracted to that proposal because of
where they are in their life but then
maybe you get married and you have kids
and at that stage in your life cycle
you're less interested in free college
tuition than you are in pre-k
legislation or lower taxes so you can
better care for your family and those
commitments might lead you to change
your voting behavior so the point is
political socialization happens as a
result of your generational membership
and it can change over time as you
progress through different stages of
life okay thanks for watching click
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