Forming Our Own Political Views

Most people are exposed to the same principals and agents of political socialization. Families spread values that support political authorities and can heavily contribute to children's initial political ideological views, or party preferences. Families influence political knowledge and identification depending on variables such as family demographics, life cycle, parenting style, parental level of political skepticism and frequency of political discussions. Demographics such as gender and age also attribute to political socialization. School is another agent of political socialization. Spending numerous years in school, children in the United States are taught and reinforced a view of the world that their text books tell them to trust. Through primary, secondary and high schools, students are taught key principles such as individual rights and property, personal responsibility and duty to their nation. Another is mass media. Mass media is not only a source of political information; it is an influence on political values and beliefs. Various media outlets, through news coverage and late-night programs, provide different partisan policy stances that are associated with political participation. Religions, beliefs, and practices play a role in political opinion formation and political participation. The perspective offered by religious institutions shape judgement regarding public policy, and political decision

I have not had much interest in politics until recently. Before last year, I did not care for anything related to politics; I thought that it was all boring and had little to no affect on me on a personal level. I am more interested in politics nowadays. I know better now that it does affect me and I should care about it. I had learned about the concepts of political socialization, party identification, political tolerance, political trust, political efficacy in government class and how they affect my political beliefs. My personal political belief has been shaped into what it is today and is still being shaped because of those six concepts.

I had my boyfriend who is a 20-year-old junior here at TCU take the Ideology Quiz. He expected, like myself, to be moderately conservative, and interestingly enough he also received the same results as I did on my quiz. He like me and 13% of the population is a “Young Outsider.” He also agreed that the exam was very extreme and as he was taking it he said that he felt that it was making him “sound more liberal than conservative.” We differed in some opinions on government performance, social values & race, and Foreign Policy & Privacy. Even within those categories we only differed on one or two questions. So I would say our political ideology is very similar. I also decided to ask my mom to take the quiz just so see how her results differed from mine. Her results were “Steadfast Conservative,” which didn’t surprise me at all. As we talked about in class, usually kids have very similar ideologies as their parents, although that is not always the case. Although I am more conservative than liberal, I believe because of my age and generation I also have some liberal ideologies which is why my mother and I do not have the same

There are three political ideologies that are addressed by Cullen and Gilbert (2012). The first one is the conservative ideology. Conservatives place their main emphasis on traditional values, and tend to have issues when someone tries to change tradition. According to conservatives, maintaining social order is an important way to protect society as a whole. Individuals are on their own when it comes to the ideology of conservatives. They have the assumption that individuals are responsible for their own actions, good or bad. Conservatives will protect innocent citizens, but will focus on the punishment of guilty one rather than rehabilitation.

A person’s ideology is influenced by their socialisation, mine was heavily influenced by my family.

As society rapidly changes with an influx of new ideas and issues, studying the college educated and those who are not will help evaluate behaviors and attitudes towards the government, ultimately, clearing the way to adaption into a modern society that perhaps offer remedies of educational and voting discrepancies or even close the gaps between political ideology or identification. Hence, this paper proposes the research question: How does education level influence political party identification.

There are many influences on my political beliefs and actions. There are four main areas define who I am politically. Those areas are the Environment, Agents of Political Socialization, Personal Characteristics, Personality and Human Nature.

Political socialization begins early on in life and is an ongoing process affecting individuals throughout. It is how people eventually identify personal beliefs and expectations in American politics. These political views can include our level of patriotism, faith in the democratic system, standards by which we hold governing bodies, and opinions regarding public policies. From the playground to the classroom, the office to the dinner table, much of our lives affect our political opinions. The most easily identified agents of this are family, schooling, peers, mass media, political parties and religious influences. Furthermore, these means indoctrinate us in the political society through four basic

Although the American political culture contains numerous core ideals and values as all American share different views, the vast majority of people support general ideas including equality, liberty, and order. America guarantees each individual political equality, allowing each individual to have their own personal beliefs within the political sphere. However, the environment, combined with the media, has a powerful influence on the views Americans chose to hold. Different generations live through different experiences which significantly shapes the thinking of individuals. Therefore, political beliefs and ideologies form due to the resolutions regarding different conflicts. Even though there seems to be many opposing viewpoints, the American

From 1972 to 2004, Abramowitz points out that the correlation between ideology and party identification rose from .32 to .63 showing an increase over time from a more moderate stance to a more polarized one in the engaged electorate. In the 1984 to 2004 ANES, the least interested and least informed Americans were shown to be in the middle of the liberal-conservative spectrum, while the more informed and active constituents were more likely to be more polarized. From the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) data, Abramowitz states that even Independents leaned more liberal or conservative than weak Democrats or weak Republicans respectively. Again, nonvoters made up forty-one percent of the center of the distribution affirming that only the nonvoters are non-ideological and non-polarized. In regards to social groups, Abramowitz concluded that religious commitment mattered more than social status, but overall, voter’s ideological beliefs made a greater impact on party loyalty than being part of any social

Political socialization often times begins during childhood; most parents do not consciously indoctrinate their children into partisanship, but they are nevertheless the main teachers of political attitudes. This early identification, according to Hershey, takes hold before children have much information as to what the parties

Have you ever thought about why you have the political beliefs and values you do? Where did they come from? Are they simply your own ideas and experiences or have you been influenced by others in your thinking? This process by which individuals acquire their political beliefs and attitudes is called political socialization. In another words, Political socialization is a concept where the study of the developmental processes by which children and adolescents acquire political cognition, attitudes and behaviors. What people think and how they come to think it is of critical importance to the stability of the government. The beliefs and values of the people are the basis for a society's political culture and that culture defines the

Political preferences seem an obvious topic of research, as the findings of such research are highly sought after. As such any research relating to what motivates political orientation would be very useful. For this reason a great deal of research into the relationship between moral foundation and political orientation has been done in recent years.

Different ideologies tend to appeal to different demographic characteristics such as gender, class, race, etc. because a person’s background will affect which system of ideas they most closely align with. Liberalism and conservatism, for example, are ideologies that regularly contradict each other, because they appeal to different demographics based upon many factors such as class, race, gender, religion, etc. The general worldview of liberalism is that people have individual rights and liberty, while promoting progress. On the other hand, conservatism places greater importance of keeping tradition and strict regulation of rules. In determining the extent of appeal to different demographics, one must assess the ways in which both ideologies

     Upon taking the “Worlds smallest Political quiz” online, the website told me that I was a Centrist. A Centrist is a person who favors selective political involvement and practical solutions to modern problems. A Centrist tends to keep an open mind on new issues and prefers capitalism to work out economic problems if at all possible. Although I was a centrist I was on the boarder line of being a right wing conservative who would like to see a capitalistic society and little government intervention. The next quiz was an ideology quiz. This quiz told me that I also tended towards the conservative side. I apparently also would like to see order in society instead of equality. These two tests showed similar results in that both said I was more closely related to a conservative than a liberal. The “Worlds smallest Political Quiz” showed the national results and percentages of those who have previously taken the test. The majority of people who take the quiz, 37.7% are liberals. The second most popular grouping is Centrist at 29 %. The ideology quiz stated that the average of all those who take this quiz are liberal as well.