How are an individual’s political values formed?

Human beings have attitudes, behaviors, habits, stereotypes, and values. And somehow these mental attributes are developed or acquired in the course of normal human social life. But how, when, and with what results does this process work? And how persistent are a set of attitudes and values once established in the individual?

The topic here is a deeply interesting question — what forms us as the adult human beings with values and a moral framework that we eventually become? For the past fifty years political scientists and social psychologists have discussed a theory of the formation of political attitudes and values that emphasizes the “impressionable years”. This theory holds that children are fairly fluid in their values and political affinities, and that young people are most open to new values and ideas in the years between 17 and 25 — essentially the years of a traditional university education. And there seems to be survey evidence supporting the idea that the formative events of that period in a given person’s life become bedrock to their political identities, with relatively little change in later years.

David Sears is one of the early founders of this approach. He presented some of his ideas as early as 1975, and in 1983 he describes the “impressionable years” hypothesis in these terms:

A third view could be termed the impressionable years viewpoint, which suggests that any dispositions are unusually vulnerable in late adolescence and early adulthood, given strong enough pressure to change. In other stages of life, people are resistant to change, and of course, even in the most vulnerable life stage, they would not change in the absence of substantial pressure to change. At all ages, the content of the disposition is irrelevant. A specific and particularly interesting instance of the impressionable years hypothesis is the generational effect. This occurs when a sizable number of those in the supposedly impressionable life stage (late adolescence and earlly adulthood) are subjected to a common massive pressure to change on some particular issue, for example, when the nation is engaged in an unpopular war. It presumably yields interactions of birth cohort and dispositional content. The final viewpoint is persistence, which suggests that the residues of early (preadult) socialization are relatively immune to change in later years. This asserts a simple main effect of age, with dispositions acquired primarily in the preadult years. (“The Persistence of Early Political Predispositions: The Roles of Attitude Object and Life Stage”, Wheeler and Shaver, Review of Personality and Social Psychology, 1983: 81-82)

This theory suggests that the ambient political and cultural environment of one’s “impressionable years” (18-25) represents a powerful influence upon his or her lifetime political attitudes and values. The theory has been subjected to some rigorous quantitative efforts at empirical evaluation, with some evidence supporting its accuracy. Especially interesting is Krosnick and Alwin, “Aging and Susceptibility to Attitude Change” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [1989] 57: 3 : 416-425). They found a reasonable level of support for the impressionable-years hypothesis. Here is their abstract:

Two hypotheses about the relation between age and susceptibility to attitude change were tested. The impressionable years hypothesis proposes that individuals are highly susceptible to attitude change during late adolescence and early adulthood and that susceptibility drops precipitously immediately thereafter and remains low throughout the rest of the life cycle. The increasing persistence hypothesis proposes that people become gradually more resistant to change throughout their lives. Structural equation models were applied to data from the 1956-1960,1972-1976, and 1980 National Election Panel Studies in order to estimate the stability of political attitudes and unreliability in measures of them. The results support the impressionable years hypothesis and disconfirm the increasing persistence hypothesis. A decrease in the over-time consistency of attitude reports among 66- to 83-year-olds was found to be due to increased random measurement error in their reports, not to increased attitude change.

For the Boomer generation (or the middle part of it anyway), the impressionable years were 1966-1974 or thereabouts. Major events during the period? Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Major unrest along racial lines occurred in dozens of cities in the US, including Chicago, Newark, and Los Angeles. The Kerner Commission report on urban unrest was released in 1968. The war in Vietnam became more and more divisive for American young people. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act had been enacted in 1964 and 1965. Large demonstrations took place in Chicago in 1968 during the Democratic Convention. The first Moon landing took place in 1969. The feminist movement became a powerful national voice for equality in 1970 or so. The Watergate scandal and President Nixon’s resignation took place in 1972 and 1974. Tumult, large social protest movements, corrupt politicians, a seemingly “no-exit” war in Vietnam — the impressionable years for men and women born around 1950 were very different from those of people born fifteen years earlier or fifteen years later. With only one or two exceptions, these events helped to create habits of mind that counseled resistance, the power of public opposition to injustice, and the particular evils of American racism.

How does the impressionable-years theory contribute to the question of the rise of far-right attitudes and values (racism, xenophobia, receptivity to an authoritarian leader, male supremacy) among some young American and European men in the 2010s and forward? Were there features of life for young men and preadults in the period of roughly 1995-2010 that would explain the eruption of racist and authoritarian attitudes in the cohort coming of age during those years?

Two large factors are often mentioned. First is the prominence of racist and extremist social media influencers who have captured sizable audience of young men to subscribe to their hateful conspiracy theories. Nick Fuentes is just one example. But this isn’t entirely helpful; aren’t these right-wing entrepreneurs responding to the demand for hate created by an emerging generation rather than creating it? And second is the drumbeat of “anti-woke” impulses, trolling and “owning the libs”, and deliberately flouting norms like “don’t admire the Nazis”, “don’t deny the Holocaust”, or “don’t use the language of vile racism” in political discourse. (This is reflected in the recent scandals of encrypted chats by young GOP activists revealed in fall 2025.) Some of this extends back to the reckless language of conservative activists like Pat Buchanan and the John Birch Society (link), whose ranting took place before many of these young men were born. These “anti-woke” thrusts seen to resonate with this segment of young conservative men. Offending people is the goal, not the unfortunate side effect. And the “manosphere” is where it percolates in social media posts, game chats, Youtube videos, and encrypted Telegram chat rooms. But here again — did the John Birch Society and the Tea Party lay the ground for the radical far-right attitudes of one segment of Gen Z, or do we need to look for other causes that more directly impacted the lives of these young people?

The rise of the political attitudes of far-right extremism among young people is quite dangerous for our democracy, and dangerous for the groups who wind up being the objects of the vitriol. The language and demonstration of racist and neo-nazi social-political attitudes reflected in the “Unite the Right” riots in Charlottesville in 2017 speaks for itself: this is a movement based on white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and nostalgia for “strong leaders” who can fight for these values. And Trump, his closest allies, and his MAGA movement seem to encourage this hate-based ideological world. Stephen Miller is a true believer and Donald Trump has a long history of racist statements and ridicule. 

There is another complication as well: the far-right extremist faction of this age group is virulent and uninhibited; but it is a minority of its own generation. There are other “political attitude groups” in the same generation whose values are quite different — egalitarian, anti-racist, and affirmative of the value of an inclusive multicultural democracy. And, of course, there is the large group of young people who are disaffected from existing political institutions in the United Staes, frustrated by diminished opportunities for themselves and others, but inclined to turn away from any kind of political activism at all. They are “disaffected and disinvolved”. So the “impressionable years” hypothesis has a bit of a problem here as well: how is it that the experience world of the United States for young people in the period 1995-2010 gave rise to such different families of political attitudes among its young people? Part of the answer probably lies with the fact that the experiences of daily life differ widely across social and economic classes in the United States, across regions of the country, and across racial lines. So we might hypothesize that young men in Hamtramck, Michigan whose childhood reflected persistent deprivation; who did not find opportunities in high school that led either to better-paying job opportunities or to higher education; and who developed a rising level of resentment when they visited Somerset Mall in Oakland County for the standard of living that would never be theirs might develop political attitudes that highlighted resentment, disassociation from political loyalties, and an openness to antagonism to other ethnic and racial groups.

This topic relates to the questions raised by Desante and Smith in Racial Stasis (link), who focus on whether there has been substantial generational change on the topic of racial attitudes and prejudice since the 1960s.

Group identities and inclusive multicultural democracy

The United States is a multicultural democracy. This is simply an empirical fact; the country is a democracy (imperfect by many important measures); and it is multiracial, multi-ethnic, and multi-national. So what is involved in helping bring about a transition to an “inclusive” multicultural democracy — a social and political order embodying fundamental equality across all groups, developing a political psychology of mutual respect for the dignity and freedoms of members of other groups, and creating an environment of reasonably harmonious social and political life across and within different communities?

Jack Citrin and David Sears address some of these questions in American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism (2014). The book is a notable contribution in many dimensions, but of special interest to the topic of inclusive democracy is their effort to gain empirical insight into the “ethnic” or group identities of the groups that make up our population, and some ideas about the social processes that contribute to the formation of those identities. Here is how they characterize social identities:

Social identities refer to the dimensions of one’s self-concept defined by perceptions of similarity with some people and difference from others. They develop because people categorize themselves and others as belonging to groups and pursue their goals through membership in these groups. They have political relevance because they channel feelings of mutuality, obligation, and antagonism, delineating the contours of one’s willingness to help others as well as the boundaries of support for policies allocating resources based on group membership. Indeed, the intimate connection between the personal and the social bases of self-regard becomes clear when one recalls how quickly an insult to the dignitity of one’s group can trigger ethnic violence. (Citrin and Sears 2014: 31)

A person’s social identity may depend on many different kinds of personal characteristics: religion (evangelical vs. Protestant vs. Muslim), gender (M, F, X), region (Midwestern vs. South vs. Long Island), or occupation (blue collar, white collar, service). But Citrin and Sears underline the particular importance of racial and ethnic affiliations in U.S. social and political life.

This approach views racial and ethnic minorities as having especially strong ethnic identities, a sense of common fate with fellow group members, and perceptions of discrimination against their own group. These psychological foundations, we suggest, underlie the normative precepts of identity politics and multiculturalist ideology, particularly resonating with its emphasis on privileging ethnicity as a primary social identity. (19)

And they draw special attention to the relatively unique features of African-American identity in the United States, which they refer to as “black exceptionalism”:

Third, the black exceptionalism model hypothesizes that African Americans have always faced a uniquely powerful color line, one that is not completely impermeable but that continues to be difficult to crack. Despite their linguistic assimilation and their significant and ongoing contributions to a common popular culture, many blacks are excluded by the legacy of the past from the level of integration into the mainstream that voluntary immigrant groups have undergone, and, we argue, are continuing to undergo. Indeed, of all the major ethnic and racial groups blacks have, on average, by far the strongest levels of aggrieved ethnic group consciousness. Young blacks are especially likely to have strong group consciousness, suggesting enduring obstacles to interethnic cooperation. (22)

The black exceptionalism perspective argues that African Americans remain subjectd to uniquely high levels of prejudice and discrimination. Key to this view is the notion of the inertial power of history. Even as laws change, fundamental social practices and the mentalities of ordinary people typically follow only slowly, as in the classic contrast of “stateways” with “folkways.” The residues of racial prejudice in the behavior and attitudes of ordinary Americans have persisted long after the Emancipation Proclamation and 1960s-era civil rights legislation eliminated formalized racial inequality from the law books. (35)

It is important to reflect on these last two points. The persistence of racial prejudice and discrimination in US society is evident. There is indeed a “uniquely powerful color line” in the US. Likewise, the consequent social, economic, and political disparities for African American individuals and families are well-documented, whether we consider health status, family wealth, or educational opportunities. Black exceptionalism is not simply a perspective; it is a well understood historical reality (though a reality that the Trump administration is working very hard to conceal). (Here is an earlier post on this topic.)

In this book, and the research supporting it, Citrin and Sears are primarily interested in a problem that is somewhat distinct from the question of white racial attitudes. They are interested in the question of “national identity” in the context of multiple “ethnic or racial identities”, which they regard as the key issue raised by multiculturalism. Does the fact that Alice identifies as an African American woman make her less likely to have a strong affinity with the nation as a whole? Is she less “patriotic” than a typical member of another ethnic group? Is there a process of “assimilation” through which local identities (“Polish-American”, “Cuban-American”) subside in favor of a composite “American” identity? (For that matter, is this part of the hysterical reaction offered to the Bad Bunny halftime show by the right?)

On this orientation, the question raised by American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism is whether specific ethnic and racial identities are compatible with an overarching “civic” or “national” identity. They consider three broad frameworks: cosmopolitan liberalism, soft multiculturalism, and hard multiculturalism. The question of whether levels of “racial and ethnic antagonism” have changed in various groups is secondary. In fact, the topic of generational change in racial attitudes — the question of whether Millennials are less racist than Boomers — is not addressed here directly at all. And yet Sears is himself one of the chief architects of the “symbolic racism” school of thought — the idea that the key change between generations has been the replacement of “old-fashioned biological racism” by a more “color-blind” racism that nonetheless perpetuates antagonism and fear by whites of African Americans.

So how are we to move beyond this “uniquely powerful color line”? Racism is a reality that is conveyed through individual actions and institutional effects. Part of progressive change must take the form of change of attitudes and culture on the part of white people, and of young people in particular. So it is especially important to have empirical and sociological data about the evolution of white racial attitudes since 1950. How have white attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes about African American people changed during these decades? Has there been generational change? The “impressionable years” hypothesis—which suggests that individuals are highly susceptible to attitude change during late adolescence and early adulthood, and then “crystallize” and remain stable for the rest of their lives—is a cornerstone of some theories of political socialization (Krosnick and Alwin, “Aging and susceptibility to attitude change”). Did the dramatic moments and struggles of the civil rights movement change the way that young white people thought about their black compatriots? (The revolution was televised!) Did the Obama presidency or the Black Lives Movement move the dial? Are we a less racist society today when it comes to attitudes, stereotypes, and expectations? The arguments offered by DeSante and Smith in Racial Stasis suggest — not very much (link). And Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2022) fills in many of the blanks in Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. We need to have a new surge of practical thinking about how a more genuinely inclusive and respectful “culture of multiculturalism” will come about.