Americans’ attitudes and behaviors have become more liberal overall in the past 50 years and have taken a decidedly liberal tilt since the 1990s, shows a new analysis of public opinion data.<\/p>\n
Americans are substantially more liberal on matters of gender, sexuality, race, and personal liberty than they were in the 1970s. However, this trend may be masked by static views on a few hot-button issues\u2014which also predict voter behavior\u2014such as gun ownership, abortion, taxes, and law enforcement, all of which changed little over the last half century.<\/p>\n
“America is a more liberal country now than it was 50 years ago,” says Michael Hout, a New York University sociologist and the author of the study, which appears in Public Opinion Quarterly<\/em><\/a>. “But its politics do not reflect this because polarizing<\/a> attitudes and behaviors changed less than either values or lifestyles.”<\/p>\n
Moreover, each cohort itself became more liberal during the studied period. Within cohorts, recent measurements\u2014those within the last decade\u2014were more liberal than in last three decades of the 20th century in 48% of the variables and more conservative in only 11% (Note: The rest of the variables either had no political lean [e.g., the importance of getting along with coworkers] or did not change [e.g., views on abortion<\/a> and gun control]).<\/p>\n
Hout adds that some of the biggest changes had little to do with political ideology<\/a>. For example, Americans of all political views read newspapers less compared to 50 years ago\u2014both between and within cohorts. In fact, newspaper reading dropped continuously and almost linearly from the 1925 cohort to the most recent (1996 onward) while within cohorts newspaper readership changed little until the millennium, then declined precipitously from 2000 to 2018.<\/p>\n
The study was supported, in part, by grants from the National 糖心视频 Foundation.<\/p>\n
Source: NYU <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"