The Social Origins of Adult Political Behavior

Abstract

Political socialization research has focused on the role of parents, extracurricular activities, and the school curriculum during adolescence on shaping early adult political behavior (Beck & Jennings, 1982;Flanagan, Syvertsen, & Stout, 2007;Torney-Purta, Richardson, & Barber, 2004). However, no study to date has examined how properties of adolescents' social networks affect the development of adult political outcomes. Using social network analysis, we find that both a respondent's social integration in high school and his friends' perceptions of their own social integration affect the respondent's later political behavior as a young adult. Peer and network effects are at work in political socialization. This has important implications for our understanding of the development of social capital, political trust, and political participation, as well as our general understanding about how one's social network influences one's own attitudes and behavior.

Long-term consequences of youth volunteering: Voluntary versus involuntary service

“…For example, students are more likely to be civically engaged in young adulthood if they: (i) believe that their teachers care about students and treat them fairly, (ii) perceive themselves to be part of the school, and (iii) feel happy and safe at school (Duke et al, 2009; Flanagan et al, 2007). Additionally, social connectedness among peers in high school has been found to have a positive return on individuals’ later civic engagement (Settle et al, 2010). It has also been suggested that private schools may be more successful than public ones in providing a climate that fosters civic engagement, which is why attending a private school is positively correlated with later volunteering and voting (Dill, 2009).…”

Measuring Mutual Dependence between State Repressive Actions

“…In social network research (Wasserman and Faust, 1994), network models are constructed so that the nodes represent actors (e.g., friends, legislators) who are linked together by some relationship such as friendship, or cosponsorship Christakis and Fowler, 2008;Fowler, 2006;Settle, Bond and Levitt, 2011). Recently, international relations scholars have begun to employ methods from the social network tool kit in order to examine the relationships that structure the international state system (Brewington, Davis and Murdie, 2007;Corbetta, 2007;Maoz, 2009).…”

Yahtzee: An Anonymized Group Level Matching Procedure

“…An important question in the literature on voting, which we can now address with this data, is the extent to which voting behavior is correlated between socially-connected individuals [12]. Scholars have long known that turnout is strongly correlated between friends, family members and coworkers, even when controlling for socioeconomic status and selection effects [13]–[24]. Some of this correlation may result from the tendency to choose friends with a similar tendency to be engaged in politics (“homophily”), and some of it may result from a tendency for socially-connected individuals to affect each other's political behavior (“influence”), but both are important phenomena and establishing a correlation is the first step in determining whether either exists [25].…”