As you know, the old and young generations have always clashed over values. Typically, these conflicts result from younger people being more liberal and older people more conservative.
Whereas, older people were also more liberal when they were younger than they are now. When young people get older, they will be considered conservative by the youth of that period. So what explains the age factor in conservatism, and why do people become more authoritarian and rigid as they get older?
Of course, this situation is not unique to us. For example, in the Brexit elections in the UK, while young people supported staying in the European Union, most of their parents did not.
Young people, aware that staying in the European Union is good for the UK, commented on the result: “Brexit is the middle finger of the boomers to the youth!” summarized the situation.
Well, after all, young people will be affected by this decision for an average of 69 years, while the elderly will be affected for 16 years. So what happened again happened to the Y and Z generation.
The motivation of those who support leaving Brexit; nationalist sentiments were conservative reasons, such as the desire for self-determination. They were also more easily affected by misinformation by politicians.
So why are older people usually more conservative? Will today’s youth face a similar fate when they get old?
There are two main factors affecting this situation: The conditions at the time of their personality formation and the physical disadvantages of aging. Scientists have found evidence to suggest that both effects come into play.
There is no doubt that the period in which we are born is very important in shaping our worldview. For example, if you were born in the 1800s, you might have thought that slavery was normal at that time. If you had been born in the Middle Ages, you could easily have believed that women were witches and let them be burned.
Today, there are some differences of opinion between generations, such as gay rights and religious beliefs. For example, if you find it normal to eat animals today and continue to find it normal when you get older, perhaps you will be viewed as a bigot by young people (This is just an approximate example).
In other words, we have a different perception compared to the period we grew up in. This affects even our voting decisions. We can say that the main reason why the elderly are more conservative is that they carry the traces of their early political experiences.
Let’s move on to the effects of the second factor: Of course, aging affects our brain; So, does being conservative include it?
An interesting finding was found in a study conducted on 20,000 elderly Germans in 2011. It has been determined that the level of openness to new experiences of Germans participating in the survey has decreased over the years.
Brent Donnellan, professor of psychology at Texas A&M University and one of the authors of this study; “If you’re a very liberal 40-year-old, you’ll likely be quite liberal at 60, but you’ll still be a liberal 60-year-old compared to other 60-year-olds, but less liberal compared to a 25-year-old.” He actually sums up the situation by saying.
This study conducted in Germany is not a long-term and longitudinal study; however, other studies suggest that these age-related changes are the same in different countries, suggesting that there may be an underlying cause.
A 2009 study compared age, political tendencies and personality in Belgium and Poland (two countries with very different post-World War II histories) and found the same pattern. These studies support each other.
Are older people more likely to be biased than younger people?
Bill von Hippel, a psychologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, found an interesting situation in his experiments and studies on the subject.
Von Hippel has seen that older people often want to rein in their preconceived notions but are literally unable to control themselves, and suspects this is the result of brain deterioration with aging.
Von Hippel says, “Many studies show that older adults lose their ability to inhibit unwanted thoughts. (…) Aging makes many people more open-minded and more negatively prone to libertarian thinking.” says.
Thinking of other people in a more inclusive way requires mental effort—executive control of the frontal lobes of the brain, as von Hippel noted in his research. As we age and the ability of our frontal lobes weakens, we may lose our ability to block stereotypes, whatever our intentions.
Von Hippel has shown this in several experiments. He found that the elderly showed higher levels of prejudice in the tests. He also found that older people were more likely to remember stereotypical information from events.
Additionally, there is some unpublished data showing that older people are more angry and argumentative later in the day; This suggests that older people’s ability to control their thoughts diminishes throughout the day. So that’s why the old folks said “don’t make a noise, I’ll cut your ball” as a kid.
Conservative means “conservative”. As they get older, they obviously tend to close themselves off to innovations as an expression of their need for closure.
Of course, each individual is unique to some extent, developmental patterns of change and stability in personality and political orientation will never be the same for two individuals.
An older person may also be much more liberal than a younger person, but if he were young at this time, he probably wouldn’t find his old self liberal enough. Scientific research shows us this.
50805
