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> Suggestive evidence is more consistent with peer socialization in college and long-run mechanisms than intentional efforts by faculty or curricula

> Suggestive evidence is more consistent with peer socialization in college and long-run mechanisms than intentional efforts by faculty or curricula So students are pressured to conform to local majority views and eventually internalise those views. Since said students are claimed to go on to wield disproportionate power in society, a policy proposal based on this work might be to introduce mechanism to counterbalance this pro-Democrat conditioning in higher education institutions.

enkid 4y ago
It's very easy to take these circumstances and give it a different spin. How about individuals are more receptive to ideas from their peers. In college they are exposed to more political ideologies, and they adopt the best ones, which happen to be "pro-Democrat." I don't actually know the mechanism, or if any of this is true, all I'm trying to point out is your framing is going to adjust the way you view the outcome. The way you frame this ("counterbalance this pro-Democrat conditioning") comes off as anti-democratic (political system, not party), and I'm really curious what your opinion is about social media that labels Republican disinformation (for example, birtherism, the 2020 election was stolen, etc.) because there has been a lot of research done to show social media amplifies those messages more than ones from the left. Does that require counterbalancing?
divided 4y ago
I feel like this was a tongue-in-cheek proposal, but why would we want to be the thought police here? These are, after all, students sharing their beliefs with other students. Conservatives have spent decades demonizing higher education as professor-led indoctrination centers. This would have the likely effect of fewer conservatives going to college and fewer conservative parents sending their children. So in that kind of environment, of course the campus becomes more and more liberal, and that’s the pool of people who later become professors, so a higher and higher percentage of professors are liberal. It’s sorta funny your proposal is to send more conservatives to college to counterbalance the liberals, but that’s a problem with decades-long conservative messaging and not anything the schools are doing. As an aside, there’s no real solution here for conservatives. Young people lean liberal. I grew up conservative in a conservative state, but college and debates with other students opened my eyes to other perspectives and I’ve shifted left ever since. Exactly like the findings in the study. The issue is growing up our beliefs are segregated along that urban/rural divide. Where I grew up, conservative kids were the majority. As soon as you mix people between that line (college), you will almost always have a majority liberal lean even in conservative states. Which as you noted will lead to conservatives becoming more liberal, as I did. Although I wouldn’t say pressured, at least in my case it was exposure to different ideas more than anything. I think that’s ultimately why conservatives demonize higher education as indoctrination. Not because it’s literal indoctrination like a church listening to a preacher, but because their kids raised conservative will meet kids raised liberal and it’s far more likely the conservative kids shift left than the others shift right. That spells disaster for a party.
oezi 4y ago
1.) Peer socialization isn't the same as peer pressure. If you come from a worker family background you are more likely to vote for labour parties even if your parents never 'pressure' you to vote for them. 2.) That democratic ideas are more popular for educated people or that rural areas lead to more republican attitudes shouldn't lead to the idea that we need policy to balance either. Rather a plurality of parties and votes would be something to strive for.
- admissionsguy 4y ago
  I think it's safe to conflate the two in this context. Someone going through the UC system is bound to experience very strong peer pressure to hide or change any conservative views may have held. As personal example, I had participated in research group meetings (at a much less left-leaning institution) that included quite vulgar Trump bashing sessions. It goes beyond universities and among the main reasons why Republican candidates usually underperform in polls [1]. > That democratic ideas are more popular for educated people or that rural areas lead to more republican attitudes shouldn't lead to the idea that we need policy to balance either. Rather a plurality of parties and votes would be something to strive for. Fair enough if not for the fact that university education is the gateway (as the OP article mentions) to positions of economic and political power. If very few people with conservative views pass through the social filter, the conservative part of the population becomes disenfranchised, which is bad for democracy. [1] "Second, suburban Republican college graduates are more likely to fear professional sanction for their views and are therefore self-censoring more, including in surveys." https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-outperform-the-polls-again-two-theories/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-out...
  - divided 4y ago
    Was the research group meeting about politics or did this randomly come up during them? And honestly it wouldn’t surprise me for college students to bash Biden as well. Why associate your political beliefs so strongly with one man? Surely someone saying Trump is a criminal business man says nothing about whether your belief on income taxes is legitimate. Not to say my college experience was typical, but it was largely apolitical. There were student groups for Republicans and Democrats and if you didn’t want anything to do with politics you didn’t have to. I didn’t spend my time discussing politics with my friends, my professors didn’t lecture about how much Bush sucks during their Operating Systems course, and my classmates weren’t bringing up how immoral the Iraq war was during the single philosophy course I took. I come from a conservative state, the school population would likely have only slightly leaned left. I didn’t feel pressured about my conservative beliefs. Looking back at the time, though, I shifted from center-right to center. Not because of being clubbed over the head in arguments, but from exposure to ideas and experiences and beliefs that my rural upbringing sheltered me from.
D13Fd 4y ago
Sure, if you want to discard the first amendment.

enkid 4y ago

It's very easy to take these circumstances and give it a different spin. How about individuals are more receptive to ideas from their peers. In college they are exposed to more political ideologies, and they adopt the best ones, which happen to be "pro-Democrat." I don't actually know the mechanism, or if any of this is true, all I'm trying to point out is your framing is going to adjust the way you view the outcome. The way you frame this ("counterbalance this pro-Democrat conditioning") comes off as anti-democratic (political system, not party), and I'm really curious what your opinion is about social media that labels Republican disinformation (for example, birtherism, the 2020 election was stolen, etc.) because there has been a lot of research done to show social media amplifies those messages more than ones from the left. Does that require counterbalancing?

divided 4y ago

I feel like this was a tongue-in-cheek proposal, but why would we want to be the thought police here? These are, after all, students sharing their beliefs with other students. Conservatives have spent decades demonizing higher education as professor-led indoctrination centers. This would have the likely effect of fewer conservatives going to college and fewer conservative parents sending their children. So in that kind of environment, of course the campus becomes more and more liberal, and that’s the pool of people who later become professors, so a higher and higher percentage of professors are liberal. It’s sorta funny your proposal is to send more conservatives to college to counterbalance the liberals, but that’s a problem with decades-long conservative messaging and not anything the schools are doing. As an aside, there’s no real solution here for conservatives. Young people lean liberal. I grew up conservative in a conservative state, but college and debates with other students opened my eyes to other perspectives and I’ve shifted left ever since. Exactly like the findings in the study. The issue is growing up our beliefs are segregated along that urban/rural divide. Where I grew up, conservative kids were the majority. As soon as you mix people between that line (college), you will almost always have a majority liberal lean even in conservative states. Which as you noted will lead to conservatives becoming more liberal, as I did. Although I wouldn’t say pressured, at least in my case it was exposure to different ideas more than anything. I think that’s ultimately why conservatives demonize higher education as indoctrination. Not because it’s literal indoctrination like a church listening to a preacher, but because their kids raised conservative will meet kids raised liberal and it’s far more likely the conservative kids shift left than the others shift right. That spells disaster for a party.

oezi 4y ago

1.) Peer socialization isn't the same as peer pressure. If you come from a worker family background you are more likely to vote for labour parties even if your parents never 'pressure' you to vote for them. 2.) That democratic ideas are more popular for educated people or that rural areas lead to more republican attitudes shouldn't lead to the idea that we need policy to balance either. Rather a plurality of parties and votes would be something to strive for.

admissionsguy 4y ago
I think it's safe to conflate the two in this context. Someone going through the UC system is bound to experience very strong peer pressure to hide or change any conservative views may have held. As personal example, I had participated in research group meetings (at a much less left-leaning institution) that included quite vulgar Trump bashing sessions. It goes beyond universities and among the main reasons why Republican candidates usually underperform in polls [1]. > That democratic ideas are more popular for educated people or that rural areas lead to more republican attitudes shouldn't lead to the idea that we need policy to balance either. Rather a plurality of parties and votes would be something to strive for. Fair enough if not for the fact that university education is the gateway (as the OP article mentions) to positions of economic and political power. If very few people with conservative views pass through the social filter, the conservative part of the population becomes disenfranchised, which is bad for democracy. [1] "Second, suburban Republican college graduates are more likely to fear professional sanction for their views and are therefore self-censoring more, including in surveys." https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-outperform-the-polls-again-two-theories/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-out...
- divided 4y ago
  Was the research group meeting about politics or did this randomly come up during them? And honestly it wouldn’t surprise me for college students to bash Biden as well. Why associate your political beliefs so strongly with one man? Surely someone saying Trump is a criminal business man says nothing about whether your belief on income taxes is legitimate. Not to say my college experience was typical, but it was largely apolitical. There were student groups for Republicans and Democrats and if you didn’t want anything to do with politics you didn’t have to. I didn’t spend my time discussing politics with my friends, my professors didn’t lecture about how much Bush sucks during their Operating Systems course, and my classmates weren’t bringing up how immoral the Iraq war was during the single philosophy course I took. I come from a conservative state, the school population would likely have only slightly leaned left. I didn’t feel pressured about my conservative beliefs. Looking back at the time, though, I shifted from center-right to center. Not because of being clubbed over the head in arguments, but from exposure to ideas and experiences and beliefs that my rural upbringing sheltered me from.

D13Fd 4y ago

Sure, if you want to discard the first amendment.