Since the average Fox viewer is a 67 year old male, it's a darn good thing for the braintrust over at GOP TV that this demographic is not only solidly conservative, but they grow more conservative as time goes on.
Right?
84 year old Dorli Rainey, for one, would tell Fox that they're full of beans. And maybe she's not the only one.
Nick Dangelis, a sociologist and gerontologist at the University of Vermont in Burlington has this to say:
Pigeonholing older people into these rigid attitude boxes or conservative boxes is not a good idea. Rather, when they were born, what experiences they had growing up, as well as political, social and economic events have a lot to do with how people behave Our results are showing that these have profound effects.
Apparently, part of the problem with most studies of this issue is that an older person's belief system isn't actually compared to what they thought and felt when they were in their 20's. It's obviously very difficult to do this, but the default consclusion is that the test subject held more liberal views when younger - a conclusion that seems to be often incorrect.
Thinks war is obsolete.
Researchers writing in the American Psychological Review attempted to compare historical age-matched surveys dating back 40 years ago. They would, for example, take data from 25yo participants in a survey performed in 1972, and compare it to data from 35yo respondents surveyed in 1982. The problem with this model is that researchers weren't comparing the same people during those years.
What's still missing, though, are long-term studies that actually follow individuals over time to see how their beliefs change.
Wishes Kucinich would consider primarying Obama from the Left.
So researches have turned to complicated computer models and microdata analysis. The process researchers are now working on is described as:
. . . using complicated statistics to tease apart the effects of getting older from the effects of being a certain age at a certain moment in time.
Lobbies DC for reproductive rights. Also thinks Metallica is the bomb.
It's a tedious study, and preliminary results are just beginning to emerge. And it's complex - seniors tend to grow into a broad belief set that's not entirely uniform. They tend, for example, to become more liberal in their attitudes towards subordinate demographic groups, but more conservative about their civil liberties.
Is perfectly fine with kids on her lawn.
The explanation? Well, by the time you're 72, you've personally experienced many members of those subordinate groups, and probably found more similarities than differences. You've also seen government administrations from Nixon on try to cheat you out of your constitutional civil rights, and this also makes a lasting impression. Your complex belief system is borne out of your vast years of personal experience.
Advocates for the legalization of . . . weekend voting.
Overall? Karl Pillemer, a sociologist and gerontologist at Cornell University, who conducted more than 1,000 in-depth interviews with seniors for his book, puts it this way:
[F]lexibility often trumps rigidity. Older people said very surprising things about being old. One of those things was that old age was a quest for adventure and a time to try new things. Many older people describe themselves as feeling freer or clearer.
Late in life, apparently, people often become more open, more tolerant, and more appreciative of compassion. Even if they started out conservative, they may become less extreme in their conservatism.
Many describe themselves as open to ideas or open to new ways of thinking, and they come back to a sense of much greater tolerance for different points of view. I had someone say, 'I used to think I was always right, but now that I'm 80, I'm not so sure I'm always right.'
Bonus Mythbuster
Winston Churchill once said, "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." Right? Also not correct - as Wikiquotes has researched.
"Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of [his wife] Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?" - Historian Paul Addison, Edinburgh University