Social Trends in American Life by Marsden Peter V.;

Social Trends in American Life by Marsden Peter V.;

Author:Marsden, Peter V.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press


For nine institutions (banks/finance, education, executive branch, organized labor, medicine, Supreme Court, scientific community, Congress, and military) the most recent cohort has the greatest confidence, while the earliest cohort is most confident in the remaining four (major companies, organized religion, press, and television). The decline and subsequent reversal across cohorts is sometimes deep and other times shallow. The decline for banks/finance, organized religion, and military was over 10 percentage points, while the recovery was over 10 points for banks/finance, education, organized labor, medicine, Supreme Court, scientific community, and military. The largest swings (summing absolute declines and rises across cohorts) were for banks/finance (45.9 points), military (42.8 points), education (26.1 points), and organized religion (26.0). Without these recoveries among recent cohorts, the over- time declines in confidence discussed above would have been much deeper and more consistent. The recoveries have not generally driven confidence upward, since relatively optimistic new cohorts have been replacing similarly positive early generations. If entering cohorts continue to be relatively confident, future cohort turnover will generate rising confidence as the most pessimistic middle cohorts begin to age out.

We next consider within- cohort trends for the four institutions with the largest cohort reversals. (For full details and all 13 institutions see Smith [2008a].) For banks/finance confidence dropped uniformly within cohorts from 1974 to 1984. It continued to decline for the youngest cohorts from 1984 to 1994, but rose for the older cohorts. From 1994 to 2004 it rose for all cohorts. Also of note is that each entering cohort has more confidence in banks/finance than the preceding new cohort (rising from 26.6% to 47.0%). The pattern for the military is very similar to that for banks/finance, but with even larger gains within cohorts and across entering cohorts. Confidence in education drops within all cohorts from 1974 to 1984, reverses direction in a couple of cohorts in 1984–1994, and then rises for all but one cohort in 1994–2004. Confidence in education for entering cohorts, however, changes little over time. For organized religion, the cohort pattern described for education is notably weaker. Declines occur for most cohorts, with only some reversal among the earlier cohorts in 1994–2004.

In contrast to these patterns, each entering cohort has less confidence than the preceding one in the two media institutions. This is a major factor contributing to both the greater depth and the linearity of the media trends.



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