Abstract
This study investigated parental socialization of adolescent political reasoning from a Vygotskian cognitive socialization perspective. Discussions between mothers and their adolescent sons or daughters were examined using a transactive dialogue system and were related to the adolescent's age and gender and to family parenting style. These discussions were predicted to influence the complexity of adolescents' subsequent reasoning about political issues. As hypothesized, older adolescents showed more complexity of political reasoning on a pretest than did younger adolescents. Mothers used more sophisticated transacts with sons than with daughters in the discussions. As well, older female adolescents used more higher level operational transacts than did younger females. This predicted developmental trend did not occur for males. Also as predicted, authoritative family styles were linked to greater complexity of adolescent political reasoning on the pretest, but there was no evidence that the brief discussions enhanced the complexity of adolescent political thinking on a posttest 1 week later Nevertheless, variations in family processes may be linked to differential socialization ofpolitical reasoning over the long tenn, consistent with a cognitive socialization model.
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