Recent Trends in Conservatism: Evidence of Non-Unitary Patterns

Abstract

Abstract While some theoretical models of conservatism seemingly posit it to be a relatively stable personality characteristic, such approaches do not easily explain changes in individual or societal levels of conservatism. Recent research has assumed that increasing conservatism is general and unitary. The present study uses both trend data and true longitudinal data to examine changes in three different indicators of conservatism: political-economic conservatism, sex-role traditionalism and opposition to abortion. Analyses of trend data show the direction of political-economic increases in conservatism and opposition to abortion over the fifteen-year period 1971–1986. Sex-role traditionalism decreased, however, for the first but not the latter part of the same time period. Longitudinal comparisons for three separate cohorts show similar results for the period 1975 to 1980. Not only do these findings show that all measures of conservatism fail to exhibit the same trends, but also it is demonstrated that ...