AUTHOR=Jeannet Anne-Marie , Dražanová Lenka 

TITLE=Cohort differences in attitudes toward sexual orientation: the formative political climate as a socializing agent

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Political Science

VOLUME=Volume 5 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/articles/10.3389/fpos.2023.1223274

DOI=10.3389/fpos.2023.1223274

ISSN=2673-3145

ABSTRACT=Why do cohorts differ in their attitudes towards sexual orientation and what is the role of societal values during formative years? We investigate whether discontinuities in the prevailing values of equality and tradition in a person's formative years impinge on their attitudes towards sexual orientation as adults. We test this by integrating historical political data from the Manifesto Project Dataset with contemporary micro-data on attitudes towards sexual orientation from ten rounds of the European Social Survey (2002 -2020) across thirteen cohorts in thirteen European countries. Using hierarchical age-period-cohort analysis with synthetic age cohorts, we find if the value of equality is politically diffuse, it can have a socializing effect. We find that the individuals who came of age during a period when political values of equality were more dominant are more tolerant of gays and lesbians. On the other hand, we do not find any evidence that individuals who experience youth during a time of more traditional political values have more negative opinions about different sexual orientations Overall, these findings suggest that cohorts adopt distinct patterns of attitudes towards gays and lesbians as a result of a collective process of socialization during their impressionable years.