GNU Too (gnu2@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:55:31 JST

@lxo Older woman dressed conservatively looking at a photo of herself as a young woman at a protest The Overton Paradox

Do people get more conservative as they get older?

Older people are more likely to say they are conservative, according to data from the

.

And, looking at responses to

, older people believe more conservative things.

But that doesn't mean that as people get older, they get more conservative.

If we group people by decade of birth, and plot the average number of conservative responses, we see that almost every cohort gets more liberal as they age.

This apparent contradiction is what we're calling the

.

If people become more liberal with age, why are they more likely to say they are conservative?

We don't know for sure, but here's a theory:

“Conservative” and “Liberal” are relative – if someone thinks they are right of center, they are more likely to consider themselves conservative.

The center moves over time.

Most people don't keep up.

To test this theory, we'll group people by political alignment – conservative, liberal, or moderate – and plot their responses over time.

Since the GSS started in 1972, all three groups have become more liberal. The Time-Traveling Liberal

Now suppose you took a time machine to 1970, found the average liberal, and brought them to a Year 2000 party. Woman from 1970 transported to a New Year's party in Year 2000

In this figure, the dotted line shows the unchanged beliefs of the time traveler.

In 2000, they would be close to the middle of the road.

And if you brought them to the present, their quaint 1970s liberalism would be indistinguishable from the average conservative.

But we don't have to imagine it.

The time-travel experiment is almost exactly what happened to people born in the 1940s.

In the 1970s, they were in their 3030s – and they were as liberal as the average liberal.

In the 1990s, they were in their 5050s – and found themselves near the center.

Since then, they have become a little more liberal – but even so, they are now substantially right of center.

Now select the other cohorts you would like to see.

Many cohorts had a similar experience:

As young adults, they were left of center.

Over their lives, they became slowly more liberal.

But the center moved faster, and caught up with them.

And some time in middle age, they found that they were right of center.

This experience might explain the Overton Paradox: if people perceive that their views have become right of center, they are more likely to identify as conservative.

Which is why many people – if they live long enough – will wake up one morning and find themselves on the wrong side of history. The Overton Paradox is just the start

Learn to read more fascinating stories hidden in the data on Brilliant. Next up, create your own data visualizations and use data to predict the future.

This article is based on Chapter 12 of Probably Overthinking It by Allen Downey, University of Chicago Press, 2023.

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GNU Too (gnu2@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:55:31 JST

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