University Influence on Students' Political Ideologies
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: As influencers of the next generation of educated politicai leaders, professors play a large role in shaping society's ftiture policy anci administrative leaders.With such ilfluence on their students' attitudes and opinions, concelrrs are raised regarding the type of infonnation they provide and how it is taught.Prior research sugeests that people shilt attitudes in response to infonnation from opinion leaders and seek out conte,tts that conform with their ideological predispositions.In this study, I seek to establish whether those findings apply to professors and to the university context.Specifically, (1) Do professors se!:\re as credible opinion leaders rl'ho can shape students' political opinions?And furthennore.(2) Do students seek out, and/or avoid.prolessors rvith certain political predispositions?To test these questions, I conducted fwo experiments ernbedded within a suruey of the UCR undergraduate student bod.v during the fall of 201 9. ln the first experiment, I found that Democratic students.the largest partisan group in my sample, become more opposed to a policy (in line with their pafty's stance) wiren the professor adr,ocates against it.The results from the second experiment show that students are more iikely to select into an undesirable class taught by a prof'essor with similar political interests.Overall, my findings implv that students' susceptibility to professoLs' iratnes and their self-selection into unir ersity courses provide undesirable circumstances fbr the goal ol irnploving cooperation u,ithin the future olAmerican govemment.
Author: Danielle Sharf
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3127569504