Study: youth attitudes uniform through time

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An MSU associate psychology professor, along with the help of a professor from Western Ontario University, recently found that America’s youth have changed very little throughout the past 30 years.

Brent Donnellan, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, analyzed data from a University of Michigan survey and said he discovered the attitudes, attributes and personalities of youth have remained relatively the same since the survey began in 1976.

The data set Donnellan and Western Ontario University psychology professor Kali Trzesniewski analyzed goes through 2006 and is focused on high school seniors.

“We didn’t find very much evidence of change,” Donnellan said. “So, high school seniors in 1976 were about the same as in 2006 in terms of their levels of self-esteem, happiness and satisfaction.”

Jerald Bachman, a senior research scientist and professor at U-M, is co-author of Monitoring the Future, or MTF, the survey Donnellan and Trzesniewski analyzed. Bachman also said he noticed similar trends in the data.

“I have recently collaborated with (Donnallen and Trzesniewski), but there is no conflict of interest in my saying that I agree with their overall conclusions,” he said. “I was on record saying much the same thing years earlier.”

Donnellan said the discoveries show the perception that youth have become worse in terms of attitude and behavior is not accurate, and that such perceptions are nothing new.

“I think if you look throughout history, older members of the society always comment on the characteristics of the upcoming generation, and usually, those are negative,” he said.

Trzeniewski, who was a graduate student with Donnellan at the University of California-Davis, said they chose to do the study after hearing about a book called “Generation Me.” The book, by Jean Twenge, is subtitled, “Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled — and more miserable than ever before.” Trzeniewski and Donnellan did not agree with Twenge’s stereotype of youth.

“We felt her methodology was not entirely accurate,” Trzeniewski said.

“When we used better data, we found that her conclusion was not true.”

Although there is little evidence of a dramatic overall change, Donnellan said there are differences in some areas, especially in how youth view education and other institutions.

“A huge change did occur where more recent cohorts have higher expectations to go on to college and graduate school than they used to,” he said.
“There’s also a little more cynicism toward school and government in more recent years.”

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