COHORT TRENDS IN ATTITUDES ABOUT LAW AND ORDER: WHO'S LEADING THE CONSERVATIVE WAVE?

Aging is commonly assumed to be associated with the adoptionof increasingly conservative social and political attitudes.Empirical tests of this assumption have provided little support,but most analyses have focused on attitude domains where publicopinion was shifting in a liberal direction. Using three itemsabout law and order, a domain marked by conservative trends,this paper evaluates the aging-conservatism hypothesis withdata drawn from 18 national surveys covering the period 1959–85.Attitude changes in four cohorts are analyzed with Tay lor'shierarchical goodness-of-fit procedures for evaluating trendsin public opinion. The findings show that each of the cohortshas participated in the shift toward more conservative opinionson law and order issues, and that either constant or zero differencescharacterize the trends in percentage differences between theoldest and the other cohorts. In the absence of differentialrates of change, we conclude that older cohorts are no morelikely than younger cohorts to adopt conservative law and orderattitudes and that period effects are influencing each of thecohorts equally.