Why Do Seniors Often Vote for Conservative Parties?

As you know, the old and young generations have always clashed over values. Typically these conflicts Young people are more liberal and older people are more conservative. due to it.

Whereas old people are young too compared to their current state was more liberal. When young people get older, they will be considered conservative by the youth of that period. So what explains the age factor in conservatism, and why do people get older as they get older? authoritarian and rigid are they?

Of course, this situation is not unique to us. For example, in the Brexit elections in the UK, while young people supported staying in the European Union, most of their parents did not.

Young people, aware that staying in the European Union is good for the UK, can talk about the outcome. “Brexit is the middle finger of the boomers to the youth!” summarized the situation.

Well, after all, young people are because of this decision. an average of 69 years while the elderly will be affected by 16 years. So what happened again happened to the Y and Z generation.

The motivation of those who support leaving Brexit; nationalist sentiments were conservative reasons, such as the desire for self-determination. From misinformation by politicians They were also more easily impressed.

So why are older people usually more conservative? Will today’s youth face a similar fate when they get old?

affecting this situation There are two main factors: The conditions in the period when their personality was formed and the physical disadvantages of aging. Scientists have found evidence to suggest that both effects come into play.

There is no doubt that the period in which we are born is very important in shaping our worldview. For example If you were someone born in the 1800s, at that time maybe you thought slavery was normal. If you had been born in the Middle Ages, you could easily have believed that women were witches and let them be burned.

Today, there are some differences of opinion between generations, such as gay rights and religious beliefs. For example, if you find it normal to eat animals today and continue to find it normal when you get older, perhaps you will be seen as a bigot by young people.(This is just an estimated example).

In other words, we have a different perception compared to the period we grew up in. This affects even our voting decisions. The main reason why older people are more conservative is that bear the traces of their early political experiences we can say.

Let’s move on to the effects of the second factor: Of course, aging affects our brain; So, does being conservative include it?

An interesting finding was found in a study conducted on 20,000 elderly Germans in 2011. The level of openness of Germans surveyed to new experiences decrease over the years has been detected.

Brent Donnellan, professor of psychology at Texas A&M University and one of the authors of this study; “If you’re quite liberal at 40, you’ll probably be quite liberal at 60, but than other 60-year-olds you’ll still be a liberal 60-year-old, but you’ll be less liberal compared to a 25-year-old.”

This study conducted in Germany is not a long-term and longitudinal study; however, other studies suggest that these age-related changes are the same in different countries, which is a root cause shows that it might happen.

A 2009 study compared age, political tendencies and personality in Belgium and Poland (two countries with very different post-World War II histories) and found the same pattern. These studies support each other.

Are older people more likely to be biased than younger people?

Bill von Hippel, a psychologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, in his experiments and studies on the subject. He found an interesting situation.

Von Hippel saw that older people often want to rein in their preconceived notions, but they literally can’t control themselves, and this comes with age. a result of a deterioration in the brain suspects it.

Von Hippel, “A lot of research shows that older adults, loss of ability to block unwanted thoughts shows that. (…) Aging makes many people more open-minded and more negatively prone to libertarian thinking.” says.

As von Hippel points out in his research, thinking of other people in a more inclusive way requires mental effort—executive control of the frontal lobes of the brain. As you get older and as the ability of our frontal lobes weakens, Whatever our intentions, we may lose our ability to block stereotypes.

Von Hippel has shown this in several experiments. He found that the elderly showed higher levels of prejudice in the tests. Also, the elderly probability of remembering stereotypical information found it higher.

In addition, older people later in the day they have some unpublished data that they are more angry and argumentative; This suggests that older people’s ability to control their thoughts diminishes throughout the day. So that’s why the old folks said “don’t make a noise, I’ll cut your ball” as a kid.

Conservative, “preserver” means. As they get older, they obviously tend to close themselves off to innovations as an expression of their need for closure.

Of course to some extent each individual is unique, Developmental patterns of change and stability in personality and political orientation will never be the same for two individuals.

An older person may also be much more liberal than a younger person, but if he were young at this time, he probably wouldn’t find his old self liberal enough. Scientific research shows us this.