As you know, the old and young generations have always clashed over values. Typical these conflicts Young people are more liberal and older people are more conservative. because of that.

While old people are also young compared to their current state was more liberal. As young people get older, they will be viewed as conservative by the youth of that period. So what accounts for the age factor in conservatism, and why do people age as they age? authoritarian and rigid are they?

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

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

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

The motivation of those in favor of leaving Brexit; nationalistic sentiments were for conservative reasons, such as the desire for self-determination. Due to misinformation by politicians They were also more impressed.

So why are older people usually more conservative? Will today’s youth suffer the same fate as they grow old?

affect this situation There are two main factors: The circumstances of the period in which their personality was formed and the physical disadvantages of aging. Scientists have found evidence to suggest that both effects play a role.

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, in that time maybe you thought slavery was normal. If you had been born in the Middle Ages, you could have easily believed that women were witches and had them burned.

Today, there are some differences of opinion between generations, such as gay rights and religious beliefs. For example, if you think it’s normal to eat animals today and continue to think it’s normal as you get older, you may be seen as bigoted by young people.(This is just an approximate example).

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

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

An interesting finding was found in a survey of 20,000 older Germans in 2011. The degree of openness of surveyed Germans 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 pretty liberal at 40, you’re probably pretty liberal at 60, but than other 60-year-olds you will still be a liberal 60-year-old, but less liberal compared to a 25-year-old.”

This study conducted in Germany is not a long and longitudinal study; however, other studies suggest that these age-related changes are the same across countries a root cause shows it can 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 the elderly more often prejudiced than the young?

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 the elderly often wanted to curb their prejudices, but they literally could not control themselves, and that comes with age. a result of a deterioration of the brain suspects it.

von Hippel, Many studies show that the elderly, loss of ability to block unwanted thoughts show that. (…) Aging makes many people more open-minded and more negatively inclined towards libertarian thinking.” say.

Thinking about other people in a more inclusive way requires mental effort — executive control of the brain’s frontal lobes, as von Hippel noted in his research. As you get older and as the power of our frontal lobes decreases, Whatever our intentions, we can lose our ability to block stereotypes.

Von Hippel has shown this in several experiments. He found that older people showed more prejudice during the tests. Also the elderly likelihood of remembering stereotyped information liked it higher.

In addition, the elderly later on 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 decreases during the day. So that’s why the old people said “don’t make a sound, I’ll cut your ball” as a child.

Conservative, “protector” resources. As they get older, they clearly 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 can also be much more liberal than a younger person, but if he were young right now, he probably wouldn’t consider his old self liberal enough. Scientific research shows us this.