The Nation's Pulse / Polling the Future
Lichter, S. Robert & Rothman, Stanley
THE NATION'S PULSE POLLING THE FUTURE by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter Are Americans returning to traditional values, or has a somewhat watered-down version of the adversary culture of the...
...This may indicate a retreat from the sexual attitudes of the 1960s, or it may simply be a function of age and marital status...
...Only a quarter of future journalists, for example, believe that private enterprise is fair to workers, as compared to 70 percent of their elders in the profession...
...On the other hand, only 19 percent believe homosexuality is wrong...
...By contrast, nine percent strongly disapprove of the Sandinistas, against 29 percent strongly disapproving of the Moral Majority...
...There is little evidence of a massive return to 1950s attitudes...
...The historical dynamism of American business has been at least partially a function of the psychology and attitudes of businessmen...
...80 percent), and three-quarters believe adultery wrong as compared to only 47 percent of established journalists...
...Nonetheless, it is surprisingly much higher than that of the current generation of businessmen...
...Business activity was considered a calling...
...Seymour Martin Lipset and others have demonstrated that students planning careers in journalism or the teaching of the social sciences tend to be considerably to the left of their peers, and our own data support these findings...
...Early in 1980 we completed a study of leading American journalists and business executives drawn from a number of major /brtuwe-listed companies...
...This essay is part of a larger study of elites and social change sponsored by Smith College, the Research Institute on International Change of Columbia University, and George Washington University...
...Seventy-five percent of the students we interviewed believe that America contributes to the poverty of Third World nations...
...In an effort to determine the social and political outlook of future journalists and businessmen, in 1982 we interviewed random samples of students from both the Columbia School of Journalism and New York University's Business School...
...alienated than the future journalists...
...For example, 54 percent of them believe that private enterprise is fair to workers as compared' to only one fourth of their journalistic peers, and only two percent believe that major companies should be nationalized...
...Modern entrepreneurs have differed from those in many traditional societies both by the nature of their commitment to the business enterprise and their conception of their community role...
...Even more significantly, so is the up and coming generation of business-men and women, though they are less Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter are the authors, most recently, of Roots of Radicalism {Oxford...
...It clearly reflects the presence of a larger proportion of blacks in our sample...
...For example, almost nine out of ten journalists believe that the American legal system favors the wealthy, against somewhat less than seven out of ten businessmen...
...The argument is not persuasive...
...Modern entrepreneurs perceived the creative application of effort to business first as a sign of salvation, and later as a sign that their lives had been meaningful...
...While they have always been the focus of some resentment and hostility, their view of themselves was re-enforced by the respect they received from the rest of the community...
...The supposedly conservative trend proved to be rather shallow, and rapidly reversed itself in the crises of the 1960s...
...THE NATION'S PULSE POLLING THE FUTURE by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter Are Americans returning to traditional values, or has a somewhat watered-down version of the adversary culture of the 1960s been absorbed by the mainstream...
...Given that the manner in which journalists view and describe the world influences other social groups, we can expect the population as a whole to move in the same direction, with significant consequences for domestic and foreign policy...
...Weber described this constellation of attitudes in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism...
...The desire to make money (though important) is not enough to produce a business community that is progressive in the broadest sense of that term...
...entrepreneurs believed that what they were doing clearly benefited the whole society...
...In all likelihood, the current revival of traditional attitudes will prove to be even more shallow than the modest revival of the 1950s.odest revival of the 1950s...
...Similarly, an overwhelming 85 percent strongly disapprove of the Moral Majority, while a mere seven percent strongly disapprove of the Sandinistas...
...Only seven percent strongly disapprove of Ronald Reagan, while 23 percent strongly disapprove of Fidel Castro...
...Our studies suggest that the up and coming generation of journalists is even more skeptical of traditional American institutions and values than the generation they will replace...
...Obviously, those entering business have done so to make money, but that has never been the whole story...
...Students are somewhat less supportive of affirmative action for blacks (67 percent vs...
...If both they and the community lose faith in the social value of business, and our evidence would indicate that this is indeed occurring, then American business is likely to lose much of its dynamism...
...What we found was that Columbia journalism students are considerably more liberal and cosmopolitan than present journalists...
...New York University Business School students are considerably less liberal and alienated than journalism students on most issues...
...Yet we also found that a surprising number of businessmen share some of the journalists' skepticism...
...People do grow somewhat more conservative in some areas with age, but for the most part they do not return to the values of an earlier generation...
...Commentators in the 1950s thought they saw the same phenomenon: church attendance rose, and the most rapidly growing campus group was the Young Americans for Freedom...
...and 71 percent of journalism students, as compared to only 49 percent of the current media elite, believe the very structure of American society causes alienation...
...Given these results it is not surprising to find that almost seven out often students strongly disapprove of Ronald Reagan, while only three out of ten strongly disapprove of Fidel Castro...
...Over 75 percent of the businessmen we questioned believe adultery is wrong as compared to only 47 percent of journalists...
...Nor is it surprising that the New York Review of Books receives almost as high a rating for reliability as the New York Times, while Commentary and National Review languish at the bottom of the reliability scale...
...Jome commentators have suggested that the liberalism of journalism students is merely a function of their student status, and that they are not notably different from other graduate students...
...Business student perceptions of political leaders and movements are also mixed...
...Further, four out often of these Columbia students believe Tffat major corporations should be nationalized-three times as many as the present generation of journalists...
...It can be argued that such is the nature of youth, and that as these business students mature they (and their counterparts in journalism) will grow more conservative...
...In short, while business students are not as skeptical of traditional American institutions and values as elite journalism students, they are considerably more liberal and alienated from these institutions and values than the current generation...
...Other issues are also involved...
...The proportion of business students holding these views is obviously considerably smaller than that of journalism students...
...In our view, the next generation of journalists and businessmen will continue to be even more liberal and cosmopolitan than the present generation...
...Almost eight out of ten business school students, for example, believe adultery is wrong...
...Today, the traditional bases of American society are even weaker than they were then...
...These questions are troubling many writers and scholars today, and though we cannot answer them with certainty we can offer evidence about two key future leadership groups...
...Not surprisingly we found that journalists are far more liberal than businessmen and far more alienated from traditional American institutions...
...Numerous studies, however, suggest otherwise...
...Since graduates of the former are represented in rather large numbers in leading media outlets, and a significant portion of NYU business school graduates become officers in major American firms, they provide an obvious basis for study...
...Businessmen from traditional societies saw economic activity primarily as a road to wealth and leisure...
...In sum, we suspect that those predicting a conservative shift in American attitudes are at least partly deceiving themselves...
...The same mixture of attitudes characterizes business student views on issues deriving from the "new morality" of the 1960s...
...In only two areas were journalism students somewhat more conservative than the present generation of media leaders...
...Only five percent of our elite media sample was black as compared to 20 percent of the student sample, and black- students are far more traditional on this issue (even if more "liberal" on other issues) than are white students...
...And while close to 60 percent of the journalists we interviewed believe America contributes to Third World poverty, only slightly over two out of ten businessmen agree...
...At the same time, 50 percent believe that American society causes alienation, and 35 percent believe that the United States contributes to Third World poverty...
...Our study also indicated that aspiring journalists are far more likely to accept Third World criticisms of America than are their elders...
...Though the differences between the two groups remain clear, it is also clear that today's business leaders have absorbed at least some of the criticisms of American life that became widespread in the 1960s...
Vol. 16 • August 1983 • No. 8
