Generations and Ideological Change: Some Observations

The recollections of 28 cohorts of college graduates—all of them former recipients of Woodrow Wilson Fellowships for graduate study—of historical events between 1945 and 1971 and their participation in activities specifically associated with the peace movement and student activism of the 1960s were brought to bear on Mannheim's theory of generations. The analysis suggests proportionately greater sensitivity to the events of the 1960s among those who reached the age of 20 near the middle of the decade, a finding that bears out generational theory. But despite this apparently heightened sensitivity among those the fight age at the right time, the effect of these recollections and experiences on attitudes expressed in 1973 was consistently overshadowed by even stronger attitudinal effects attributable to an early commitment to activism. The latter was more closely related to the family milieu than to having come of age politically in a particular historical period. The data were obtained from a mail survey of 1321 former Wilson Fellows.