Kids these days.
It seems that every generation of people, upon transitioning to the current “older generation,” looks back and the younger and concludes that society is going to hell in a handbasket.
Doesn’t appear that way to me. Sure, kids are maturing faster. But objectives measures such as overall crime rate show, for instance, show no decline.
Yes, they look and dress funny — compared to how we did. They use language differently. And why not, for it is a bonding thing. They have their odd, new words and expressions, we had ours. Besides, language evolves.
A bunch of years ago Tom Brokaw released a book, The Greatest Generation, about American “citizens who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America.” [School Library Journal]
While the people and accomplishments are nothing to scoff at, my reaction to the sentiment went like this: “Well, okay. But people are people. Change the opportunities and the attributes of the social environment, and myriad other factors — and you will change the behavior of people.
In psychology this is called the “fundamental attribution error.” People tend to over-estimate personality/character traits as the explanation for behavior and under-estimate situational/environmental factors.
Consider the infamous Milgram experiment. Nearly two thirds of all subjects “shocked” their peer to a surprising degree. Why? Because they had been informed of the “rules” and instructed to “go on” by an authority figure. A more recent, and ethical, follow-up study generated surprisingly similar results. Sure, personality likely plays a role in most behavior, particularly on the individual level, but in this case it seems situational variables are stronger. In most cases, however, the two are very difficult to tease apart.
A new study suggests that some character traits are more malleable than we may have presumed.
The results of a meta-analysis of 72 separate studies on the attributes of American college students, conducted by Sara Konrath, were released under this heading:
Empathy: College students don’t have as much as they used to
Wow.
“We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research. “College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”
But again, if these results hold up, I wouldn’t conclude that the nature of the American populace has changed. Rather, how the newer generation has been nurtured, and is still influenced, by a multitude of factors — social, cultural, economic, political, etc., — that has likely changed. And so any condemnation or attempts at remediation should be aimed there.
The saying about not throwing out a baby with the bathwater is appropriate here. Until we know which factors lead to a drop in empathy (and some might further argue, and know that this is indeed a bad thing) let’s not go blaming “the media” or Facebook or the incredible prosperity our culture is fortunate enough to assume.
As for that factor — economic prosperity — why wouldn’t the younger generation assume it? They have known no world wars, no severe economic depressions, no want for meat or bread. How are they to rise to greatness without a meaningful calling or challenge?
Not that we should create one. Not that we shouldn’t, either. I just wonder.
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Tags: culture, personality
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