Thread by @Kunkakom

Finally ready to share what I started working on 4 years ago:
Why do some people grow into liking politics?

I propose that the seemingly non-political concept of basic psychological needs helps to explain the origins of valuing & enjoying pol. engagement link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Maybe you are one of those people who like talking and reading about politics. However, many other citizens couldn't care less about what's currently going on in D.C., Brussels, Berlin.
Why? Where do dispositional differences in wanting to engage with politics come from?

A 2nd observation motivating this research:
Often, those individuals who meet the criteria of good citizenship (e.g., politically aware & engaged) also fare well on other indicators of social attainments (e.g. income, education).
Is it coincidence, mutual influence, common cause?

We know that a person’s level of curiosity towards politics is malleable until around 18 years of age, yet remains remarkably stable afterward.
Hence,something must be happening in the early years that shapes our orientations towards the political domain for the decades to come.

Political socialization research focuses -naturally- on political factors (e.g., pol. events, doamain-specific exposure), mostly investigating young adolescents who are old enough to understand what politics is and what it means.

Building on insights from motivation science, I propose a theory on the non-political origins of dispositional differences in pol motivation,arguing that the seeds of political engagement&other social attainments are planted early in life&prosper in *need-supportive environments*

Basic psychological needs is a central concept in motivation science. According to self-determination theory, all human beings share the needs for autonomy, competence & relatedness.
The deprivation of these needs thwarts the human inclination for curiosity & social adaptation

Yet, being a curious person who easily adapts to one's environment helps you thrive in various domains of life. Importantly, for various reasons, these two inclinations (intrinsic motivation and internalization) are particularly conducive to valuing & enjoying politics

I theorize that early non-political experiences -namely a family environment that promotes the satisfaction of basic psychological needs- help explain volitional pol. engagement in the following decades of life, mediated through one's inclination for curiosity & internalization.

I investigate this proposition using two representative cohorts studies from the UK and the US.
Long before respondents reached adulthood, different instruments were used to measure whether parents provide an environment that is conducive to satisfying basic psychological needs.

The cohort data also tell us what has become of these children when they were surveyed again years or decades later.

The data shows the expected "positive manifold": Growing up in need-supportive contexts goes along with higher levels of 1) political engagement 2) psycho-social functioning 3) social attainments, all measured decades later.

The association btw need-supportive parenting in childhood & pol engagement is often but not always robust after controlling for a long list of skills and background variables.
1 SD increase in eg. involved parenting is associated with an increase of pol engagement by β=0.33 SD.

Need-supportive parenting also moderates value transmission:
Children are substantially more likely to internalize parents' orientations towards politics when the parental homes satisfied the offspring’s basic needs for relatedness and autonomy.

These findings are correlational and not definitive. Yet, they provide initial evidence for political ramifications of need-thwarting or -supportive influences, which are seemingly remote to the political domain but deeply engrained in human processes of psychosocial functioning

I argue that need-supportive influences during socialization may thus present a valuable addition to scholarly explanations of individual differences in political engagement.

Interestingly, even though they interpret their findings from a different perspective, recent studies in educational contexts by @carolgalais and with experimental designs by @JohnHolbein1 can also be interpreted as evidence for the effects of seemingly non-political influences.

These findings also relate to current discussions disputing the causal status of classical predictors of political participation & suggest to consider in these discussions basic psychological needs as a potential common cause of political participation and its various correlates

Beyond its theoretical import, the notion of political engagement’s non-political origins involves practical implications for educational and political institutions, suggesting that domain-specific familiarization should be accompanied by more holistic approaches

Such holistic approaches consider the various large and small need-supportive stimuli that equip children with the psychological nutrients they require to thrive in various domain of social life, including the political domain.

Syntax and data: osf.io/tnax4/
View-only article: rdcu.be/bRpeo
Pre-Print: alexander-wuttke.de/wp-content/upl…