Friendship recession, part 2

 In my last post, I noted that the evidence for a “friendship recession” came down to one survey conducted in 2021.  In that survey, the number saying that they had no friends was a lot higher than in several surveys conducted between 1976 and 2003.   But the earlier surveys were conducted by telephone using random digit dialing—ie, calling people and asking them to participate.   The 2021 survey was given to an online panel—people who agreed to participate regularly in surveys and received a small payment for doing so.  Although the panel was weighted to be representative of the population, it has one inherent difference—the respondents have more experience with surveys.   Consequently, they realize that if you say you have friends, you may get follow-up questions about those friends; if you say you don’t have any friends, you’re less likely to get follow-up questions.  Some respondents may be in a hurry, reluctant to answer more questions on the subject, or just want to get paid with minimum effort, and they will tend to say they have no friends (or only a few).   Of course, I don’t know that this makes a difference—the only way to find out is to compare it to recent surveys conducted by the traditional method.  There don’t seem to be any that ask the same question (not counting family members, how many close friends do you have), but I found one that is similar, from January 2019: “How many people would you consider to be your true friends?”

                  2019           2003

0                  5%             2%

1-2             22%          14%

3-5             35%          39%

6-10           17%          18%

10+.           19%.         27%

The report of the 2019 survey lists the categories as 6-10 and 10 or more, so it’s not clear how they counted people who said they had exactly 10; the 2003 categories are 6-9 and 10+.  Comparing 2019 to 2003, there is some increase in the numbers saying that they had none or just one or two friends.  Also, the 2019 question doesn’t add the condition of not being a family member.  So you could argue that it supports the claim of a decline in friendship.  However, it’s much smaller than the decline suggested by the 2021 survey.  Also, people may understand “true friends” and “close friends” differently:  “true friends” seems more restrictive to me.  Of course, I don’t know if I’m representative on this point, but if I am that could account for some or all of the difference.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

The Friendship Recession: men, women, both, or neither?

 For a while I had a lot of posts about the claim that there has been a decline in social connection.  I was reminded of the issue by a New York Times story which drew on a recent paper in Psychology of Men & Masculinities.  The opening sentence of that paper:  "A variety of global research reports suggest that the size and quality of men's social networks has declined disproportionately in relation to women in the last 30 years (Cox, 2021; Gallup Organisation, 1990; Figures 1 and 2)..."  The citations involve two surveys of the United States, one in 1990 and one in 2021 (the Figures 1 and 2 in the citation are based on data from those surveys), so "variety" is an exaggeration, but the difference between those surveys is dramatic.  To quote from the New York Times: "In a 2021 survey, 15 percent of men said they didn’t have any close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990."  My calculations were slightly different (maybe because of treatment of "don't knows") but also showed a dramatic increase  4.3% in 1990 and 16.4% in 2021.  However, the Times didn't mention that there was also an increase in the number of women reporting no close friends:  from 1.6% to 11.6%.  That is, it increased by a factor of seven, compared to a factor of four among men.  The mean number of reported friends for men went from 11.3 in the 1990 survey to 5.2 in 2021; among women, it went from 8.2 to 4.7.  So you could argue about whether the "friendship recession" was larger among men or women:  either way, if you go by the comparison of these surveys, it was substantial among both and limiting your attention to either men or women alone is misleading.

But is the difference between those surveys a reflection of a change in society or of differences in the surveys themselves?  I wrote about this issue a few years ago, and noted a couple of differences:  the 1990 survey was by telephone and the 2021 survey was an online panel and the 2021 question was preceded by a number of questions about whether you had done various things with friends recently, which may have pushed people towards a stricter definition of "close" friend.  I noticed another difference when I looked this time:  in 2021, the question about the number of close friends is preceded by "Now, thinking only about the friends you are close to…"  You could say that doesn't matter--they just said "close" again.  However, I wonder if some people interpreted that in geographical terms:  "close to" as "live close by," and answer the next question in terms of only those close friends living nearby.  

The Times offered another piece of evidence about the plight of men:  "in 1990, nearly half of young men said they would reach out to friends when facing a personal issue; two decades later, just over 20 percent said the same."  In this case, the questions were the same "Who do you usually talk to first when you have a personal problem?"  Among young men, there was indeed a shift away from friends and towards parents--but was this because they had fewer friends, or because they became closer to their parents?  The question asked about who you talked to first, not about whether you would talk to your friends.  

So my general conclusion is that:  (1) we don't know whether there's been a decline in friendship or social connections and (2) if there has, the evidence is that it's been similar among men and women.  There's also a more technical but still important point:  men are more likely to report having no friends than women are, but also more likely to report having large numbers of friends.  That is, the difference is not a straightforward matter of men having fewer friends.* 

Despite the public interest in this topic, there don't seem to be any other recent surveys.  The question on number of close friends was first asked in 1976 and then was asked a number of times, mostly by Gallup, until 2003.  Since then, it hasn't been repeated except in the 2021 survey (there have been some other questions about friends and/or social connections, but none have been repeated over a span of more than a few years).   

*Of course, reports of the number of friends don't tell you about the nature of those friendships, and it's possible that men and women differ in what they mean by "close friend."  But this just adds to the general point that we don't have much information. 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

On the eve

 In 1965, there was a Harris poll of college students.  One of the questions involved showing people a list of authors and asking if any were among your favorites.  The authors, listed in order of number choosing them, were William Faulkner, JD Salinger, Ian Fleming, James Baldwin, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edward Albee, Henry Miller, John Updike, CP Snow, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Jean Genet, William Burroughs, John Cheever, and Doris Lessing.  Baldwin was known for his writings on race and the civil rights movement, and Fleming was a genre novelist (James Bond)--the others could be called "literary" authors.*  I made an index of the number of literary authors that students named as favorites (capped at 4)--about 30% scored 0, 30% 1, 24% 2, 8% 3, and 8% 4 or more.  The survey was mostly about college affairs, but there were a number of political questions, and I looked at their association with score on the literary authors index and with picking Fleming as a favorite.  Baldwin took clear positions on some of the issues, so picking him was an obvious signal of political views--I was interested in whether general taste in literature was associated with political views.

The results:

Vote (or preference) in 1964 election: 
   literary authors:  more likely to support Johnson
   Fleming:  no  clear difference

Party ID:
   literary authors:  more likely to be Democrats or Independents
   Fleming:  no clear difference

Have your views on politics changed a good deal, some, or only a little in college?
    literary authors:  more likely to say a good deal or some
    Fleming:  no clear difference

Vietnam (carry war to North Vietnam; negotiate and get out; hold the line)
   literary authors:  more dovish
   Fleming:  more hawkish    

Should "girl students" be able to obtain contraceptives at the school infirmary?
   literary authors:  more likely to say yes
   Fleming:  no clear difference

Should laws on abortion be relaxed, tightened, or kept the same?
   literary authors:  more likely to say relaxed
   Fleming:  maybe some preference for tightened or kept the same

Approve of Mississippi Freedom Summer
    literary authors:   more likely to approve
    Fleming:  less likely 

Approve of Negro and white students living in the same dormitories:
    literary authors:  no clear difference
    Fleming:  no clear difference

Approve of Negro and white students eating in the same cafeterias:
    literary authors:  no clear difference
    Fleming:  no clear difference

For the preceding two questions, overwhelming majorities approved.  

Approve of Negro and white students belonging to the same social clubs
    literary authors:  no clear difference
    Fleming:  less likely to approve

Overall, there was strong approval, but 21% of students who chose Fleming as a favorite author disapproved, compared to only 9% of those who didn't choose him.

Approve of Negro and white students dating each other:
    literary authors:  more likely to approve
    Fleming: less likely to approve

Approve of "intermarriage between the races"
    literary authors:  more likely to approve
    Fleming:  less likely to approve

There was a pretty consistent tendency for people who liked more literary authors to take liberal positions.  With Fleming, it was less consistent, but when it made a difference, choosing him as a favorite was associated with more conservative positions.  Why?  There's a saying (usually attributed to Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., but apparently George Bernard Shaw said it first):  "some men see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not?"  This leaves out a third group (and probably the largest one):  those who see things as they are and say "that's just the way it is."  That is, people who are curious about things are more likely to be critical; conversely, people who just want to be more entertained are more likely to favor keeping things as they are.**  

The more general point is that the association between intellectualism and left-of-center political views is deeply rooted.  

*Sartre also wrote on politics, but I think that at that point he was better known for his novels and plays.

**See also this post.  

I couldn't resist

 As I mentioned in my last post, I have a number of new posts planned (dealing with confidence in institutions and the relation between college education and politics), but this isn't one of them.  A few days ago, a New York Times op-ed by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner mentioned a Gallup question that goes back to the 1940s:  "looking ahead for the next few years, which political party do you think will do a better job of keeping the country prosperous — the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?"  and I couldn't resist taking a closer look.  The difference between percent saying Democrats and percent saying Republicans:

Rauch and Wehner say "In the post-World War II period, Democrats — still remembered for ending the Great Depression — held a seemingly impregnable prosperity advantage, forcing Republicans to fight every national election uphill."  That had been my impression too, but I'm not sure that the figure bears it out.  In the 1940s and 1950s, the parties were about even.  The Democrats pulled ahead after the recession of 1958, and built their lead in the Kennedy-Johnson administration, but those changes could plausibly be explained as a reaction to short-term economic conditions.  On the other hand, the Republicans never managed to get more than a small lead, so maybe the public did have a tendency to favor the Democrats after taking account of current conditions.  But since the late 1970s, it's been close, as Rauch and Wehner point out.  Also, there seems to have been less variation over time:    between 1964 and 1968, it went from +41 for the Democrats to +2, and between 1972 and 1974 from -5 to +30.  In the last 25 years, the range has been from -14 to +20).    That's probably a reflection of the growing strength of partisanship--people are more likely to say that their party is better, regardless of current conditions.  A possibly related point is that the number of people who name a party (rather than saying that they're both the same or that they don't know which would be better) has increased:  

That may be influenced by changes in interviewing techniques, but the shift has been so large and steady that it seems likely that there's an underlying change in propensity to choose a party--that is, a decline in the number of real independents.  Finally, in recent years, Republicans have had an advantage:  they've led in 13 of the last 15 surveys.  

[Some data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Where was I?

It has been a long time since my last post.  I've been away for the past couple of weeks, at the International Sociological Association Forum of Sociology and then vacationing.  I have a number of posts planned, but also an accumulation of other things that need to get done before I can work on them, so for anyone who is eagerly awaiting another post, here are the slides for my presentation:

College electors, part 3

 I had two previous posts on voting preferences among college students in the 1940s-70s.  This post will look at faculty at two elite universities, Yale and Princeton.   Polls of faculty were less common than polls of students, but were taken in some elections.   In 1948, a poll of Princeton faculty found 47% for Thomas Dewey, 31% for Harry Truman, 16% for Norman Thomas (Socialist), 3% for Henry Wallace (Progressive), and less than 1% (1 out of 220) for Strom Thurmond.  The biggest difference from the national vote was with Thomas, who got only 0.3% in the election.*  I think that some of his support in the poll was sentimental (he was a Princeton graduate) and would have gone to Truman in a real election.  But either way, Princeton faculty were well to the left of the students, who went 70% for Dewey and 10% for Thurmond.  Dewey did better in the sciences and engineering.  

In 1952, 57% of Yale faculty favored Adlai Stevenson and 41% went for Dwight Eisenhower.  Engineering went for Eisenhower by a 3:1 margin, but all of the other schools went for Stevenson, with the Law and Divinity schools especially one-sided (they didn't break it down by department within Arts and Sciences).  The survey also asked about preference in three Senate races, two in Connecticut (one was to fill a vacancy) and one in Wisconsin, where Joe McCarthy was running for re-election.  The results for the Connecticut races were similar to the presidential results, but McCarthy got only 11%, while his Democratic opponent got 82%.

In 1964, 93% of Princeton faculty favored Johnson and only 4% favored Goldwater.  Four of the ten Goldwater supporters in the poll were from Engineering.  The survey also asked about party identification:  55% said they were Democrats, 30% independents, and 15% Republican.  

In 1968, a poll of Princeton faculty found 71% for Hubert Humphrey, 6% for Richard Nixon, 8% for Dick Gregory (Freedom & Peace Party, 0.1% nationwide), and 7% probably wouldn't vote.  The poll also gave space for comments, and "many expressed disenchantment, even disgust, with the choices offered for president."  One physics instructor wrote "I do not support Humphrey-Muskie; I oppose the others.  Wallace, Agnew, and LeMay appeal to the kinds of hatred that put Hitler in power, and Nixon welcomes the fruits of those kinds of hatred."   Engineering gave Nixon his strongest support, although even there he was well behind.  There was no clear difference between the science, humanities, and social science departments--Nixon was below 5% in all.  

Despite the scattered nature of the information, some points are clear.  First, there were differences by field, and they weren't just Humanities and Social Sciences vs. STEM.  This suggests that there is some intrinsic connection between intellectual interests, or certain kinds of intellectual interests, and political views.    Second, there was a big gap between faculty at elite universities and the general public by the late 1960s.  This means that the recent decline in public confidence in higher education isn't a straightforward matter of conservatives reacting to their underrepresentation on university faculties:  if it were, it would have happened long ago. Of course, the general distribution of votes is a not a complete measure of political climate, and you could argue that the decline is a reaction to some other political change on campus, like the rise of DEI.  But if people didn't react to a clear and simple change--the collapse of Republican support among university faculty--it seems unlikely that they would react to a more subtle one.    I think the decline in confidence has been driven by Republican elites:  they became more critical of higher education in recent years, and that has influenced public opinion.    Third, there were large shifts from one election to the next until the 1960s.  From personal observation I'm confident that faculty support for Republican candidates in presidential elections has been consistently low since the 1980s.  But  in 1980 John Anderson, a Republican running as an independent, got a lot of support among students at elite universities.   Anderson represented a strand of Republicanism that was once important but has now disappeared, so that raises a question of how much of the decline of Republican support among university faculty was the result of changes in the Republican party.  That is, when they had an opportunity to pick a liberal/moderate Republican, did they take it?  Unfortunately, I didn't find any faculty polls for the 1980 election.

[Data from the archives of the Daily Princetonian and Yale Daily News]

Interruption

My last two posts were on polls of college student voting from the 1940s-70s.  I intended my next post to be on polls of faculty voting, but I found more information than I expected, so it will take some time to put it together, so this post will fill the gap.

Earlier this year, David Shor posted the following figure on Twitter and wrote "Explicit antisemitic attitudes are now much more common among young voters" 

This was surprising to me, so I looked for similar questions to see if they showed the same pattern.  In 2022, a Pew survey asked if your opinion of Jews was very favorable, somewhat favorable, neither favorable nor unfavorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable.  It asked parallel questions about six other groups:  Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, mainline Protestants, and atheists.  The data set didn't include exact age, but classified people into four groups:  18-29; 30-49;50-64; and 65 and up.  

The means by age group, with 5=very favorable, 4=somewhat favorable.....1=very unfavorable.

Although Jews got lower ratings from younger people, they were still the highest-rated group, as they were among all age groups.  Moreover, Catholics, Evangelical Christians, "mainline Protestants (such as United Methodists, Episcopalians, etc.," and Mormons also got lower ratings among younger people, and the slopes were as large or larger than the slopes for the rating of Jews.  

In the oldest group, 51.2% said they had a favorable view of Jews and 5.2 said unfavorable; in the youngest, it was 39.7% and 7.5%.  The Blue Rose question didn't include a "neither favorable nor unfavorable option," and if you allocate that in proportion that gives about 8% unfavorable in the oldest and 16% unfavorable in the youngest.  That's a smaller difference than the Blue Rose data, but still substantial.  However, the comparison with the other religions suggests that the favorable/unfavorable question is not a particularly useful measure of antisemitism.  Other surveys have tried to measure antisemitism by asking people if they agree with various stereotypes about Jews, and this seems like a more promising approach in principle, but those questions are less common.

How should the differences among age groups in favorability ratings be interpreted?  I would say it's a mix of two things:  younger age groups have less favorable views of religion in general, and more favorable about the two groups that groups that are outside the bounds of traditional American religious beliefs.**  If you just extrapolate, it seems that atheists and Muslims will soon be the highest-rated groups among younger people.  However, I don't think that will happen--instead, the ratings of atheists and Muslims will level off, and there will be a tendency for ratings of different groups to cluster around 3.0:  i.e., more people treating religion or lack of religion as a private choice, not for them to judge either way.

*I learned about it from a recent Substack post by Matthew Yglesias.

**"Traditional" in terms of the memory of people who are alive today.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]