Success

  This figure shows a summary of answers to three survey questions:  

1.  "Hard work offers little guarantee of success"  [agree/disagree]

2.  [choose between] "First statement: Most people who want to get ahead can make it if they're willing to work hard. Second statement: Hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most people."

3.  " Hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most people" [agree/disagree]

The vertical axis gives the log of the ratio "optimistic" (disagree on 1, first statement on 2, disagree on 3) to "pessimistic" answers.  

 

I thought that #2 would get more optimistic responses than #1 and #3, because it explicitly presented the optimistic alternative.   It did get more optimistic responses than #2 in the early years, but the difference was pretty much gone by 2010--there was no trend in answers to #1, but a pessimistic trend in answers to #2.  #3 was only asked between 2012 and 2016, so you can't say anything about trends, but it clearly gets more pessimistic responses than the others. 

In an attempt to get a better sense of what was going on, I looked at breakdowns by education (college graduates vs. everyone else) for early and late examples of #1 (1987 and 2012), and #2 (1999 and 2020).  The percent giving optimistic answers:

1.  "hard work offers little guarantee of success"

            not grad      college grad

1987     65%                82%

2012     60%                75%

2.  most can get ahead vs. no guarantee

1999      75%                80%

2020      60%                55%

On #1, more educated people are more optimistic and the educationaldifferences are about the same in both years.  On #2 the educational differences are smaller, and they change direction:  more educated people are more optimistic in 1999 but less optimistic in 2020 (and that change is statistically significant).  

My interpretation:  When people are asked question #1 they think mostly of themselves, and because most of us believe in ourselves, we are more optimistic when answering about ourselves than about people in general.  The educational difference on that question is understandable if people are thinking of their own experience ("I worked hard and I.....").  Question 2 refers to "most people," so answers are more about perceived fairness of society.   The change in the educational differences supports something I've said a number of times, that more educated people are getting more egalitarian (despite what critics of "meritocracy" say).   But there was some shift towards pessimism among less educated people as well--that's consistent with the shift on questions on the causes of poverty (lack of effort vs. circumstances).    

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]