(Press-News.org) During the Great Recession, high school students in the U.S. became more concerned about others and the environment, psychologists at UCLA and San Diego State University report in a new study.
The research, published July 11 in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, focused on survey data collected on high school seniors during three time periods: the global recession (2008-10), just before the recession (2004-06) and the earliest period for which data were available (1976-78).
The study authors found that high school students' concern for others declined significantly between 1976-78 and 2004-06, then rebounded by the period of the Great Recession. Compared with high school students who graduated in the years just before the recession, students who graduated during the recession were more concerned for others, more interested in social issues and more interested in saving energy and helping the environment.
For example, 63 percent of recession-era 12th graders said they made an effort to turn down the heat at home to save energy, compared with 55 percent in the pre-recession period; 30 percent of recession-era students said they thought often about social problems, compared with 26 percent of pre-recession students; and 36 percent said they would be willing to use a bicycle or mass transit to get to work, up from 28 percent just before the recession.
"This is the silver lining of the Great Recession," said Patricia Greenfield, distinguished professor of psychology at UCLA and senior author of the study. "These findings are consistent with my theory that fewer economic resources lead to more concern for others and the community. It is a change very much needed by our society."
The research was based on an analysis of data from Monitoring the Future, a survey of a representative sample of U.S. high school seniors conducted between 1976 and 2010 in which students were asked about a variety of issues. The current study focused on their answers to questions related to concern for others and the environment, as well as those related to the importance of money and materialism. The study authors also analyzed whether the high school seniors believed they were more intelligent than average.
They found that recession-era high school students were more likely to think they were smarter than their peers, and they were more satisfied with themselves — the recession did not reverse the overall long-term trend toward young people having a more inflated sense of self, the researchers said.
Other analyses by the team found that high school students' positive self-views had decreased during previous recessions but not during the recent recession.
"In the past, recessions led to less positive self-views. The recent recession is the only one that produced an increase," said co-author Jean M. Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before."
That finding suggests other factors in the culture may be at work, such as technology and a "focus on fame," said UCLA's Greenfield, director of the Children's Digital Media Center @ Los Angeles.
Compared with pre-recession high school students, recession-era students were less likely to believe it important to own expensive products and luxury items. However, recession-era students continued the long-term trend of believing earning a lot of money is important.
The lead author of the study was Heejung Park, a UCLA a doctoral candidate in psychology, whose research reveals how social change affects human development.
The research was funded by Russell Sage Foundation as part of a major initiative to assess the effects of the Great Recession on the economic, political and social life of the country.
INFORMATION:
For information about San Diego State University, visit http://www.sdsu.edu.
UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and six faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
END
LA JOLLA, CA ----A team of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has identified why disruption of a vital pathway in cell cycle control leads to the proliferation of cancer cells. Their findings on telomeres, the stretches of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that protect our genetic code and make it possible for cells to divide, suggest a potential target for preventive measures against cancer, aging and other diseases. The findings were published July 11 in Molecular Cell.
Telomeres have been compared to the plastic tips at the end of shoelaces because ...
By comparing the human genome to the genomes of 34 other mammals, Australian scientists have described an unexpectedly high proportion of functional elements conserved through evolution.
Less than 1.5% of the human genome is devoted to conventional genes, that is, encodes for proteins. The rest has been considered to be largely junk. However, while other studies have shown that around 5-8% of the genome is conserved at the level of DNA sequence, indicating that it is functional, the new study shows that in addition much more, possibly up to 30%, is also conserved at ...
Researchers in the Antibody and Vaccine Group have developed two monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) called anti-4-1BB and anti-CD40 and investigated a third called anti-CTLA-4. Each of these antibodies binds to a different target molecule in the immune system, potentially heightening the body's own immune response to cancer.
Published in the July edition of Clinical Cancer Research, the study has shown that the antibodies boost the immune system to fight neuroblastoma -- a form of childhood cancer which grows from undeveloped tissue of the nervous system.
They found that ...
UK scientists have found a naturally occurring molecule in the body which may have important consequences for treating osteoarthritis.
Researchers from The University of Manchester and the University of Westminster have found that the molecule, known as Urocortin, protects cells in the joints from being destroyed.
The discovery could help lead to the development of new medicines to prevent joint degradation -- a condition which affects millions of people in the UK each year.
Osteoarthritis, a painful condition associated with a loss of joint mobility particularly in ...
During the hot summer months, there's nothing quite like a nice refreshing and cooling dip in a pool, and it would seem that elephants agree. In fact, in some game parks, elephants will rarely stray far from water, and have even been, albeit controversially, called a water-dependent species. But are they really water dependent and if so what drives this dependence? Is it caused by a necessity to cool down? Robin Dunkin, a researcher from University of California, Santa Cruz, USA explains that although elephants have numerous tricks they use to keep cool, such as using their ...
July 11, 2013, Shenzhen, China - An international consortium, consisting of Autism Speaks, Duke University School of Medicine, The Hospital for Sick Children of Toronto, BGI and other institutes, has investigated the genetic variants in 32 families with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The results show that whole genome sequencing and analysis promise great value to identify de novo or rare inherited mutations that give rise to autism in ASD groups. The findings were published online today in American Journal of Human Genetics.
Autism is the fastest growing developmental ...
This news release is available in Spanish. This phenomenon, termed cell competition, occurs in a defined time window, between days 3 and 7 of mouse development. During this period all embryonic cells compete with each other, as explained by Dr. Cristina Claveria, first author of the study, and Dr. Miguel Torres, director of this work and Head of the Department of Cardiovascular Development and Repair at CNIC.
"Thanks to cell competition the developing organism optimizes itself by selecting the cells theoretically more capable of supporting vital functions throughout ...
This news release is available in German. If the heart following a heart attack is not sufficiently supplied with blood, heart tissue dies. In adult humans, the ability to heal itself is hardly developed. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim, together with U.S. colleagues, have now observed in the embryo of the zebrafish that muscle cells migrate from the undamaged atrium into the ventricle and thus significantly contribute to regeneration. This could serve as the basis for novel therapeutic approaches.
If clinicians ...
This news release is available in German. Jerusalem is characterized by a continued level of territorial conflict. Rarely does a day go by without media reports of violent clashes between Orthodox Jews, secular Israelis, Palestinians and the Israeli police and security forces. Ethnic, religious and ideological tensions determine the social life of the city, and efforts to find a political solution to the city's future status have thus far failed.
Researchers from ETH Zurich, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva and the ...
One might expect that collisions between the remains of monstrous stars, with masses reaching 200-300 times that of our Sun, would be among the most spectacular phenomena in the Universe. Perhaps they are, but we will unfortunately probably never have the chance to find out. Astrophysicists from the Astronomical Observatory of the Faculty of Physics at University of Warsaw have discovered that the first such collisions will not occur until billions of years from now.
For a long time, astronomers have believed that the biggest stars in the Universe do not exceed 150 solar ...
