B&I Workshop: Turgut Keskinturk (Duke)

Turgut Keskinturk (Duke) will present his talk, "Generational Imprinting: How Political Events Shape Cohorts."

Abstract:
How, and for whom, do political events translate into enduring political change? This article advances a three-stage model of cohortization, in which salient events produce age differential changes in attitudes, elite cues drive identity-congruent political sorting, and life-course timing regulates whether these attitude changes remain persistent over time. Focusing on the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 as a quasi-natural experiment, I test this model by analyzing attitudes toward U.S. law enforcement among non-Hispanic White Americans using five surveys that collectively span from 2016 to 2024. The findings consistently show that Democrats and Independents became strongly unfavorable toward law enforcement-much more so among younger than older individuals. Moreover, the changes persisted for younger individuals, while fading among older individuals, leading to cohort-led polarization. This article integrates two classic-though largely partial-theories of political learning, offering a model for understanding how salient events can realign generational divides.