How Protesting Depends on Peers: U.S. Students in the Late 1960s

• In Event: 283 - Regular Session. Collective Behavior: Modeling Participation and Action

Abstract

If an individual’s decision to protest or join a movement is influenced by the actions and attitudes of significant others, then the actions of socially proximate individuals should be positively associated. This hypothesis is tested using a survey of freshmen entering American colleges in 1967, who were surveyed again at the beginning of 1970. The freshmen were asked to estimate their own chance of protesting. This provides a comprehensive control variable at the individual level, and is aggregated at the college level to measure social influence. A student’s probability of protest during college increases markedly with the proportion of fellow freshmen who had anticipated that they would protest, controlling for over fifty variables at the individual, institutional, and state levels. There is evidence that this effect reflects genuine social interaction rather than the student’s selection of a college inhabited by likeminded people. Students protested, in part, because peers in their college were prone to protest.

Author

• Michael Biggs, University of Oxford