IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amsocr/v88y2023i2p220-251.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Change in Personal Culture over the Life Course

Author

Listed:
  • Philipp M. Lersch

Abstract

Prior literature finds stability in personal culture, such as attitudes and values, in individuals’ life courses using short-running panel data. This work has concluded that lasting change in personal culture is rare after formative early years. This conclusion conflicts with a growing body of evidence for changes in personal culture after significant life course transitions, drawing on long-running panel data. To integrate these conflicting findings, the current study develops and applies a life course adaption model of personal culture, accounting for early imprinting and the continued possibility for change. Drawing on rich data from six long-running panel studies from five countries (BHPS, HILDA, PSID, SHP, SOEP, UKHLS) and 428 measures of personal culture, I test the theoretical expectations using mixed-effects modeling and an individual participant data meta-analysis. Results support the life course adaption model. Although lasting, non-transitory, within-individual changes in personal culture are relatively small compared to stable between-individual differences, I find strong support for the proposition that individuals change persistently in their personal culture as they move through the life course. These changes are partly dependent on prior biographical experiences. Finally, personal culture fluctuates substantially from year to year. Change in personal culture is increasingly varied for younger birth cohorts.

Suggested Citation

  • Philipp M. Lersch, 2023. "Change in Personal Culture over the Life Course," American Sociological Review, , vol. 88(2), pages 220-251, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amsocr:v:88:y:2023:i:2:p:220-251
    DOI: 10.1177/00031224231156456
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224231156456
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00031224231156456?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zachary Winkle, 2018. "Family Trajectories Across Time and Space: Increasing Complexity in Family Life Courses in Europe?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(1), pages 135-164, February.
    2. Susan L. Brown & I-Fen Lin & Anna M. Hammersmith & Matthew R. Wright, 2019. "Repartnering Following Gray Divorce: The Roles of Resources and Constraints for Women and Men," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(2), pages 503-523, April.
    3. Patrick J. Egan, 2020. "Identity as Dependent Variable: How Americans Shift Their Identities to Align with Their Politics," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 699-716, July.
    4. Lersch, Philipp M. & Schulz, Wiebke & Leckie, George, 2020. "The Variability of Occupational Attainment: How Prestige Trajectories Diversified within Birth Cohorts over the Twentieth Century," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 85(6), pages 1084-1116.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christian S. Czymara & Anastasia Gorodzeisky, 2024. "Hostility on Twitter in the aftermath of terror attacks," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 1305-1325, October.
    2. Chaïm la Roi & Carmen Alebeek & Tom Meer, 2025. "Socialized to (Dis)trust? A Panel Study into the Origins of Dispositional Institutional Trust," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 371-391, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zachary Van Winkle & Anette Fasang, 2021. "The complexity of employment and family life courses across 20th century Europe: More evidence for larger cross-national differences but little change across 1916‒1966 birth cohorts," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 44(32), pages 775-810.
    2. Ronja Sczepanski, 2023. "European by action: How voting reshapes nested identities," European Union Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 751-770, December.
    3. Jesper Lindmarker & Martin Kolk & Sven Drefahl, 2025. "Cohabitation and Mortality Across the Life Course: A Longitudinal Cohort Study with Swedish Register-Based Sibling Comparisons," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 41(1), pages 1-48, December.
    4. Tosi, Marco & van den Broek, Thijs, 2020. "Gray divorce and mental health in the United Kingdom," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    5. Bruno Arpino & Jordi Gumà & Albert JuliÃ, 2021. "Deviations From Standard Family Histories and Subjective Wellbeing at Older Ages," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2021_16, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".
    6. Ariane Bertogg & Anja K. Leist, 2023. "Gendered life courses and cognitive functioning in later life: the role of context-specific gender norms and lifetime employment," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 1-15, December.
    7. Grossmann, Jakub & Jurajda, Štepán & Roesel, Felix, 2021. "Forced Migration, Staying Minorities, and New Societies: Evidence from Post-War Czechoslovakia," IZA Discussion Papers 14191, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. David Pelletier & Simona Bignami-Van Assche & Anaïs Simard-Gendron, 2020. "Measuring Life Course Complexity with Dynamic Sequence Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 1127-1151, December.
    9. Marcelo Parreira do Amaral & Jenni Tikkanen, 2022. "Governing the Life Course through Lifelong Learning: A Multilevel and Multidimensional View," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-13, May.
    10. Liao, Tim F. & Bolano, Danilo & Brzinsky-Fay, Christian & Cornwell, Benjamin & Fasang, Anette Eva & Helske, Satu & Piccarreta, Raffaella & Raab, Marcel & Ritschard, Gilbert & Struffolino, Emanuela & S, 2022. "Sequence analysis: Its past, present, and future," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 107, pages 1-1.
    11. Luca Maria Pesando & Nicola Barban & Maria Sironi & Frank F. Furstenberg, 2021. "A Sequence‐Analysis Approach to the Study of the Transition to Adulthood in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 47(3), pages 719-747, September.
    12. Olivia Jean Arcangeli & Anastasia Ejova, 2025. "Does Time Heal All Wounds? Life Satisfaction Trajectories in Australian Middle-Aged Women Before and After Relationship Dissolution," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 1-36, March.
    13. Glenn Sandström & Lena Karlsson, 2019. "The educational gradient of living alone: A comparison among the working-age population in Europe," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 40(55), pages 1645-1670.
    14. Livia Sz. Oláh & Rudolf Richter & Irena Kotowska, 2023. "Introduction to the Special Collection on The new roles of women and men and implications for families and societies," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 48(29), pages 849-866.
    15. Jaume Ojer & David Cárcamo & Romualdo Pastor-Satorras & Michele Starnini, 2025. "Charting multidimensional ideological polarization across demographic groups in the USA," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 9(10), pages 2027-2037, October.
    16. Zachary Van Winkle, 2020. "Early Family Life Course Standardization in Sweden: The Role of Compositional Change," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 36(4), pages 765-798, September.
    17. Haoming Song, 2022. "Women’s Divergent Union Transitions After Marital Dissolution in the United States," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(3), pages 953-980, June.
    18. Arnaud Wolff, 2022. "The Signaling Value of Social Identity," Working Papers of BETA 2022-15, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    19. Alessandro Di Nallo, 2025. "The partnership context of first parenthood – and how it varies by parental class and birth cohort in the United Kingdom," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 53(16), pages 465-510.
    20. Michaël Boissonneault, 2021. "Period measures of life course complexity," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 44(47), pages 1133-1148.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:amsocr:v:88:y:2023:i:2:p:220-251. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.