Abstract
This empirical study of the formation of social attitudes during junior high and high school is based on data gathered in 1992 through the use of a self-administered questionnaire filled out by about 700 Japanese students and their parents.
The paper focuses on authoritarian conservatism and general life satisfaction as separate facets of the different ways of thinking that typify the various social strata. The status attainment model served as the basic model. The variables, some of which were based on structural equation measurement models, were arranged in the following causal ordering : 1) social background i.e., father's education and occupational status, 2) socialization factors i.e., parents' social attitudes, number of family members, 3) ascription i.e., ability in school, age or grade and 4) educational conditions in school i.e., substantive complexity of schoolwork, closeness of supervision by teachers and routinization of work. 5) authoritarian conservatism or general life satisfaction.
The results indicated that 1) there are significant, but not particularly powerful, causal connections between parents' and children's levels of authoritarian conservatism and general life satisfaction. 2) The fact that the social background variables have little significant effect on these two variables suggests that social reproduction theories such as the Bourdieu's, or Bowles and Gintis do not apply to contemporary Japan. 3) Despite Parsonian thesis of socialization into the nuclear family, educational conditions mainly form student's authoritarian conservatism and general life satisfaction in contemporary Japan.
