“Kids These Days: Why the Youth of Today Seem Lacking”, 2019-10-16 (; similar):
In 5 preregistered studies, we assess people’s tendency to believe “kids these days” are deficient relative to those of previous generations.
Across 3 traits, American adults (n = 3,458; Mage = 33 to 51 years) believe today’s youth are in decline; however, these perceptions are associated with people’s standing on those traits. Authoritarian people especially think youth are less respectful of their elders, intelligent people especially think youth are less intelligent, and well-read people especially think youth enjoy reading less. These beliefs are not predicted by irrelevant traits.
Two mechanisms contribute to humanity’s perennial tendency to denigrate kids: a person-specific tendency to notice the limitations of others where one excels and a memory bias projecting one’s current qualities onto the youth of the past. When observing current children, we compare our biased memory to the present and a decline appears. This may explain why the kids these days effect has been happening for millennia.
…Five studies were designed to examine the occurrence of and mechanisms underpinning people denigrating the youth of the present (herein termed the kids these days effect). Studies 1 to 3 examined the prevalence of the kids these days effect across 3 different traits and the degree to which it is pronounced for people who excel on that trait. Study 1 examined whether the belief that children are less respectful of their elders is magnified for people who are high in authoritarianism. Study 2 investigated whether people who are more intelligent are particularly predisposed to believe that children are becoming less intelligent. Study 3 explored whether well read people are especially likely to think that today’s children no longer like to read. Then, study 4 investigated the mechanisms leading people to perceive kids these days as particularly lacking on those traits on which they themselves excel in a mediation model. Study 5 manipulated people’s beliefs in their standing in one of these domains and showed resulting indirect decreases in the kids these days effect through our proposed mechanisms.