The Motivation and Political Alienation of Older Americans

Abstract

Utilizing a sample of older Americans this paper focused on the relationship between their personal motivation (whether internally or externally oriented) and their feeling of political incapability, political discontentment and anomie. The individual was defined as internally oriented to the degree that he felt there was a direct causal chain between his actions and given social outcomes, and externally oriented to the degree that he thought that luck, chance or fate determined these outcomes. Following Olsen's example, political incapability was defined as a feeling that the social system is preventing one from reaching desired goals, political discontentment was defined in terms of the political world not being worth one's participation, and anomie was defined as estrangement from one's social world [1]. External orientation was found to be significantly related to feelings of political incapability, political discontentment, and anomie among older Americans. The data tended to indicate that early personal orientation toward problem solving led to generalized expectations which provide long range motivational and behavioral patterns for individuals which follow them throughout life.

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