The Liberalizing Effect of Taking Introductory Sociology

Very few systemic attempts have been made to measure the impact of a sociology course on students' political attitudes. Even when an intended course objective has been to change political attitudes, the direction and magnitude of these changes have not been empirically assessed. To this end, students in four introductory sociology classes were tested at both the beginning and at the end of the semester using 18 paired statements on political orientation. The results were compared to those obtained in a similar study at the same university four years earlier. The findings showed that an introductory sociology course had a significant liberalizing effect on students' attitudes regardless of the professor's theoretical perspective. We also found that students taking the course in 1981 were significantly more conservative than those who took the same course four years earlier.