Social determinism,rationality, and partisanship among college students

This study finds high rates of defection from parental partisanship among a sample of undergraduate students at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, despite relying on students' perceptions of their parents' party loyalties, which almost certainly exaggerate agreement between students and parents. There was a much higher rate of defection among students from Republican families than among students from Democratic families. The pattern of defections from parental partisanship was consistent with the rational reevaluation hypothesis: liberal-conservative self-placement was strongly related to party identification among students from Republican families and families without a party preference.