Changes in students' sociopolitical attitudes during medical school: socialization or maturation effect?

This study examined medical students' attitudes toward the issue of universal access to medical care in order to determine whether students become more conservative with increased training and, if this is the case, whether changes in students' sociopolitical attitudes can be mostly attributed to the influence of professional education (socialization effect) or to the fact that students change their way of thinking as a result of getting older (maturation effect). Data were obtained from a survey of 586 freshmen, juniors and recent graduates trained in three differently-oriented schools, one being more socially-oriented in its approach to medical education than the other two. The findings documented a conservative trend in more advanced students, not only in the two traditional schools but in the socially-oriented school as well. However, based on the authors' conceptual model, this conservative trend could not be attributed to a pure socialization effect nor to a pure maturation effect. Rather, both types of effect seemed simultaneously at play. In general, students' sociopolitical attitudes were more related to their personal background characteristics than to the characteristics of their professional medical training. These results suggest that selection more than medical training per se is the crucial determinant in influencing medical graduates' sociopolitical outlook.