ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a study of 18- to 24-year-old young adults designed to help explore what makes people so different from each, and also to investigate whether "Millennials" share any values or views widely enough to make them into a generation. It used open-ended interviews to elicit respondents' religious beliefs and social values in their own words, in order to study how they are understanding the new globalizing, media-saturated world in which they are becoming adults, and to investigate the psychological organization of their beliefs. The study discussed leads people to believe that "Millennials" are becoming adults in a world different enough from that of their parents that it has formed them as a generation in some respects, and that they are reshaping important features of our cultural landscape – especially as they value religious and political tolerance, and ethnic and gender equality.
