Search

This Paper resents a definition and typology of "awareness contexts" and offers a paradigm for their study. The paradigm emphasizes the developmental interaction processes deriving from given awareness contexts, and directs attention to transformations of those contexts. The writings of four sociologists are located within the paradigm with respect to the types of awareness context they assume and the segments of the paradigm they treat. Implications of the paradigm for future research and theory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces research papers included in the December 1954 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." In this issue fourteen articles are published which place a central emphasis on the nature and consequences of lace-to-lace interaction. These articles, which might ordinarily have been spread through several issues, are collected into a special issue in order to direct attention of members of allied disciplines, like anthropology, and psychology, to the variety and extent of sociology's present commitment in the small group field. Within the ranks of sociology it is hoped that this issue may help to capture the minds and talents of members who have not previously concerned themselves with small group research. There is every prospect that authors of articles in the present issue, with their average age in the low thirties, will for many years be deeply involved in the development and clarification of small group thinking. The case for the study of small groups will be most satisfactorily resolved if their enthusiasm can be sustained, their work criticized, and their ranks increased.

This paper examines the community situation of shipyard workers on Tyneside, certain aspects of their orientations to work and general social perspectives, and the relationship of these to each other and to the structure of social relations at work. In terms of their community situation shipyard workers would seem to come close to Lockwood's traditional proletarian type of worker. There is evidence to suggest, however, that these workers' social perspectives are not at all clearly traditional proletarian. The explanation for this is found, at least m part, m the much greater complexity of social relations at work than are accounted for in the model of traditional proletarianism. The paper suggests that existing typologies of the orientations and social perspectives of workers need to be refined by more detailed studies of the structural and relational aspects of both work and community situations. The paper concludes with a brief examination of changes in both industry and community and the likely effect of these on the social perspectives of shipbuilding workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the success of the Davis-Leinhardt graph theoretical model in predicting structural trends in a data bank of 742 sociograms from diverse small groups. The model has an over-all success rate of 70%, but two key predictions are not supported. An alternative model is then tested. Its prediction that the sums of pair relations tend toward cluster-ability is supported in 77% of the tests, and its prediction that differences of pair relations tend toward a transitive tournament is supported in 90% of the tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra-organizational stratification systems may be viewed as a series of social distance patterns "attached" to a set of fixed positions. The focus of the present paper is on the social distance strategies employed in inter-status and intra-status relationships on a psychiatric ward. A patient's position in the status hierarchy, as determined by sociometric choices, is considered a function of (1) her access to prestigeful groups, i.e., staff; (2) her access to the public and private knowledge of prestigeful groups; and (3) the qualitative nature of the contact situation in inter-status relationships. The various social distance strategies result in either status threats or power threats for staff personnel on the ward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work on the effects of cooperative and competitive settings appears to be completely ambiguous. An examination of these studies suggests that the strength and direction of the effect is strongly influenced by the extent to which the group has an interdependence task. A review of the literature suggests that the results may be generalized to a variety of types of groups. The thesis is put forward that these results may be conceptualized in terms of a balance between two opposing behavior patterns: one oriented to greater individual productivity and one oriented to blocking the productivity of others. This paper reports an experiment confirming the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has evolved from a preliminary report of a study conducted in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1950. Although the study was originally conceived as applied rather than pure research, the attitude-type scale devised afforded an operational formulation of the anomie concept. This formulation was broader, however, than that specified by Durkheim. This paper benefits from the findings of the New York research, although it is substantively based on the earlier research. The objective of the Springfield study was the measurement and assessment of the impact of a series of ADL card advertisements (anti-discrimination and American Creed messages) that were posted under controlled conditions in vehicles of the public transit system. The applied character of this research imposed a different research design than would have been developed if the study had exclusively focused on the anomie concept. In an exploratory study such as this, caution dictates that the findings be weighed principally on the scale of their suggestive potentialities.

Sociometry is an axis with two poles. The arm towards one pole is directed towards the discovery of the deeper levels of society's structure. The other is directed towards promoting change of society based upon the dynamic facts found in its structure. Since one cannot anticipate the structure of society, the sociometrist must be an experimental realist and plunge into the task of uncovering the actually functioning structures in which people relate themselves to one another. It is an unavoidable task, yet one surely worth the effort, if one ever gain control over social processes in which one participates and to which the destiny not only of oneself as individuals is bound up, but also the destiny of man as a species if he is to better his lot and build a harmonious society. Social process is used in this paper to define the temporal development of interpersonal relationships as contrasted with structure, which is herein used to designate the spatial facts of such relationships. Social process is the way by which structure comes to exist. In contrast to structure, which may be conceived spatially, social process is the manner by which sociation occurs, develops and results in structure, the psychosocial organization of relationships maintaining between individuals.

Remarriage as a means of rectifying a mistake in divorce has been given less attention. Instances of such remarriage are commoner than is sometimes supposed. The author's attention was drawn to the subject by a number of clients of the Institute of Family Relations who got divorces, afterwards decided that they were happier together than they were apart, and remarried each other successfully. This paper reports on 200 such cases. Some of these are decidedly complicated, various other marriages having served to embroider the main pattern. Of the 200 cases here reported of remarriage of the same persons, 96 were happy on the second attempt; 29 were doubtful and 75 definitely unhappy. The mean length of first marriage was 5.1 years, nearly one third lasted less than two years, while nearly one fourth were of at least ten years' duration before the divorce. There is very little relationship between the length of marriage prior to divorce and the length of intermission prior to remarriage. A short marriage may be followed by long separation or vice versa. One might suppose that those longest married would require the shortest time to discover that their divorce was a mistake; that there would be, in other words, a negative correlation between first marriage and intermission. This is not found. The correlation is positive, though small.

The study of mass communications has not interested many sociologists until quite recently. Each of the workers has been interested in a special problem, and on the whole those problems have been practical, requiring what is immediately useful for action rather than what is or will be useful for basic knowledge. That practical orientation has not only been responsible for the diversity of research but also for a notable lack of the systematic point of view that a theory of mass communication would give. Such a theory could illuminate the area of research better than mere common sense, and by doing so make the application of specific research techniques more appropriate and more accurate. In this article the sociological concept of the mass will be examined to see if it may be used to define the character of the audience of mass communications. The mass has no social organization, no body of custom and tradition, no established set of rules or rituals, no organized group of sentiments, no structure of status roles, and no established leadership. It merely consists of an aggregation of individuals who are separate, detached, anonymous.

The frictions which frequently appear in human relations within industry do not necessarily arise solely from the work situation. In many cases, such conflicts may reflect the group memberships of the industrial participants and the relative positions of their groups in the total society. In this analysis of industrial relations in an African community, the interpersonal relations of Europeans, Asians, and Africans at work are seen as a counterpart of the relations of these groups in community life as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on James M. Williams' article "The ecological approach in measuring community power concentration: an analysis of Hawley's MPO ratio." My article was simply the best approximation to the operationalization of a concept of power distribution within a system that I could find at the time. Mr. Williams bases his criticism of my approach to power on the results of correlations of the MPO ratio with case-study findings. It is interesting to note that where he obtains some slightly significant results, which show a direct relationship, he questions the quality of the data. He suggests that, since seven different researchers produced the data, there is probably some lack of standardization among them. In the first place, the ratio is constructed not of the total number of managers, proprietors and officials, but only those not elsewhere classified. Second, there is no logical flaw in the interpretation of the ratio as a measure of power distribution. Third, my use of the power concentration hypothesis was limited to innovative programs. Expressly excluded were firmly established components of community structure, such as is manifested in the welfare sector. Presumably the latter is a resolution of an earlier exercise of system power.

The article focuses on an article "Scaling Norm Conflicts in the Area of Prejudice and Discrimination," by Nathan Kogan and James F. Downey that was published in the "Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology." This is a methodological paper, based on the assumption that prejudice and discrimination can be analyzed in terms of conflict between the norms of different reference groups. It reports the development of a scale measuring the propensity to choose discriminatory or anti-discriminatory courses of action in particular social situations involving norm conflict.

Social structures are defined by their parameters the criteria underlying me differentiation among people and governing social interaction, such as sex, race, socioeconomic status, and power. The analysis of various forms of differentiation, their interrelations, and their implications for integration and change is the distinctive task of sociology. Two generic types of differentiation are heterogeneity and status inequality. Nominal parameters divide people into subgroups and engender heterogeneity. Graduated parameters differentiate people in terms of status rankings and engender inequality. The macrosocial integration of the diverse groups in modem society rests on its multiform heterogeneity resulting from many crosscutting parameters. For although heterogeneity entails barriers to social Intercourse multiform heterogeneity undermines these barriers and creates structural constraints to establish intergroup relations. Crosscutting lines of differentiation thus foster processes of social integration, and they also foster processes of recurrent change. Strongly interrelated parameters impede these processes of integration and adjustment, however. (Such relationships between parameters - for example, between the occupation and income of individuals - must not be confused with the relationships between forms of differentiation - for example, between the division of labor and income inequality in societies.) Pronounced correlations of parameters reveal a consolidated status structure, which intensifies inequalities and discourages intergroup relations and gradual change. The growing concentration of resources and powers in huge organizations and their top executives poses a serious threat of structural consolidation in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editorial staff of "Sociometry" continued their efforts during the past year to solicit and select articles of good quality which reflect significant developments in research in social psychology. Since the last report, 89 manuscripts have been submitted (as of June 30, 1957). Of these, 22, or about 25 percent have been published or accepted for publication. Fifty-four were rejected and 13 are in process of appraisal or revision for resubmission. It will be noted that the number of manuscripts submitted is less than that reported as of July 31, 1956. The number reported at that time was 131. Even allowing for the probable intake of new articles during July 1957, there is a substantial decrease in the number submitted. However, the quality of articles submitted has definitely improved. Without any relaxation of the standards, the acceptance rate has gone from 16 percent in 1956 to 25 percent in 1957. The problem of accumulating a satisfactory backlog of good articles still remains. In spite of persistent efforts to encourage submission of good quality manuscripts, all of the acceptable articles available when each issue goes to press are still being published.

This article looks into the social and psychological basis of human relations. The article focuses principally upon the effects of the social environment upon individual psychological processes. The four areas of social psychology are interpersonal perception, cognitive structure, anxiety and achievement in the classroom, and group effects on intra-individual processes. Interpersonal perception is described as being concerned with (a) process involved in one person's perception on another, (b) the personality attributes of the perceiver and those of the percievee, and (c) the structure and dynamics of the social groups of which the perceiver and usually also the perceivee are a part. The performance of task of the type found in schoolwork is sometimes improved under low or moderate anxiety but that high levels of anxiety are uniformly found to bring about a decrement in performance.

Methods for studying small groups are applied to theoretical questions derived from social psychology. Groups of five persons, of like sex and age, ranging from age five to twenty were studied over four separate sessions. The focus was on age-related developments in interpersonal dynamics, such as number of interaction participants, clique formation, inter- action forms, interaction sequence profiles, and within-session dynamics. Piagetian, social learning and symbolic interaction paradigms are used to interpret the findings. The evidence argues that negative and positive interpersonal actions differ in their effect on social adaptation, status and power differentiation increases with age, and that developmental stages are more complex than the Meadian and Piagetian traditions have suggested. Furthermore, the data suggest strong pressures towards homeostasis within interpersonal relationships, regardless of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In longitudinal data for the decade 1957-67, the socioeconomic achievement of white metropolitan native mates from five religio-ethnic backgrounds is examined. Jews, regardless of ethnic ancestry, attain higher levels of education, occupation, and income than all other sub- group; while Roman Catholics of Italian and Mexican heritage achieve the lowest levels. Controlling statistically for social origins reduces the gross differentials by about one-third; no net effect of religio-ethnic affiliation remains during the ten-year period after both social origins and prior achieved statuses are controlled. Thus, there is no evidence of occupational and income discrimination on purely religious or ethnic grounds. Contrary to current emphasis in the social psychology of religio-ethnic achievement, achievement-related work values and motivations of adults are neither key intervening variables nor do they influence the Process of stratification to a substantial degree. The most important variable in explaining the differential socioeconomic achievement of the religio-ethnic subgroups is education, alter the variation owing to the handicaps and benefits of social origins has been removed statistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review of research on social class and mental illness suggests the hypothesis of two patterns: (1) a discrete relationship with the lowest class having a higher rate than all others but with little difference in rates for other classes; (2) a continuous relationship, with rates systematically increasing with each drop in class status, but with an extremely large increase for the lowest class. Findings for 4,650 Washington male first admissions between 1954 and 1965 support this hypothesis. Alternative interpretations of the relationship between social class and mental illness are considered. Since most interpretations posit a discrete pattern, they will have to be modified or extended to account for both patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It seems reasonable to assume that applied social sciences develop more rapidly under some conditions than others. The purpose of this article is to take this simple assumption seriously, and to identify the theoretic and conceptual tools most conducive to the maturation of applied social sciences. Applied social science has distinctive intellectual requirements largely because it is exposed to special exigencies and tensions. Its theories and concepts not only have to pass inspection before the bar of science, but they must also prove serviceable in coping with this specific set of social tensions. It is not enough, therefore, to examine intellectual tools of applied social science in terms of their manifest scientific functions as technical instruments. They must also be considered in the light of their latent social functions for the peculiar system of human relations in which they are implicated. Attention is directed to two historically different planes of work in applied social science. One of these is the ongoing work in such areas as race relations, housing, industrial sociology, criminology, or mass communications research.

There are several books that contain text about "Minority Groups." The contents and approaches of these texts are disturbing to one who believes that sociology is concerned with the development of empirically-tested generalizations regarding human relationships. A course on "Minority Groups" should present, or attempt to develop, generalizations regarding "minorities." Yet, there is now no "sociology of minorities" in this sense. Nowhere in the "minority" literature can one find a systematic and comprehensive set of sociological generalizations. This lack is not so culpable, for such a set does not now exist. Many authors do not seem to miss it. In the texts one finds many facts, most of them interesting and some of value. There are numerous hypotheses and frequent personal opinions, often stated as if they were conclusions. Preachments regarding what, or who, is bad and proposals for reform are quite common. The few tested generalizations present are often hard to recognize and separate from less useful statements.

The influences responsible for the rapid increase in preoccupation with small groups spring both from within the academic development of various disciplines and from various agencies instituted for devising practical solutions for immediate application. A brief mention of influences contributing to small group research will serve as orientation to the main trail of this article. The article illustrates the testing of hypotheses derived from sociological findings in experimentally designed situations. The article discusses psychological findings, generalizations, and laboratory techniques relevant to the study of experience and behavior of individual group members. The article also provides a refined analysis on a psychological level of individual behavior in the group setting through precise perceptual and judgmental indices. If such data obtained through precise judgmental and perceptual indices and other appropriate techniques are in line with findings concerning group relations on the sociological level, there shall be an integration of psychological and sociological approaches in the study of group relations.

Certain pervasive regularities of human social behavior seem to the sociologist to point to the utility of the higher-level sociological abstractions, such as social structure or social organization. However, the search for objective, reliable, behavioral indicators or reflectors, from which such abstractions may be inferred with some confidence, is a difficult one. The research reported in this article investigates the usefulness of the Chapin Social Participation (SP) schedule as one such indicator. The two related hypotheses to be examined can be stated as: The SP schedule, supplemented by certain standard sociological information, yields data providing an objective basis for inferences regarding patterns of leadership in voluntary organizations in a small American city; and these voluntary-organization leadership patterns constitute an integral part of the power structure or influence system of the social organization of the community studied. The potential scientific significance of evidence favoring the hypotheses lies in the implications about the nature of the social organization of other similar communities. It is appropriate to ask what would constitute evidence toward acceptance of the above hypotheses.

It has for several decades been a fundamental tenet of sociological role theory that when an individual forms a conception of his own role in an interpersonal situation he does so in relation to the role of relevant others in the situation. There is a reciprocity between the self role and the imputed other role, such that one should be predictable from the other. The expectations which an individual has regarding his own behavior are meaningful against the expectations he has regarding the behavior of others with whom he will interact. In spite of wide acceptance of this point of view, there is very little empirical study directed toward validating and refining and implementing the viewpoint. This article will explore the self-role other-role relationship with the following objectives in mind: to produce preliminary evidence of the relationship between self- and other- role conceptions, to identify some characteristic self-other-role pairs, and to identify some of the ways in which the self- and other-roles are related to one another. Specifically, a class of 120 upper division college students were presented with a mimeographed description of a situation in which two college students steal 500 dollars together. Each respondent was then directed to identify himself as the principal actor in the situation, and to write his general reaction to finding himself in such a position. At a subsequent point he was asked to write specifically what he thought would be the effect of this misdeed upon his relations with family, friends, and organizations, in the event they did not know of the act and also in the event that they did know.

The article presents information on the relationship between social psychology and social casework. As reported, it is important to understand the particular theory or set of assumptions of social casework in the U.S. in terms of the broad cultural setting from which it grows. It is further reported that both the fields, social psychology and casework, have drawn heavily upon psychoanalysis as social casework is concerned with social action which involve moral judgments. It is also reported that by further development of objective measures of their operations, the contribution of casework to social psychology would be greatly enhanced.

In an attempt to get some basic information on first pregnancy and the effects of the pregnancy experience upon husband-wife relationships, a research was done with the cooperation of a group of couples who had recently gone through their first pregnancy. During the Spring of 1949, 228 couples who lived in the barracks village at Michigan State College were interviewed and asked for their cooperation. The study was anonymous. Questionnaires were distributed to the couples by the research team who later returned with a box with a slit in it for collection of the questionnaires. All couples living in the village whose first child was not more than 2 years old were included in the sample. Husbands and wives were given separate envelopes containing questionnaires to be filled in independently. Each spouse was to seal his completed questionnaire and then the two were to be placed in a large envelope. In this way it was possible to compare the responses of husbands and wives on certain questions. There was no way of knowing how many couples discussed their questionnaires as they filled them out. All but 7 of the couples interviewed cooperated in the study and 212 out of 221 questionnaires handed out could be used in the final tabulation.

There appear to be two main approaches to the study of the family. One describes the family as a group having certain properties that differentiate it from other groups. It has a certain kind of structure; it has a set of internal relationships that can be specified by reference to the roles of the family members; and, as a group, it has certain legal, economic and status relations to other groups. Possibly not all sociologists would wish to identify themselves with this approach but systematically speaking this is a sociological way of ordering the social events represented by the family and its activities; it is so because it takes the group as the unit of its study. The other approach to the family, which is essentially psychological, takes the individual as the unit of its study. The family is conceived as creating a particular kind of social structure within which the individual is embedded, which acts upon him in diverse ways and on which he acts. The family is conceptualized as an environmental factor having the twin functions of instigator to behavior and manipulandum for behavior. It provides the main setting in early life for the learning of those behavior characteristics that have both individual and social reference, skills such as talking and feeding oneself, and motives and values.

This article discusses the possible applications of demoscopes in basic social research of the future. A "demoscope" is a social fact-finding instrument which denotes much more than the term "survey" since a demoscope includes the organization of personnel who plan, execute, and report a survey as well as the physical equipment of office, tabulating machinery, schedule cards, communicating and transportational and all other equipment. By basic social research, pure scientific research is meant which is not primarily concerned with solving immediate problems nor immediate guiding of administrative decisions but which seeks social laws. Basic social research here means the search to generalize ever more widely the currently limited uniformities that have been measured in interhuman behavior and in their attendant conditions. Such generalizations give man in the long run more basic ability to predict and control human relations. Developing demoscopes as promising instruments for observing social facts, involves the usual assumptions of scientists. It assumes that, social progress depends in part on social research, social research depends in part on observing facts, observing facts depends in part on better instruments.

The number of projects submitted by members of the Society to the Committee on Social Research has continued to increase for the third straight year. The 495 projects for 1946 were submitted by 330 members, or 25 per cent of the total membership of the Society. The 432 projects in 1945 were submitted by 280 members or 22 per cent of the membership for that year. Thus it is seen that most of the 1946 gain occurred in two fields: Social psychology and Social Research. Except for these fields, the two distributions are fairly similar. In the 1945 census an attempt was made to check on coverage by asking all members, whether they had projects to report or not, to return signed schedules. The main gain in 1946 was in those reporting projects. However the less than 43% return leaves the question of representativeness of coverage unanswered. Two hundred twenty-one members, or two in every three who reported projects, reported only one project, and of course each of these was classified in one field.

"Self-interest" in the broadest sense, including the interests of one's family, friends or other group, is the motivation of labor in all societies. In Euro-American urban societies this self-interest operates largely through money acquisition and exchange. In pre-literate societies and also in rural, non-industrialized communities on all cultural levels, self-interest operates largely through conforming to community values, following prescribed rituals or magical beliefs, and maintaining valued personal relationships and esteem. Self-interest is differently defined by different cultures, in terms of goals; and by different castes and classes, in partly quantitative terms--"ceilings" and "floors" of aspiration. [Ed.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The image which a person holds regarding another may be the result, or it may be rather the cause, of his attitude toward the other. False images often come from genuine illusions, errors of judgment, or social defamation, and are not always "rationalizations" of pre-existing love or hostility. Interpersonal misunderstandings do not automatically correct themselves but may become chronic and reciprocal, the persons adjusting their behavior in various ways to the false images. The current emphasis on rationalization tends to overlook these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the research in sociology focuses on the social institutions, such as family and religion; community study and human ecology; social psychology; processes of cultural change and finally, analysis of the pathological aspects of culture and society. The thesis presented in this article is that the sociologist and anthropologist should include within the focus of their attention the behavior systems of definable functional groups. This approach entails as a point of departure the definition and characterization of behavior systems. The general characteristics of a behavior system include a group of specialists recognized by the society, as well as by themselves, who possess an identifiable complex of common culture values, communication devices, techniques, and appropriate behavior patterns; the acquisition by initiates of the body of esoteric knowledge and appropriate behavior patterns before the novices are accepted by the initiated; appropriate sanctions applied by the membership to control members in their relations with one another and with the larger society, and to control nonmembers in their relations with members. Thus, the main objective of this research is the formulation of general propositions indispensable to sociological theory about behavior systems and the discovery of the relation of the behavior system to the person in his interactional group.

In this article the author focuses on the treatment of routine interaction and the problem of collaboration by the socialists. According to the author very few of the writers have any conception of the extent to which a free life is based, and must be, upon effective social conditioning. The fact that practically every habit is also a discipline in social collaboration is ignored in academic studies. He remarks that success in work and living depends on, the development of effective routine relationships with other people, and these are based on social convenience and not on any necessity or truth, and the development of intelligent understanding. The author argues that the intelligent development of civilization is impossible except upon the basis of effective social collaboration and that such collaboration will always be dependent upon semi-automatic routines of behavior made valuable by personal association and high sentiment. The most intelligent adaptation will remain ineffective until transformed from logic and the abstract into the human and actual routine with deep emotional attachment.

Social behavior is a common, every-day phenomenon. It is about as easy for the social investigator to locate as is the common cold for the medical investigator. There are few laboratories for the experimental study of social behavior set up and directed from the point of view of sociology. Experimental approach in sociology is a recent arrival in the family of sociological methods. It is not yet a well recognized procedure. It is probably fair to say that this new method is only beginning to develop a discipline founded on the experimental study of social behavior of the individual in the group. The ultimate purpose of such study is presumably to establish an objective basis for the prediction and control of social behavior. Since group work deals with the adjustment of individuals through group association, it is obvious that it must look to this new discipline as a theoretical basis for practice. This article is written from the point of view of a group worker who has been unable to find an adequate theoretical basis for practice in past sociological studies.

The article presents a study in education which examines the conceptual structures of leadership behavior and the need orientations of teachers to leadership style. The result of the research reports that motivation-oriented teachers prefer systems-oriented leadership. The straightforward implication is that teachers, regardless of need orientations, see the ideal principle as being both systems and persons-oriented. Also, teachers regardless of need orientations, know and can describe the ideal principle.

The article discusses the juxtaposition of matrices of interpersonal relations to those of role-playing under conventional norms. The central point of this problem is the possibility of more or less severe conflict between personal sentiments and conventional forms on the one hand, and interpersonal relations and formalized role-playing on the other. The author argues that sentiments are entirely independent of the cultural setting in which individuals start experiencing interpersonal relations. Since most of the evidence points to the fact that early childhood experiences are more crucial for the formation of personality than later ones, it seems obvious that most people will not manage to completely separate their self from their persona. The degree to which people resent, or are unable to accept this split-personality patterns can be seen in the common tendency to create interpersonal islands of informal groups in the highly formalized setting of standardized role expectations typical of large-scale bureaucratic organizations.