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The article analyzes merchant behavior in ghetto marketplaces. For this purpose, the article presents two position papers taking different perspectives in regard to a possible explanation for the racial-ethnic differences found through previous research. Walter E. Williams, research economist with the Urban Institute, criticizes previous articles on the grounds that they fail to suggest a behavioral model of merchant behavior and because they fail to suggest effective policy measures to modify this behavior. Williams suggests a rational behavior model: that minorities are characterized by more unemployment, higher residential mobility, and lower income, and that merchants use this readily accessible information to determine creditworthiness. Frederick D. Sturdivant, Meshulam Riklis Professor of Business and Its Environment at the Ohio State University, suggests that the economic model employed by Williams is outdated and inappropriate, that the behavioral model encourages racist stereotyping.

This paper seeks to assess the utility of the transactional model of individual stress. According to the logic of the model, whether persons manifest stress is a multiplicative function of both situational and individual characteristics. The paper briefly discusses possible advantages of the perspective over other frames of reference. Then it describes a pilot study designed to determine whether hypotheses based on the transactional model could be supported empirically. Utilizing interview data from a small probability sample of all adults in the state of Missouri, scales were constructed by an improved method of item analysis for use as indicators of variations in stress and the situational and individual factors. Comparing stress scores by situational and individual variables produced results indicative of a multiplicative relationship and thus supportive of theories derived from the transactional perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable attention has been given recently to the perplexing problem of the relationship between attitudes and behavior (Ehrlich, 1969; Deutscher, 1969; Warner and DeFleur, 1969; Ajzen et al., 1970; Lastrucci, 1970; Tarter, 1970). Methodological issues have been debated, the lack of congruence between attitudes and behavior has been examined, and a variety of solutions have been offered. We are told, for example, that the continuing poor correlation between measured attitudes and overt behavior requires us to search for the intervening variable or variables which apparently obtain (Ehrlich, 1969); or to employ the "direct observation" of the phenomenon under investigation rather than try to extrapolate from paper-and-pencil tests to behavior (Deutscher, 1969); or to develop theories that, in turn, enable us to find indicators that are more valid than the paper-and-pencil type (Lastrueci, 1970); or to simply admit that attitudes as "presently conceptualized play no real role in behavior" (Tarter, 1970). A number of important aspects of attitude research, however, have been obscured or omitted in these discussions. For the surprising aspect of the situation is not, as has often been implied, the lack of congruence between attitudes and behavior, but the persistent use of research designs that are inappropriate for the complexity of the subject under investigation. Further, it is surprising that researchers have failed to draw out other important implications of their research. That is, the fact that an attitude does not lead directly to a behavior does not justify the assertion that attitudes play no role in behavior, or that attitude research lacks significant implications for social life. The basis for this latter statement will be shown below in a discussion of the values of attitude research. It may be that inadequate research designs, valued for their simplicity rather than their appropriateness, are a manifestation of the "publish or perish" syndrome. In any ease, this paper attempts to outline the problems and the values of attitude research, and to demonstrate thereby that such research is of great significance for the understanding of social phenomena. If that significance seems minimized by those studies that have found poor correlation between attitudes and behavior, the fault lies both in the failure to create research designs that reflect the complexity of the problem and in the tendency to exalt the importance of the proximate causes of overt behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pleads for hermeneutic processes to be taken into account in the discussion of role conflict. In order to avoid reification of mechanistic assumptions under- lying cross-pressure models of social action, it is suggested that theory as well as research should take into consideration that norms and behaviour are mediated by interpretative processes. These constitute a level of `social understanding' which can be operationalized in role-conflict terms as three different types of conflict. Reciprocity of perspectives and evaluation, as the main dimensions of interpretation processes, are shown to be the main features of conflicts in role interaction [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how the problem of predicting traveler behavior may be approached in terms of economic utility theory. A general utility maximization model on the level of individual trip-making decisions is developed from basic hypotheses regarding the costs and benefits attributed to travel disaggregated into individual trips. For predictive purposes the form of the utility functions involved must be specified, and several possibilities are explored. The functional forms of the resulting travel demand functions are then derived. In order to pursue an analysis of variations in traveler behavior and in order to perform aggregation over individuals, disturbances in the parameters of the utility functions are considered. The parameters investigated are marginal utilities and the distributions used are normal distributions. In considering binary choices, a trip demand model, a modal split model, and a destination split model are obtained from the same basic methodology. Finally, possible approaches to testing the functional relations involved and to measuring marginal utilities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the systems of relationships and manner of operation of several hospital wards. Data from these settings suggest three concepts of understanding the behavior of the participants. One is elastic autonomy: the autonomy of an actor is not fixed, but expands and contracts according to others assessments of his professional competence. The second is accountability: an actor is held to be accountable or responsible for his decisions and actions. Third is monitoring: the process by which actors keep track of each other's performance. Contingencies affecting autonomy are discussed, as are the relationships between these concepts and those of bureaucratic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have long been aware that when they become part of the system they are investigating, their own behavior may a.fleet the behavior they wish to study. Little data has been collected on the effect of respondents on the researcher and the consequences of this on tho research process. The problem is described and analyzed in this paper. We contend that respondents who have special qualities may intrude upon the researcher's role and make it difficult for him to collect necessary data. An illustration is presented from the authors' study of stripteasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the ubiquitous trends in social behavior is the formation of comprehensive systems of interaction known as communities. Everywhere in the world and throughout man's existence on earth, the formation of communities has been evident, from the primitive tribe to the contemporary nation-state. Among the exciting developments within the more complex communities of mankind, such as cities and nations, is the emergence of subcommunity forms which both complement and contest the arrangements of the larger society. Status communities and ethnic communities of many sorts belong among the contemporary sub-communities. It is instructive to apply this concept of sub-community formation to areas of behavior such as the worlds of art and jazz, when that behavior can be shown to approach closure and completeness with respect to a distinctive way of life. This paper deals with two major tasks: (1) the development of a special theory of the jazz community as an unique form of status community, and (2) a judgment as to the validity of referring to the social world of the jazz musician as a community. It should be mentioned that while this formulation is conceived in terms of the jazz subculture, it also has widespread application elsewhere in the area of social deviance. Since the concept of status group has its roots in the general theory of community, we shall briefly outline that concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major purpose of this paper, therefore, is to develop a more general model of compliance-gaining behavior. Particular emphasis will be placed on those variables which differentiate among individuals with regard to the compliance-gaining techniques they use. In this discussion we shall attempt to specify a preliminary list of interpersonal strategies which will encompass the wide range of compliance-gaining behaviors. Finally we shall illustrate the usefulness of the model by discussing one problem to which it may profitably be applied, the relationship between social class and the generation of school-children defined as "behavior problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of this paper are to propose a new concept for use in attitude studies; to explain one way in which this concept has been operationalized; to suggest an hypothesis for use in further studies of this concept; and to present some preliminary research findings concerning this hypothesis. Social scientists have long been interested in differences and similarities between people holding "liberal" and "conservative" attitudes toward various issues and problems of the day. Countless numbers of research studies have been conducted in this area. Perhaps most interesting among these studies have been several attempts to determine whether people tend to have a general liberal-conservative orientation, or whether we must expect their attitudes to vary in different situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a study of 49 families of ambulatory schizophrenics and 52 families of hospitalized schizophrenics. The obtained data were related to Wolman's power and acceptance theory, and divided into instrumental, mutual and vectorial relations. In all 101 families each parent expected the other parent to be his parent. A reversal in social roles was the general rule in all the investigated families. Parents disappointed in one another fought against each other and the child was expected to satisfy their emotional needs. The conclusion was made that in schizogenic families, the parents turned children and the child was forced into a premature pseudo-parental hypervectorial role that leads to schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper coin pares the conceptions of mental illness held by a group of psychiatrists and a random sample of the general public in the same locality. The hypothesis was that the public, but not the psychiatrists, would tend to consider troublesome behavior as being more indicative of mental illness than non-troublesome behavior. Statements representing five pairs of troublesome non-troublesome types of behavior were rated by both groups as indicators of mental illness. Analysis of the data, using the statements at face value and with a weighting system, did not support the hypothesis. Both public and psychiatrists appear to have similar views but not in the expected order. Most notably, manic behavior ranked very low among the conceptions of mental illness. This finding accords with recent reports of a decline in the incidence of manic- depressive psychoses. Is this decline due to changes in modern society that alter public and psychiatric conceptions of mental illness? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that "total institutions," specifically state operated mental hospitals, contain two cultures: (1) that brought by the inmates and (2) that found in the "institution." Attempts to develop a therapeutic milieu in mental hospitals have been largely directed to `modification of the social structure and have largely ignored cultural norms. There appears to be an implicit assumption that a therapeutic community may be achieved through a social structure with certain universal characteristics. A study of selected background norms of patients in one such "therapeutic milieu" revealed significant differences from the norms of behavior maintained on the ward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a pioneer study of contemporary significance in electoral behavior in reference to a paper on this issue written by Roscoe C. Martin. As far as taste is concerned there was a bias at the outset for selecting an article representing a contribution to an empirically based political science. Martin's piece certainly meets that standard. The article is an early attempt to investigate in a systematic, quantitative fashion a problem that has received considerable attention in more recent volumes of the Quarterly and other scholarly journals, the question of voting behavior in state and local elections. Martin's report of the socioeconomic and institutional factors associated with an Austin municipal election in 1933 precedes the major voting studies conducted on the national, state, and local levels by several years, even decades. But it is not enough merely to say that this study broke new ground in an era when political scientists generally took only marginal interest in studying electoral data; it is also worth remarking that Martin did so in a manner that is still significant for contemporary students of voting.

The article presents the author's reply to the comment by sociologists F. Ted Hebert and Lelan E. McLemore on his paper "The Effect of Organization Size Upon Normative Diversity." The author says that F. Ted Hebert and McLemore contend that the concept of north refers only to a widely shared set of beliefs regarding appropriate behavior, thereby implicitly suggesting that two individuals are an insufficient number of actors to develop shared expectations for behavior. Because they take issue with his definition of two or more who share a perspective and emphasize "widespreadness," in their definition, they apparently feel that two individuals can not interact, develop a shared perspective and sanction one another. Few interactional settings develop a complete consensus in expectations due to factors which isolate or segregate individuals from one another, such as size of the group, role specialization, centralization of decision making or physical separation. The proportion of actors sharing a perspective or the central tendency is not really important in his paper; instead, the concern is with diversity of expectations in an interactional setting.

The article focuses on the author's comment on the paper "The Effect of Organization Size Upon Normative Diversity," by D. Michael Betz, that appeared in the March 1972 issue of the journal "Social Science Quarterly." Conceptually, the norm construct is weakened to the point of triviality by reasoning that "where two or more individuals share a perspective or attitude such shared perspectives represent a normative environment for those individuals and other individuals in their midst." In standard usage, the norm concept has reference to widely shared sets of beliefs regarding appropriate behavior where these beliefs are not only shared but believed to be shared and are supported by social mechanisms encouraging conformity. Betz has examined attitude diversity, not norm diversity and has shown that with respect to three questions, diversity of attitudes is more common in large organizations than in small. Only Betz's unfortunate definition of the norm concept permits labeling these attitudes norms.