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As the name suggests, social-psychology is a bastard field. It consists of such a variety of peoples doing so many different things in different ways, that it defies definition—at least for me. In spite of the neat delineations which are made in textbooks and the scholarly historical treatments which appear in encyclopediae and symposia, I find it difficult to grasp a concept of "social-psychology" which is anything more than the operational definition: "Social psychology is what people who call themselves social-psychologists, do." That is not much help, but it is all we have got. I mention my own confusion in this matter, not with the aim of confusing others, but by way of explanation: some of the issues I will touch upon in this paper may infringe upon what readers consider to be other areas of sociology. I regret such territorial invasions. But in my own quest for understanding why people act as they do, I have increasingly found that the traditional "fields" in the discipline and the traditional courses in the catalogue do not provide appropriate categories with which I can explain to colleagues and students what it is I am discovering. Having said all of this, let us get down to business. It is a decade since Dennis Wrong published the paper in which he challenged "The oversocialized conception of man in modern society" (1961). Reacting to a determinism which pervaded the social sciences and which seemed to be seeping into popular currency, Wrong asked if man were in fact as constrained by a monolithic culture as we social scientists would have it. A few years later Harold Garfinkel referred more bluntly to the models of men constructed by the various social sciences: he called them "judgmental dopes." The cultural dope and the psychological dope are, respectively, the man in the sociologist's society and the man in the psychologist's society (1967:67-68). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to outline and examine a few basic functions which ideology performs for the individual and for society. In order to progress in this direction, it might help to agree on some basic conceptual definitions. To begin with, some effort must be made to arrive at a satisfactory definition of ideology, since that term occupies a rather central place in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ordinarily an anniversary occasions the reification of an artificial period. In this case however, there is a certain juncture in the history of the point of view which makes of the past quarter-century something worthy of consideration for symbolic interactionism as well as for our celebration of the founding of the Midwest Sociological Society. The year 1937 lies virtually in the middle of a four-year period which saw the publication of Mind, Self, and Society, Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, and The Philosophy of the Act. It would represent the greatest naiveté to suggest that thus the year 1937 represented the introduction of symbolic interactionism. We are all aware of the long development: from James, Baldwin, and Cooley to Thomas, Faris, Dewey, Blumer, and Young. Even the Tardean imitation and suggestion which underlay Ross's Social Psychology contributed a good deal ordinarily not credited to him in the development of interaction theory. Nor is it the fact that Mead represents the fullest development of the orientation that makes so significant the posthumous publication of his works (for which we may conveniently take 1937 as an anchoring point). Mead's ideas had been known for a very long time. He had taught University of Chicago students from 1893 to 1931. His notions were bruited about in classes and seminars wherever there were professors conducting them who had studied at the University of Chicago—not least in the great heartland included in the Mid-west of our Society. Some of Mead's students had published their versions of his ideas or quotations from some of his philosophical papers—Kimbali Young's Source Book in Social Psychology of a decade earlier contained a paper by Mead, and his Social Psychology bore the strong imprint of Meadian interactionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symbolic interaction theory as derived mainly from the work of George Herbert Mead views the self-concept as a structure of attitudes which arises in social experience and organizes the individual's perception of his social milieu. Recently, tests based upon this symbolic interaction orientation have been developed for the elicitation of self attitudes. One such test frequently used is the Twenty Statements Test (TST) constructed by Manford Kuhn and Thomas McPartland. The TST attempts to ascertain the specific statements respondents use to identify themselves to themselves. The applicability of the TST to problems of self theory is indicated by the rather wide use which has been made of the instrument. Investigations using the TST have focused upon the following: self-concept and social position; a self-concept and behavior; and the self-concept and attitudes toward other social objects. While TST results have been of substantive interest, little attention has been given to the methodological issues involved in the instrument and its use. For example, little is known concerning the validity and reliability of the test and its scoring procedures. If substantive assertions based upon TST results are to be considered as sound, judicious concern should be directed toward basic methodological issues. It is the purpose of this paper to consider empirically one methodological aspect of the TST. The focus is upon the test format itself. The question is posed: Do variations in the TST format produce variations in individuals' response patterns? Specifically, does the length of the test influence the number and the nature of statements made by respondents? This paper is directed toward answering this question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper, then, is to bring organizational analysis to bear upon the problem of competition for control over goals, means, and organizationally relevant behavior. Further, emphasis is placed upon one type of strategy by which such competition has been managed, i.e., formal coaptation (See Selznick, 1949) and, additionally, some consequences of that strategy. The unit for analysis is the Christian Family Movement (CFM), a Midwest based, lay apostolic, action organization whose leaders claim the allegiance of some 60,000 married couples in fifty-five countries. For some time now CFM has been experiencing the pains of organizational transition, and its history reflects the consequences of two groups in competition for control over the organization's goals and means. One consequence is somewhat of a two-dimensional authority structure, each dimension of which is felt to be the only legitimate one from the standpoint of its representatives. Other consequences have to do with policy-development and the achievement of formally stated goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of questions have been recently raised or re-raised with respect to the status and intended function in sociology of the methodological device known as the "type." Martindale's summary of the historical and contemporary uses to which the typology has been put as well as his formulation of the issues connected with such use permits the economy of moving directly into a specification of the problems considered in this paper, and the proposed solutions. The present effort is directed primarily at providing one solution to the often raised problem of "the relation between the idealization involved in the type and the empirical reality," although less pressing issues are also treated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most promising efforts to operationalize the concept of the "self" has been that of the late Professor Manford H. Kuhn and his students. This approach has employed the "Twenty-Statements Test," or TST, an open-ended instrument which is designed to elicit the respondent's "spontaneous" self-definitions in their order of salience. Since its first publication in 1954, the TST has been used in a variety of studies? However, previous studies of the "self" have been conducted on restricted population samples, and little is known about the self-definitions held by a general population. The present paper describes the TST responses of a representative sample of the general adult population of Iowa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general theory of symbolic interaction, specifically self theory, is focused upon the importance of language as an instrument of definition and communication. People are seen as responding not directly to a resistant outer reality but to meanings of objects which are defined within a cultural system and social organization. G. H. Mead, in his discussion of the way persons develop self concepts and the accompanying ability to take roles effectively, speaks of the degree to which persons develop a "general other." This general other is an organized structure of attitudes believed to be common to all and is defined in terms of a universe of discourse growing out of the symbolic interaction of a community of individuals. Replies to the Twenty Statements Test, described by Kuhn and McPartland, display this quality. Self-identifying statements which people make fall along a rough spectrum of reference which can be broken up in various ways. The distinction which Kuhn and McPartland have reported is between what they call consensual and nonconsensual statements. Consensual statements are defined as those statements which would be generally understood by persons in the larger society without explanation. Nonconsensual statements are defined as those requiring interpretation before their social relevance can be assessed. The consensual statement is language behavior directed to the general other, while the nonconsensual statement is language directed to a more limited audience. H. S. Sullivan's contribution in developing the notion of the "significant other" consists in accounting for the fact that persons often do not seem to internalize standards and norms from the whole society but from segments of it on some selective basis. In this paper, the number of consensual statements made in response to the Twenty Statements Test will be called the locus score. Respondents are assigned to "high" and "low" locus categories as they make more or less than the median number of consensual statements. Expanding upon this frame of reference, it seems reasonable to propose that the locus quality found in self-conceptions of a given person is also characteristic of his conceptions of other objects. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that the self is the core of a set of interrelated attitudes, and that the level of reference employed by the respondent in his attitudes toward the self would therefore be applicable to other attitudes as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]