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This paper attempts to deal with the concept of commitment to a society in the context of a commitment-alienation continuum. Two aspects of commitment were measured: cohesion or affective commitment and control or ideological commitment. Data were collects in a society intentionally structured to solve the problem of attention: a kibbutz in Israel, Measures of the two dimensions of commitment were related to overall satisfaction and a series of ten variables (involving social roles, values and interpersonal relations) which were posited to be significant in the lives of kibbutz members. The main findings were: 1. The degree of commitment to the society is positively related to the degree of overall social need satisfaction. 2. The degree of commitment tends to be higher the more the individual is satisfied in those areas of life which are important to him. 3. Persons occupying roles considered important in the society tend to be more committed to the society than persons occupying less important roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on parent-child separation. Several societies in the world customarily practice this kind of relationship. As the case suggests, this would seem as an excellent manner to study the effects of separation, free from the sampling issues that are almost unavoidable in the child-care institutions. However, the hindrances to reliable data and interpretation are so numerous, and thus renders this approach impracticable. The Kibbutz movement in Israel, wherein children are separated in infancy from their parents and are placed in communal nurseries, is taken as an example.