Social and Psychological Dimensions of the Family Role Performance of the Negro Male.

This paper was stimulated by the controversy that has developed over the Moynihan Report and the question of the extent to which the Negro family represents an institutionalization of culturally "deviant" norms. In order to probe this question further, an attempt was made to determine some of the concomitants of discrepancies between the subjectively perceived actual and ideal family role behavior of a sample of Negro males. The results indicate that such discrepancies in family role performance are related to relatively low evaluations of one's own achievements and probability of success in goal striving, as well as relatively higher discrepancies between achievement and aspiration. These findings point to the fact that discrepancies in family role performance of the Negro male are part of a more encompassing perception of failure in the larger arena of goal-striving behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]