[ 2.00 ]       Empirical Differentiation and Variation
systematic analysis of each type individually or a careful and systematic comparison of them with each other. Above all it has not even begun to approach the difficult analysis of mixed and transitional cases, of which there are undoubtedly many. It has been presented here for a very specific purpose, to give a sense of concrete relevance to the claim that the categories of social structure developed in this chapter and the preceding ones do provide a starting point for systematic comparative analysis and eventually the construction of a typology of social structures.
This illustrative discussion has, we think, gone far enough to substantiate that claim. The types, not only in terms of direct spelling out of the implications of the basic value-orientations, but in terms of the adaptive structures which go with them, certainly make sense empirically. Even,on such a superficial level as the present one they stimulate many insights and seem to make otherwise baffling featuresof certain societies understandable. When the same basic conceptual framework is applied systematically and in detail, with careful checking of empirical evidence, and when it is combined with a much more sophisticated analysis of motivational process, there is every reason to believe that a highly useful set of tools of comparative empirical analysis will prove to be available.
Now we must leave the analysis of social structure as such and proceed to further development of the theory of motivational processes in the social system, the processes both of its maintenance and of its change. In analyzing these problems the relation between the social system and its roles on the one hand, and personality on the other, will always have to be in the forefront of our attention.
THE LEARNING OF SOCIAL ROLE-EXPECTATIONS AND THE MECHANISMS OF SOCIALIZATION OF MOTIVATION
THE social system is a system of action. It is a system of interdependent action processes. The structural aspects which have been singled out for attention in the three preceding chapters involve a certain mode of abstraction from this process. It is now necessary to fill in certain aspects of what has been abstracted from, to analyze certain aspects of the element of process itself in the context of the social system. For this purpose it is necessary to clarify further the concept of mechanism, which is here used in a sense parallel to its use in physiology and in personality psychology.
A process is any way or mode in which a given state of a system or of a part of a system changes into another state. If its study is an object of science any process is assumed to be subject to laws, which will be stated in terms of determinate interrelations of interdependence between the values of the relevant variables. Frequently, however, the laws governing a process are incompletely known, or even not at all. Then it may still be possible to describe the process in terms of the initial and the final states, and possibly intermediate stages or go a step further to state empirical generalizations about it.
A scientist studying the interdependences of variables generally isolates the particular process or class of them in which he is interested and treats it as a system. For some purposes, however, it is necessary to treat the process in question as part of a larger system.
201
V
[ 2oa ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
When this is done in such a way that interest is focused on the significance of alternative outcomes of the -process for the system or other parts of it, the process will he called a mechanism.
This concept is of the first importance in the present context. There is no reason to helieve that there is anything relative ahout the laws of motivational process, beyond the sense in which all scientific laws are relative. But while the laws are not relative, the mechanisms of motivation are, because they are formulated with specific reference to their significances for a particular class of system. The particularly important point is that the mechanisms of personality as a system are not the same as the mechanisms of the social system, because, in the ways which have been set forth in this work and elsewhere, personalities and social systems constitute two different classes of system. In so far as "psychology" gives us completely generalized laws of motivational process they are as much and as direcdy applicable to processes of action in the context of the social system as anywhere else. But in so far as what psychology gives us is not laws but mechanisms, the high probability is that they are mechanisms of the personality as a system. In this case the presumption is that they are not directly applicable to the analysis of social process, but their content in terms of laws must be reformulated in terms of its relevance to the social system. Social systems thus do not "repress" or "project," nor are they "dominant" or "submissive"; these are mechanisms of the personality. But the motivational processes which are involved in these mechanisms also operate in social systems. We are profoundly concerned with these processes, but in their relevance to the mechanisms of the social system.
It is necessary to explain a little further just what this means. We may take for granted that motivation is always a process which goes on in one or more individual actors. We may speak of the "motivation" of a collectivity only in an elliptical sense as referring to certain uniformities in the motivations of its members, or to a certain organization of those motivations. But in order to select the relevant uniformities and patterns of organization, it is necessary to have criteria of relevance which are seldom if ever given in generalized knowledge of motivational process itself. It must be given in terms of mechanisms which involve, as part of their conceptualization, the specification of the types of consequences of alternative
The Mechanisms of Socialization            [ 203 ]
outcomes of the processes concerned which are significant to the social system. But in order to make this specification in turn we must be in a position to say in systematic terms what these consequences are. It is this circumstance which, in the present state of knowledge, gives the "structural" analysis of the social system a certain priority over its "dynamic" or motivational analysis. If we do not have the structural analysis we do not know where to begin dynamic conceptualization, because we are unable to judge the relevance of motivational processes and laws, above all to distinguish between mechanisms of personality and mechanisms of the social system.
The first task is to set up a classification of the motivational mechanisms of the social system and to relate this systematically to the classifications of the mechanisms of personality. In another publication1 the mechanisms of the personality system have been classified in three categories, those of learning, of defense and of adjustment. Learning is defined broadly as that set of processes by which new elements of action-orientation are acquired by the actor, new cognitive orientations, new values, new objects, new expressive interests. Learning is not confined to the early stages of the life cycle, but continues throughout life. What is ordinarily called a "normal" adaptation to a change in the situation or the "unfolding" of an established dynamic pattern, is a learning process.
The mechanisms of defense are the processes through which conflicts internal to the personality, that is between different need-dispositions and sub-systems of them, are dealt with. In the cases of complete resolution of such conflicts the mechanisms of defense merge into those of learning. Finally, the mechanisms of adjustment are the processes by which the individual actor deals with elements of strain and conflict in his relations to objects, that is to the situation of action. He may thus face the threat of loss of an object of attachment, of frustration of the attainment of a goal through situational strains and the lilie. Again, with complete resolution of situational strains and conflicts the mechanisms of adjustment merge with those of learning. A completely successful substitution of a new object for one entailing severe conflict may thus obviate the need for dependency on the object the loss of which is threatened.
1 Parsons and Shils, Values, Motives and Systems of Action, Chapter H. This chapter is of first importance as background for the present discussion.
[ 2,04 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
This way of conceiving and classifying the mechanisms of personality functioning implies a most important assumption which should be brought into the open. Learning as conceived above is a process of change in the state of the personality as a system. Defense and adjustment are conceived as equilibrating processes, processes which counteract tendencies to change the system in certain ways. There is in this classification no class of mechanisms for maintaining a stable motivational process in operation. In other words, we are assuming that the continuance of a stabilized motivational process in a stabilized relationship to the relevant objects is to be treated as not -problematical. This assumption, though seldom made explicit, seems to be of very general applicability in psychology. It may be compared to the first Newtonian law of motion, the law of inertia, which states that the -problems for mechanics concern not what makes bodies move, but what makes them change their motion, in direction or velocity. We shall assume the motivational counterpart of the law of inertia in the present discussion, that it is change of intensity or "direction," i.e., orientation, of action which poses the problems for the dynamics of action theory. Hence for the social system as well as the personality we will not be concerned with the problem of the maintenance of given states of the social system except where there are known tendencies to alter those states. This principle gives us a clear criterion of what constitutes a motivational problem in the context of the social system.
Now it must again be remembered that motivational processes are always processes in individual actors. Therefore, the application of the above criterion means that the problems of the mechanisms of the social system arise where, from our knowledge of individuals, we have reason to believe that there are tendencies to alter established states of the social system. What, then, for our immediate purposes is an established state of a social system, or relevant subsystem?
The answer to this question is given in the basic paradigm of social interaction which has been discussed so often. An established state of a social system is a process of complementary interaction of two or more individual actors in which each conforms with the expectations of the other('s) in such a way that alters reactions to ego's actions are positive sanctions which serve to reinforce his given
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need-dispositions and thus to fulfill his given expectations. This stabilized or equilibrated interaction process is the fundamental point of reference for all dynamic motivational analysis of social process.
It is certainly contrary to much of the common sense of the social sciences, but it will nevertheless be assumed that the maintenance of the complementarity of role-expectations, once established, is nót problematical, in other words that the "tendency" to maintain the interaction process is the first law of social process. This is clearly an assumption, but there is, of course, no theoretical objection to such assumptions if they serve to organize and generalize our knowledge. Another way of stating this is to say that no special mechanisms are required for the explanation of the maintenance of complementary interaction-orientation.
Then what classes of tendencies not to maintain this interaction are there? Fundamentally they can he reduced to two. First it is quite clear that the orientations which an actor implements in his complementary interaction in roles, are not inborn but have to be acquired through learning. We may then say that before he has learned a given role-orientation he clearly tends to act in ways which would upset the equilibrium of interaction in his incumbency of the role in question. The acquisition of the requisite orientations for satisfactory functioning in a role is a learning process, but it is not learning in general, but a particular part of learning. This process will be called the process of socialization, and the motivational processes by which it takes place, seen in terms of their functional significance to the interaction system, the mechanisms of socialization. These are the mechanisms involved in the processes of "normal" functioning of the social system.
However, the problems of the socialization process are formulated on the assumption that the factors producing the equilibrium of the interaction process are stabilized with the exception that the requisite orientations for adequate functioning of a given actor in a given role have not yet been learned. But concretely this is not the case. Both within the individual actors as personalities and in the situation in which they act there are factors tending to upset the equilibrium. Changes in the situation as such may be said to present new learning problems and thus fall within the scope of socializa-
[ 2o6 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
tion. But certain changes arising from the personalities of the interacting factors and their reactions to situational changes are another
matter.
We have seen that the very structure of the interaction process provides the major dimension for the organization of such tendencies. They are tendencies to deviance, to depart from conformity with the normative standards which have come to be set up as the common culture. A tendency to deviance in this sense is a process of motivated action, on the part of an actor who has unquestionably had a full opportunity to- learn the requisite orientations, tending to deviate from the complementary expectations of conformity with common standards so far as these are relevant to the definition of his role. Tendencies to deviance in this sense in turn confront the social system with "problems" of control, since deviance if tolerated beyond certain limits will tend to change or to disintegrate the system. Focusing, then, on the tendencies to deviance, and the reactions in the social system which operate in the direction of motivating actors to abandon their deviance and resume conformity, we may speak of the second class of mechanisms, the mechanisms of social control. A mechanism of social control, then, is a motivational process in one or more individual actors which tends to counteract a tendency to deviance from the fulfillment of role-expectations, in himself or in one or more alters. It is a re-equilibrating mechanism.
The mechanisms of social control comprise aspects of the two classes of mechanisms of the personality which have been called mechanisms of defense and of adjustment. They constitute, that is, defense and adjustment relative to tendencies to violate role-expectations. Psychologically the particularly close relationship to the superego is immediately evident. It should, however, again be emphasized that though the mechanisms of social control comprise elements of these personality mechanisms, they are not the same, but are mechanisms of the social systemNJust what specific systematic interrelations exist will have to be explored in the subsequent analysis. Of the two classes, however, for obvious reasons the mechanisms of personality adjustment are dynamically the more closely- related to the mechanisms of social control. It is, after all, in the interrelations with social objects that both the problems of adjustment of the per-
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [ 207 ]
sonality and of control for the social system, arise. On the other hand functionally, the mechanisms of social control are more closely analogous with the mechanisms of defense, since both are concerned with the processes by which a system of action is internally integrated, and disruptive tendencies are held in check
A word should also be said about the relations between the mechanisms of socialization and social control on the one hand and the allocative processes of the social system on the other. The allocation of personnel between roles in the social system and the socialization processes of the individual are clearly the same processes viewed in different perspectives. Allocation is the process seen in the perspective of functional significance to the social system as a system. Socialization on the other hand is the process seen in terms of the motivation of the individual actor. Learning to decide between alternatives of role-incumbency which the social system leaves open to the individual is certainly part of social learning and such decisions manifest the value-orientations acquired through socialization. The process of allocation of facilities and rewards on the other hand is from the motivational point of view a process of acquisition and loss of valued object-relations by individual actors. It is thus a process of "flow" in a stabilized situation (e.g., of "income") or it is a process of situational change requiring adjustment by the actor. The adjustments may be successfully learned through socialization mechanisms or they may be factors in producing tendencies to deviance and hence foci for the operation of mechanisms of social control.
The present chapter will be concerned with the processes of socialization and their mechanisms, leaving until Chapter VII the analysis of deviance and the processes of social control.
§ THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE CHILD AND THE INTERNALIZATION OF SOCIAL VALUE-ORIENTATIONS
the term socialization in its current usage in the literature refers primarily to the process of child development. This is in fact a crucially important case of the operation of what are here called the mechanisms of socialization, but it should be made clear that the term is here used in a broader sense than the current one to desig-
[ 2o8 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
nate the learning of any orientations of functional significance to the operation of a system of complementary role-expectations. In this sense, socialization, like learning, goes on throughout life. The case of the development of the child is only the most dramatic because he has so far to go.
However, there is another reason for singling out the socialization of the child. There is reason to believe that, among the learned elements of personality in certain respects the stablest and most enduring are the major value-orientation patterns and there is much evidence that these are "laid down" in childhood and are not on a large scale subject to drastic alteration during adult life.2 There is good reason to treat these patterns of value-orientation, as analyzed in terms of pattern variable combinations, as the core of what is sometimes called "basic personality structure" and they will be so treated here. Hence in discussing certain highlights of the socialization of the child, primary emphasis will be placed on this aspect of socialization in more general terms.
Before proceeding it may be emphasized that the socialization of the child is a case of socialization in the strict sense of the above definition, not of social control. What has sometimes been called the ifbarbarian invasion" of the stream of new-born infants is, of course, a critical feature of the situation in any society. Along with the lack of biological maturity, the conspicuous fact about the child is that he has yet to learn the patterns of behavior expected of persons in his statuses in his society. Our present discussion is not concerned with the fact that children, having learned these patterns, tend very widely to deviate from them, though this, of course, happens at every stage, but with the process of acquisition itself on the part of those who have not previously possessed the patterns.
As a mechanism of the social system, the combination of motivational processes in question must be conceived as a set of processes of action in roles which, on the basis of known facts about motivational process, analytical and empirical, tend to bring about a certain result, in the present case the internalization of certain
2 The commonest apparent type of exception is that explained by ambivalence in an earlier orientation system. In such a case there may of course be dramatic changes of overt behavior.
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [ 209 ]
patterns of value-orientation. This result is conceived to be the outcome of certain processes of interaction in roles.
In order to analyze the processes then, it is necessary to have two classes of information available. First we must have knowledge of the processes or mechanisms of learning from the point of view of the actor who is in the process of being socialized. Secondly, we must have in mind the relevant features of the interacting role system, which place the sociaZizee, if the term may be permitted, in ä situation which favors the relevant learning process. The assumption is that mechanisms of socialization operate only so far as the learning process is an integral part of the process of interaction in complementary roles. Thus not only the socializing agents but the socializee must be conceived as acting in roles. At the instant of birth, perhaps, the infant does not do so. But almost immediately a role is ascribed to him which includes expectations of his behavior. The behavior of adults toward him is not like their behavior toward purely physical objects, but is contingent on his behavior and very soon what are interpreted to be his expectations; thus "the baby is expecting to be fed." It is only when this mutuality of interaction has been established that we may speak of the socialization process. Purely physical care of the infant in which he has no role but is merely a passive object of manipulation is, if it ever exists, not socialization.
In Values, Motives and Systems of Action five cathectic-evalua^l rive mechanisms of learning were distinguished and systemically related to one another. All of these are relevant to the present context and what they are and how related must be briefly reviewed here. In the background stand the cognitive mechanisms of discrimination and generalization. The five are reinforcement-extinction, inhibition, substitution, imitation and identification. The first three do not necessarly involve orientation to social objects, while the last two do.                                                                        „J
Reinforcement-extinction is the name given for the most general relation between the gratifying-depriving features of the outcome of a behavioral process, and the strength of the tendency to repeat it under appropriate conditions. The broad law is that in general the receipt of gratifications will tend to strengthen the pattern while that of deprivations will tend to weaken it. This generalization
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[ 210 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
should, of course, be carefully interpreted in the light of the many different meanings in the content of gratifications and deprivations and the complex interrelations of need-dispositions in the personality system as well as the significance of many variations in the conditions. A simple "hedonistic" interpretation is clearly inadequate. The second mechanism is inhibition, which means simply the process of learning to refrain from carrying out the action motivated by a given need-disposition, in the presence of an appropriate opportunity for gratification, regardless of what happens to the "affect" involved. There is a fundamental sense in which inhibition is the obverse of, and inherently linked with, learning itself. For unless complete extinction of previous need-dispositions were immediately given with every new step of learning, learning would be impossible, for the attachment to the old pattern would be unbreakable. Inhibition is thus in one direction the process of breaking through motivational inertia.
The third general mechanism is substitution, which means the process of transferring cathexis from one object to another. Substitution obviously involves inhibition, in the form of renunciation of cathexis of the old object, but in addition it involves the capacity to transfer, to "learn" that the new object can provide gratifications which are more or less equivalent to the old. Thus in the most general terms "progress" in learning means, first, at least enough reinforcement to prevent extinction of motivations, second, capacity to inhibit the need-dispositions which block new orientations, and third, capacity to accept new objects, to substitute.
Closely connected with these cathectic-evaluative mechanisms are the primarily cognitive mechanisms of chscrimination and generalization. Discrimination is the very first condition of the construction of an object-world, and must continue to operate throughout all learning processes. Generalization on the other hand, by providing awareness of the common attributes of classes of objects, is an indispensable condition of substitution, and of higher levels of organization of an orientation system. Above all, generalization is essential to the cathexis of classes of objects and even more of abstract categories and cultural objects, i.e., symbols, as such, hence to any process of successive substitutions building up to these cathexes, including processes of symbolization. Probably the acqui-
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [ 2x1 ]
sition of at all generalized patterns of value-orientation involves this mechanism deeply.
Imitation is the process by which specific items of culture, specific bits of knowledge, skill, symbolic behavior, are taken over from a social object in the interaction process. In one sense then it may be conceived as a process of short cutting the process of independent learning, in that alter is able to show a shorter and easier way to learn than ego could find by himself. Of course imitation presumably must prove rewarding in some sense if the act to be learned is to be reinforced. But above all imitation does not imply any continuing relation to the "model," or any solidarity attachment.
Identification, on the other hand, means taking over, i.e., internalizing, the values of the model. It implies that ego and alter have established a reciprocal role relationship in which value-patterns are shared. Alter is a model and this is a learning -process, because ego did not at the beginning of it possess the values in question. Identification may be subclassified according to the type of values and the nature of the attachment to alter. The most important variations would be according to whether it was a specific or a diffuse attachment and whether it was an affective or love attachment or a neutral or esteem attachment. In any case this is obviously the most important of the learning mechanisms for the acquisition of value patterns.
We may now turn to the features of the interaction process itself, as a complementary role structure, which are important for the socializing effect of the operation of the learning processes just reviewed. The socializing effect will be conceived as the integration of ego into a role complementary to that of alter(s) in such a way that the common values are internalized in ego's personality, and their respective behaviors come to constitute a complementary role-expectation-sanction system.
The first point to mention is that, prior to and independent of any identification, alter as an adult has certain control of the situation in which ego acts, so that he may influence the consequences of ego's actions. Put in learning terms, he may use these to reinforce the tendencies of ego's behavior which fit his own expectations of how ego should behave, and operate to extinguish those
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[ 212 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
which are deviant. Corresponding to the learning mechanisms of reinforcement-extinction, then, we may speak of socialization mechanisms of reward-funishment, the particular and specific orientations to ego's behavior which tend to motivate him to conformity and dissuade him from deviance from alter's expectations.3 These are to be conceived in abstraction from alter's functioning as a model either for imitation or for identification.
However, rewards and punishments obviously operate to induce inhibitions and substitutions. The simplest motivation for. an inhibition presumably is learning that gratification of a need-dispositon will bring deprivational consequences.4 So far as these consequences have been imposed by a social object contingent on ego's action they constitute punishments. For substitution, on the other hand, presumably a combination of rewards and punishments is, if not indispensable in all cases, at least an optimum; namely the punishment of continued retention of the old object, combined with rewarding of cathexis of the new.
Secondly, alter may operate not only as a reinforcing-extin-guishing agent but as a model for imitation. In addition to imposing contingent consequences on ego's specific acts he may hold up a model, which in turn becomes the focus of reinforcement-extinction processes, however actively they may or may not be carried out by alter's own action. In this case we may say that alter as an active model adopts the role of a "teacher" and because the term fits direcdy, we may speak of socialization hy "instruction" as the implementation of the mechanism of imitation by the socializing agent. In the learning context the term imitation emphasizes what happens when there is a model for imitation. In the socialization context the fact that a model of a given type is provided to "instruct"
8 It is o£ course possible for ego to reward or punish himself, given motivation to do so, which implies internalization of the relevant value-orientations.
* There are many complex problems of the psychology of learning involved here which it is desired to leave open: For example Solomon's studies of avoidance conditioning seem to show a quite different pattern from the "classical" reinforcement experiments. It is extremely important not to beg any of these questions. The aim of the present sketch is to place some of the problems of the psychology of learning in the context of their possible significance for the social system. This is done essentially by analyzing the role-structure of the socialization process. It is hoped that sufficient parsimony is observed on the psychological side to avoid commitment to dubious generalizations.
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [ 213 ]
ego is just as much the focus of attention. Thus attention is directed to the specific role of alter as well as to ego's learning processes as such.
Finally, the mechanism of learning (generally in addition to the others in a complex process) may be identification. For identification to take place there must develop a further feature of the interaction relationship of ego and alter. In addition to what alter does in the sense of his overt discrete acts with their reward-punishment significance, and to what he offers in the sense of patterns for imitation, alter's attitudes toward ego become the crucial feature of the socialization process. We have seen at a number of points how crucial this step in the integration of an interactive system is. Indeed it is in this way that we have defined an attachment, namely an orientation to alter in which the paramount focus of cathective-evaluative significance is in alter's attitudes. Overt acts thereby come to be interpreted mainly as "expressions" of these attitudes, that is, as signs, or even more as symbols of them.
When a reciprocal attachment has been formed ego has acquired, as it was called in Chapter IV, a "relational possession." He acquires a "stake" in the security of this possession, in the maintenance of alter's favorable attitudes, his receptiven ess-responsiveness, his love, his approval or his esteem, and a need to avoid their withdrawal and above all their conversion into hostile or derogatory attitudes.
The generalizations about motivational processes which are summed up in what is called the mechanism of identification apparently imply the extremely important generalization, we may perhaps say theorem, that value-orientation patterns can only be internalized from outside5 through reciprocal attachments, that is, through ego becoming integrated in a reciprocal and complementary role relative to alter which reaches the level of organization and cathectic sensitivity which we call that of attachment and a common value pattern involving loyalty. The third of the basic classes of mechanisms of socialization, then, we may call the mechanisms of value-acquisition with all the implications as to the nature of the process, not only within the personality of ego, but in terms of his interaction with alter, which have been oudined above.
5 There may, of course, be creative modifications from within the personality.
[ 214 ]      ^fee Learning of Social Hole-Expectations
This sketch of the significance of the process of identification is extremely elementary and leaves many crucial problems unsolved. The stress has been placed on the building up of a pattern of values common to ego and to alter, ego being considered as acquiring the values from alter through identification. This leaves open, however, several crucial problems concerning the processes of differentiation of such a value-system. Above all the roles of ego and alter are generally complementary and not identical. There is, therefore, an element of common value but equally an element of differential applicability of the common value element to ego and to alter. Ego as a small child is clearly not expected to behave exacdy as alter as an adult does. Furthermore, ego and alter may be of opposite sex, thus introducing a further differentiation.
On this basis we may distinguish the following elements in the value-patterns acquired by ego from alter through identification; a) the common value-orientation in sufficiently general terms to be applicable both to ego's role and to alter's and hence, presumably more broadly still, e.g., to the family as a whole, etc. This would take the form of allegations that such and such things are right or wrong, proper or improper, in rather general terms; b) alter's expectations—in value-orientation terms for ego's behavior in his role, e.g. differentiated from alter's by age and possibly by sex and perhaps otherwise; and c) the complementary expectations for the definition of alter's role.
There is still a fourth element involved in the possible differentiation from the roles of either ego or alter of third parties, e.g., the father if alter is the mother, and finally a fifth in that ego's role is not static but expected to change in the process of his "growing up" —so that a valuation relative to his own future is very much part of his value-acquisition. The complex problems involved in these differentiations will be briefly touched upon in the subsequent discussion but their analysis can at best only be begun.
Of course many features of the actual process of socialization of the child are obscure, especially the factors responsible for differences in outcome, and for pathologies. However, using the above conceptual scheme it will be worthwhile to attempt a brief sketch of some of the highlights which at least can provide the points of
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [ 215 ]
departure for some hypotheses, if not the codification of established knowledge. It should be remembered that our concern here is with the acquisition of value-orientation patterns, and factors which may be responsible for the internalization of different types of value-orientation pattern. Hence our primary focus will be on mechanisms of value-acquisition through identifications.
There are throughout two terms to the analysis, namely the role of the socializing agent and of the socializee. In the latter case there are three primary classical attributes of the infant, his plasticity, which is simply a name for his capacity to learn alternative patterns, his sensitivity, which may be interpreted to be a name for his capacity to form attachments in the above sense, and his dependency. The last is, given the first two, the primary "fulcrum" for applying the leverage of socialization. The infant, as an organism, is helpless and dependent on others for the most elementary gratifications of food, warmth and other elements of protection.
The socializing agent is, therefore, inherently in a position to begin the process of socialization by being the agent of rewards and, implicitly at first, then explicitly, of punishments. The beginning orientation of the infant very soon must include awareness of the role of the adult in this most elementary sense. It is, then, the securing of the leverage of the infant's motivation to secure the specific rewards of being fed, kept warm, etc. and avoid the corresponding deprivations0 which constitute the first beginning of his
6 Just as in the case of the more specific processes of learning, many problems arise concerning the more specific significances of particular infantile needs and their handling in the course of socialization, including degrees of leniency and severity with respect to such matters as weaning and toilet training and the significance of the timing of discipline in such areas. Again we cannot attempt here to go into these problems in detail but can only attempt to provide a general framework of role analysis within which these detailed problems may be approached. It may, however, be tentatively suggested that if the processes of identification are as important as the present approach seems to indicate, the presumption is that these specific details of child-training practice are likely to be primarily significant in their capacity as expressions of the attitudes of the socializing agents, rather than through their independent intrinsic effects; It seems probable that the strong emphasis on the latter in some circles has been colored by seeing the socialization process in terms of a reinforcement theory of learning alone without reference to the processes of interaction in roles which are of primary interest to the present discussion.
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flaying a role as distinguished from being merely an object of care.7 Certain elements of this care come to be expected to be contingent on conformity with alters expectations, starting with respect to such responses as crying, smiling, or coming to get something (after learning to walle).
It is probable that the basis of attachments begins to be laid down before much imitation occurs, because it takes considerable maturation before the infant has high capacity for imitation. It is probably of great significance that, except in disorganized conditions, there is relatively little direct and early frustration of the infant's fundamental physiological needs. The primary frustrations come with the necessity to make substitutions for the original objects—e.g., weaning. But certain other gratifications corning from pleasant physical contact and the like are especially likely to be contingent on the adult's attitudes toward the infant, and thus on his own behavior. This is probably a main basis of the strategic significance of erotic gratifications and needs in human personality, that their genesis in physical contact with the mother, through suckling, fondling, etc. is likely to be a most prominent focus of role-expectation contingency at an early stage of socialization. Then by a series of substitutions an adult structure of erotic need-dispositions gets built up.
In any case generalization from the particularity of rewarding acts on alters part plus early dependence is the process of genesis of early attachments. Perhaps the first thing to be said about the earliest attachments is that they are in the nature of the case primarily affective if only because the infant does not yet have the capacity for inhibition which underlies affectively neutral orientations. It seems to be completely established that inhibition must be learned, and how, when, in what contexts and subject to what limitations is one of the most important problem areas of socialization theory.
Secondly, there is the question of the temporal priority of specific and diffuse attachments, in the pattern variable sense. Both are, if we assume reward-punishment for particular acts as the
7 The existence of genetically inborn social-relational needs may remain an open question here. I£ they exist this provides additional motivation to role-assumption.
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [217]
primary starting point, results of processes of generalization. But the generalization from the specific act to the category of action of which it is an example seems tentatively to be the more elementary one. Hence one would expect that an attachment to the mother as for example, the source of food gratifications, would be the first type of attachment. The generalization to a diffuse attachment in which she is the person who "cares for" ego, not merely in the sense of rninistrations but of attitudes, requires a further step. The duality of meaning of the word "care" in the language would appear to be significant.
Granting both sensitivity and dependency, there is still a problem of the mechanisms by which this generalization takes place. It may be suggested that here again the erotic sphere plays a particularly strategic part. Precisely because of many of the practical exigencies of infant care, bodily contact with the mother plays an important part in the relationship. Though as psychoanalytic theory has emphasized, the oral, anal and even urethral zones have in early childhood special erotic potentialities, it may well be that the more significant property of the erotic sphere is its diffuseness. The specific acts of care, such as feeding, have in a certain sense an instrumental character; as such their significance may not be confined to the fact that they provide a favorable basis for building up response needs as distinguished from reward needs and generalizing these to the person of alter rather than to the particular context or class of acts. Much of the significance of the erotic sphere may thus rest on the fact that it is a favorable bridge between reward and response, in that, from the dependence on erotic rewards, especially the diffuser ones of affectionate bodily contact, the path to diffuse attachment can most readily be entered upon.
If this interpretation is correct, it would seem to follow that though specific fixation on specific erogenous zones would ordinarily occur in the normal socialization process to some degree, the more extreme fixations which play a prominent part in pathological syndromes should be treated as consequences of some disturbance of the normally more diffuse functions of erotic interest. It is suggestive that erotic fixation on parts of ego's own body may indicate disturbance of security of a diffuse erotic interest in relation to alter. This would make oral and anal eroticism more significant as
[ ai8 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations secondary aspects of libidinal development than as the primary foci
of it.
If the foregoing analysis is correct even the most elementary attachment of a specific response character means that the step to role-playing in the full social system sense has been taten. There is already a common value pattern shared by ego and alter, namely the valuation of their mutual attitudes of affection, such that particular acts are treated as "expressions" of the appropriate attitudes, not simply as discrete rewards and punishments. There are definite norms of appropriate behavior on "both sides. The dependence of this development on capacity for generalization is clear.
Such an attachment means that the child is not merely receptive to the responses of alter, but has learned to respond himself, for example, by smiling and "cuddling up." But at about this point another of the most fundamental alternatives of socialization patterning opens out. The child has an obvious interest in eliciting both rewards and responses from the adult. But there is an enormous inequality in realistic capacity to perform. In this context the socialization process may take the turn of encouraging ego in passivity, an orientation which is in a sense appropriate to his helplessness, or it may encourage him in building up the more symmetrical reciprocity of receptiveness and response, if not of concrete reward-actions. Indeed it would seem that because of the inherent inequality in the latter sense the only real possibility for motivating an active orientation lay in encouraging responsiveness as well as receptiveness on the child's part, that is, rewarding it hoth with discrete acts and with enhanced receptiveness and responsiveness on alters part. It is clearly through internalization of the values expressed in attitudes along this dimension that orientation, in terms of the variable of ascription-achievement, tends to be built up. This may, for instance, be extremely important to the development of the achievement values of American Society.
It seems highly probable that early diffuse attachments, particularly to the mother, constitute the focus of what is sometimes called the security system of the child. Security in this sense may be taken to mean that there is a certain stabilization of his system of orientation, by virtue of which the child is able to develop a certain tolerance of frustration. But the price of this security is, in
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [ 219 ]
the early attachments, a certain enhancement of dependency. This may be culturally variable in that the presence of mother surrogates mitigates the degree of dependency on the one attachment, but ordinarily this does not involve a difference of pattern as between the objects of attachment from which new values could be learned.
The tolerance of frustration, which becomes possible within a diffuse love attachment, seems to provide a major clue to the further significance of such an attachment, namely as a lever for imposing the learning of new values. Part of the frustration to which a child is exposed is inherent in the physical and other aspects of the situation, but a substantial part of it consists of disciplines, whether administered to the child deliberately or not, which may be considered to be mechanisms of socialization.
The uses to which the leverage of frustration tolerance is put will vary with the nature of the roles for which individuals are being socialized, which in turn are very different in different societies. Malting allowance for this variability, however, we may concentrate the discussion on some considerations relevant to the processes of acquisition of some of the value-patterns not direcdy involved in the diffuse love relation of mother to small child. These are above all the independence necessary to an autonomous achievement orientation, the capacity for affective neutrality, for universalism and for functional specificity independent of the direct gratification interests of childhood, especially in affectively neutral contexts. These are admittedly value-patterns of particular significance in the adult role-system of our own society, but they have varying lands of relevance in other societies.
Success in malting the transition from dependent status in a diffuse mother attachment to a more "grown up" stage depends on two primary sets of conditions. The first is the combination of objects of identification offered by the situation in which the child is placed, the value patterns they embody, and their relations to each other in the earlier stages, especially the relations of the two parents. The second is the set of conditions which provide a psychologically favorable situation for the process of identification to operate.
The second is not primarily our concern but a few things may be said about it. The first of these favorable conditions apparently
[ 220 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
is adequate security in the above sense. In the first instance this centers on the mother. One may, however, say that, for the father to serve as an important identification object, he must be included in a solidarity system with the mother, so that neither is the child excluded from the mother-father solidarity nor the father from the mother-child solidarity—for purposes of simplicity we may omit reference to siblings. It is from his inclusion in this diffuse solidarity system, the f amüy as a collectivity, that the child derives his primary "support."
Secondly, there must be an imposition of disciplines which, given the starting points, constitute frustrations of the child's already established need-dispositions, especially certain needs for immediate gratification, and his dependency needs. It may be surmised that these will include not only ad hoc frustrations but will, at critical points, include failure of alter to respond to ego's established expectations; what had become established as legitimate expectations from alter at one stage of childhood, are not responded to at the next stage.
Ego may respond to these frustrations with adjustive mechanisms; indeed, to some degree he certainly will. But these must not become frozen in combination with defense mechanisms so that the socialization process is blocked, so that, for instance, alienative need-dispositions become established. It would seem, then, that certain adjustive responses to the pressure of frustration of expectations would have to be treated permissively, in the sense that they. are "tolerated" by alter without jeopardizing ego's security. If the attachment were specific to the need-disposition context in question, alters failure to reciprocate would necessarily jeopardize the security of the attachment, but by virtue of the latter's quality of diffuseness it is possible for alter to show in other, ways that the attitude of love has not been disturbed. Just what the balance in detail of failure to reciprocate, of permissiveness, and of expression of diffuse love should be, will vary with the lanship system and the roles for which ego is being socialized. It also involves problems of psychological process on which our knowledge is fragmentary, and the available evidence cannot be reviewed here.
Finally, it may be said that the frustration involved in the refusal to reciprocate ego's expectations must be balanced by a
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [221]
promised reward for the fulfillment of alters expectations, that is, for learning the new orientation. If a diffuse love attachment is already given, and if we maintain that relational rewards are by this time the most fundamental, we may see that specific significances attach at this later stage to the attitudes of approval and esteem on the part of alter. These can above all be the conditional elements in the reward system which are manipulated by the socializing agents, along with specific gratification-rewards.
In our own society, particularly, this throws a considerable light on the problem of "conditional love." If capacity for independent achievement is to be learned, there must be a conditional element in the reward system. Ideally it is not the parent's love attitude which is conditional, but his approval for specific performances. A capacity to segregate these two aspects would be a condition of parental adequacy. But under certain conditions this segregation will tend to break down, and the love, not merely the approval, become conditional. This may be expected, if it is sufficiently severe, to have pathogenic consequences for the child.
It may be noted that these four prerequisites, security, discipline (implying frustration), permissiveness, and affectively neutral relational rewards are also characteristic of the psychotherapeutic process, and in this capacity are deeply involved in the equilibrium of the social system. There are fundamental differences which will be commented upon at the proper points, but it is important to note that socialization, psychotherapy and other mechanisms of social control are intimately interdependent. These relationships will be further analyzed in the following chapter and in Chapter X below.
Within this framework it is interesting to look at the possible significance of the differentiation of the two parental roles in the socialization process, above all with reference to the question, why is a father important? Even if his participation in the routine care of the child is minimal! That he is extremely important is indicated again by the erotic factor and by the intricate geometry of sex role identification and of erotic attachments. It is highly suggestive that normal heterosexuality is institutionalized in all known societies, hence that homosexuality is with few exceptions tabooed, and that there is a universal incest taboo within the principal solidary kin-
[ 222 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
ship group, which universally includes the conjugal family. We presume that to a significant degree this patterning is learned through socialization, is not therefore a sample manifestation of the "sexual instinct."
Precisely in this connection the difference between psychotherapy and socialization is suggestive. The small child whose security rests primarily on his attachment to his mother has not yet learned the value-orientations of higher levels of maturity. We may suggest that acceptance of certain pressures to take further steps in maturing, with their attendant frustrations, is in such circumstances less disturbing if the responsibility for the pressure can be divided between the parents and hence does not come primarily from the central love-object. With all the variability of sex role from society to society, it can be said to be universally true that the adult masculine role is less implicated with detailed child care than the feminine, and is more implicated with prestige and responsibility in the wider society beyond the narrow Mnship circle.
The fact of the father's solidarity with the mother makes it pos; sible, therefore, for him to be the symbolic focus of certain pressures on the child. The situation can be defined in the terms that, "you have to do this because your father wants you to," and the mother will support the father in this but still be less direcdy involved. Security in the mother relation is less likely to be jeopardized by this pressure because she does not have to take the full onus of the pressure on herself. There is, of course, room for wide variations in the ways in which this influence is concretely exerted and the responsibilities are divided, but this seems to be a common element.
It seems to be significant that in the geometry of erotic attachments, in the case of both sexes, the sacrifice of the erotic element in the attachment to the mother seems to figure prominently in the "price" which has to be paid for growing up. It is a critical fact that children of both sexes start with a primary attachment to the mother which, since Freud, we know contains a prominent erotic element. The boy has to renounce the erotic element of his mother-attachment in favor of an adult heterosexual attachment which must, however, be outside the family of orientation. The heterosexual orientation remains, but the particular object, indeed class of objects in the case of the mother surrogates, e.g. older sisters in our
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [ 223 ]
society, other kinswomen in others, must be renounced. Generally this renunciation must be in favor of a generation mate. The common phenomenon of men being sexually interested in younger women, but seldom older women, might even be interpreted as a reaction formation against incestuous wishes, connected as they are with dependency needs. Seen in this perspective the Oedipus conflict of the boy may be regarded as connected with the pressure to renounce in certain respects the expectations of his infantile attachment-role vis-ä-vis his mother, rather than with sexual rivalry in the ordinary sense. The father is symbolically identified as the source of the pressure, in part no doubt because the boy cannot bring himself to believe that his mother would "do this to him." In the more general sense of course both parents are merely manifesting their attitudes of what is expected of a (ibig boy."
It may be presumed that in this situation the relational rewards mentioned above are above all connected with the masculine role-identification of the boy, they thus not only include accepting the generalized values of both parents, which it may be presumed in the normal case they share, but involve particularizing those values in application to himself by his coming to understand that he must grow up to be a man, in a normative sense. It is the approval and esteem of both his parents for his demonstrations of masculinity which forms one of the main foci of his socialization at this point. He therefore identifies with his father in a double sense; first, in that he shares the values in general and for his age group of both parents, and second, that he accepts the norm that their application to him should be in the differentiated role of a boy as distinguished from that of a girl. In our society at least the prolonged 'latency period," with its evidences of compulsive masculinity, and its strict segregation of the sexes, not by adult decree but by peer-group pressure, as socially patterned phenomena, strongly suggests that the learning process in this case is heavily involved with complicated adjustive processes.
The case of the girl shows an interesting combination of similarities and differences. The "danger" of retaining her infantile status is not that of identification with the wrong sex role, but failure of capacity to form an adequate attachment to the opposite sex. Her father is presumably the prototype of the masculine object
[ 224 ]      ^e Learning of Social Role-Expectations
for her as he is for her brother. But again the incest taboo forbids a simple transfer of erotic attachment from the mother to the father, there must be renunciation first of the mother attachment, second of an infantile erotic attachment to. the father, and then development of a mature attachment to a man. This involves a complex combination of identifications with the mother and with the father. In terms of sex role, of course, the prescription is for acceptance of the role of the mother, hence identification with her in this sense. But there must still be the process of emancipation from the infantile mother-attachment. It may be presumed that identification with the father plays a crucial part in this, but because of the complementarity of the sex roles it may he relieved of certain of the pressures operating in the case of the boy. It may be presumed that because of the pressure to renounce the mother-attachment there is a tendency to transfer the erotic needs to the father, but this in turn is inhibited by the implications of the incest taboo. It may well be that this blocking is a fundamental focus of feminine resentments against men. But the important point is that for-the girl as well as the boy the father constitutes an important focus of the pressure to grow up, to renounce infantilism, and hence to learn the value orientations of the adult world of the society; in both cases attachment to the mother is a barrier to this learning, and the fathers intervention constitutes a lever to pry the child loose from this attachment.
It may be inquired what, from the present point of view, is the crucial difference between the role of sexuality in the infantile mother-attachment and in normal adult sexuality? Adult sexuality is fitted into a context of acceptance of adult values and roles generally while infantile sexuality is not. On the infantile level eroticism is an integral part of, and symbolizes, the total role in which security rests; on the adult level it is put in its proper place in the larger complex of values and roles. A man is "worthy" to enjoy an erotic love relationship only in so far as he lives up to the general value-pattern for the masculine role in the society, as he attains requisite levels of competence, responsibility, etc. Similarly a woman must accept her familial role, her attachment to a fully masculine man not a mother figure, and the responsibility of socializing her children in terms of the general value system, as a condition of
The Internalization of Social Value-Orientations    [ 225 ]
being loved in the sense which is an altered repetition of the infantile prototype. It is this integration of the erotic needs with the adult value-system of the society which defines the essential difference between normal adult sexuality and "regressive" sexuality. At the same time the powerful force of erotic need-dispositions on the normal adult levels testifies to their crucial role in the socialization process. It is at least strongly suggestive that though these needs can be shaped and integrated with adult roles they are too deeply rooted to be eliminated. The relevance of this situation to the prevalence of the empirical clustering of social structures about the kinship system, which we discussed in the last chapter, is evident.
An essential part of this process is the progressive introduction of new patterns of value-orientation. The stress on particular patterns will vary greatly in different social systems, and their incidence will be differently distributed between different roles. But the greater responsibility of the adult in all societies, as compared with the child, means above all that the capacity for inhibition, hence for affectively neutral orientations, and for achievement must he developed to some important degree. Also universalism is by no means negligible in any society, for example, with reference to technical efficiency.
It may be suggested that identification with the father is critically important, especially with reference to these components of a value-orientation system in all societies, but the more so the more these latter value-patterns are institutionalized. There are also crucial questions as to how far the mother role must also be altered in conformity with varying emphases on different components in the system of value-orientation. The necessity of this is given in the requirement that both parents share a common value system and in its terms show solidarity vis-ä-vis their child. Only this solidarity permits the leverage of socialization relative to the early mother-attachment to operate.
One of the most interesting features of the socialization process of the child, as reviewed in terms of the acquisition of value-orientations as formulated by the pattern variables, is the hierarchy of capacity for and incidence of the principal value-patterns. From this point of view the affective orientations are the first and in a sense easiest to acquire because of their direct relation to infantile
[ 226 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
dependency and gratifications. Affective neutrality is more difficult, and needs to he motivated by diffuse affective attachments. At the same time it requires emancipation from too great exclusiveness of these attachments. Universalistic orientations would appear to be the most difficult to acquire. Activity-passivity, which is related to achievement-ascription, and specifidty-dirfuseness on the other hand are not so direcdy related to this hierarchical scale except that one may perhaps say that passivity is more "primitive" than activity, and that affective specificity is more primitive than affective diffuse-ness, since it involves a lower level of generalization.
This hierarchy clearly is related to the phenomena of regression which have concerned personality psychologists so gready. The orientation element, which is most difficult to acquire and which in a sense depends on the most complex set of prerequisite conditions, is, at least under certain types of strain, likely to he the first to break down. Furthermore it is one with relation to which the socialization proces is most likely to go wrong, since it involves the most complex prerequisite and hence around which more of the neurotic type of defensive and adjustive mechanisms are likely to cluster.
This structure of the value-orientation patterns relative to the socialization process, sketchy as its presentation has been, is clearly of the first importance for understanding the functioning of social systems, of different types. It is clear from the preceding chapter that different types of society and sub-system, because their role-orientation patterns are built up of different combinations of the pattern variables, impose very different sorts of strain on the socialization process and on the personality types which result from it. They are, hence, vulnerable to different types of strain in different ways.
§ BASIC PERSONALITY STRUCTURE: MODAL CLUSTERING AND DIVERSITY
we have seen that each one of the pattern variables is intimately involved in that aspect of the socialization process which concerns the acquisition of value-orientation patterns. It has been possible, in a rough way, to show that each of them may present crucial alternatives at different stages of the socialization process,
Basic Personality Structure                   [ 227 ]
and that it is within the possibility of variation of the role taken- by alter to swing the balance one way or the other. Of course what has been presented above is in this respect a very crude sketch. These alternatives in fact appear not once but many times, and there are very complex combinations of influences emanating from the role-expectations of the various socializing agents. But this sketch has been sufficient to show the relevance of the pattern-variable scheme to the analysis of socialization, and the kind of theoretical approach which would be indicated to carry the analysis farther with genuine empirical rigor.
It follows, then, from the above analysis that in principle any one of the major pattern variable combinations can become internalized as a result of socialization processes and presumably, though this question has not been explored here, without a primary part being played by recourse to the operation of mechanisms other than the learning mechanisms, that is, without "neurotic" complications. At least the indications are very strong indeed that there is no one humanly "normal" pattern of internalized value-orientation so that all others could be considered to be "neurotic" deviations from it; for example some pattern of the "mature personality" in general.
It seems to be without serious qualification the opinion of competent personality psychologists that, though personalities differ gready in their degrees of rigidity, certain broad fundamental patterns of "character" are laid down in childhood (so far as they are not genetically inherited) and are not radically changed by adult experience. The exact degree to which this is the case or the exact age levels at which plasticity becomes gready diminished, are not at issue here. The important thing is the fact of childhood character formation and its relative stability after that.
Secondly, if the above account of the process of value-acquisition is correct only in its broadest lines, it follows that the combination of value-orientation patterns which is acquired must in a very important degree he a function of the fundamental role structure and dominant values of the social system.
This statement needs to be qualified in two ways. First, as we shall show presendy, it cannot be a function only of this fundamental role structure. Secondly, the roles in which socialization takes place are predominandy kinship roles, and we have seen that
[ 2z8 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
these are in certain structural respects among the less variable as between primacies in the values of the pattern variables.
We are then justified in concluding that the weight of evidence is strongly in favor of the existence and importance of an element of "basic personality" as Kardiner has called it, which is a function of socialization in a particular type of system of role relationships with particular values. Patterns of value-orientation play a peculiarly strategic part hoth in the definition of role-expectation patterns and in personality structure. Hence it may be concluded that it is the internalization of the value-orientation patterns embodied in the role-expectations for ego of the significant socializing agents, which constitutes the strategic element of this haste personality structure. And it is because these patterns can only be acquired through the mechanism of identification, and because the basic identification patterns are developed in childhood, that the childhood structure of personality in this respect is so stable and unchangeable.
The value-orientation patterns are so crucial in this regard because they are in fact the principal common denominator between personality as a system and the role-structure of the social system. If the whole analysis of action systems presented up to this point is correct this must he the strategic set of features of personalities which is most directly shaped by socialization processes. The same analysis of action, however, enables us to introduce certain very important qualifications and limitations relative to the concept of basic personality structure.
The most important is that such a concept must be interpreted to refer to a component of the normal personality structure in a society, not to that personality structure as a concrete entity. Secondly, such a personality structure cannot be uniform for a whole society, but it must be regarded as differentiated with regard to those status-differentiations in which Idnship groups function as units within the same society, and also by sex within the same classes of Idnship units.
We assume that all normal early socialization of children occurs within the context of kinship, though often, of course, supplemented by other agencies such as schools and peer groups. The fundamental lines of differentiation in socialization patterns will
Basic Personality Structure                 [ 229 ]
then be by sex within any given status group, and relative to the more general role-structure in which the parents are involved. The fact that it is the status differentiations which involve Idnship units as units which are significant means that class, community and ethnic differences would be the most important within the same society. We must speak, then, of broad differentiations of basic personality structure between major types of societies, and of narrower differentiations by these status categories within the same society.
But even so the basic personality structure will be only one aspect not only of the total concrete structure of the personality, but of its concrete value-orientation aspect. This is because of a variety of factors. In the first place no two human organisms are alike by genetic constitution. Therefore the same influences operating on different genetic material will not necessarily bring about the same result. It is a case analogous to that of the same beam of light refracted through different prisms; the spectra will not be identical.
But, secondly, it is the concrete constellation of reciprocal role relationships which constitutes the socializing influence, and within the same broad status groupings of the society these are different in a variety of ways. One of the most obvious is the age, sex, birth-order composition of kinship units. Even though there is a broad similarity of pattern, in detail the relationship of a first child and a second child to the mother is never identical, first, because the mother is older when the second child is born, second, because of the presence of the first child. The relation of a second child to the mother is never quite the same if the first is a brother as it is if it is a sister, and so on. These variations may be almost random within certain status-groups, and their consequences thus "iron out," but they nevertheless produce differences of result for people who are, broadly, being socialized for the same adult roles. There is also, thirdly, the fact that the individual idiosyncrasies of the socializing agents enter in. It is the concrete reciprocal role relationship to the particular person in the particular situation which influences the learning process, and this may be more or less "typical," no two cases are absolutely identical.
It must be kept in mind that a personality is a distinctive action system with its own focus of organization in the living organism
[ 23° ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
* and its own functional imperatives. Given the initial diversity of genetic constitution, plus the diversity of situational influences, including the combination or role-interactions, it would be stricdy impossible for socialization, even in a relatively uniform milieu, in terms of major differentiations of social structure, to produce a stricdy uniform product. The diversity of personality structures of those occupying the same status in the social structure, which is one of the best attested facts of clinical observation, is thus not fortuitous but is fundamentally grounded in the nature of the relations between personality and the social system. The two systems of action are inextricably bound together, but they not only are not, they cannot he identical in structure or in the process of functioning.
This diversity of personality structures relative to the role structure of the social system implies that we cannot rely on the building up of basic personality structures alone to explain the fundamental motivational processes of social systems. There are, it would seem, three further places we must seek. The first of these is to the capacity of the individual to make rational adaptations to the exigencies of his situation. This capacity is clearly along with genetic endowment a product of the processes of socialization in which identifications and value-acquisition will have played a prominent part. Once given the value-orientation patterns of the personality as internalized these processes of rational adaptation are not theoretically problematical to the sociologist and will not be further treated here.
Second we must look for additional mechanisms of socialization than the acquisition of basic value-orientations as sketched above, and third, where motivation to deviance exists, for mechanisms of social control. The latter will be deferred to the following chapter, but before approaching the former a few further remarks may be made about types of basic personality structure and their relations to the distribution of variations from them.                       .-'
The facts concerning the nature of the acquisition of value-orientations, which we have reviewed, make it quite clear that the empirically observed diversity of concrete personality types cannot, relative to the dominant value-pattern system of the society or subsystem of it, vary at random. The point of reference for analyzing
Basic Personality Structure                 [ 231 ]
the distribution will, of course, have to be the relevant institutionalized pattern-type. This, it is to be remembered, will always be differentiated by sex role. The "modal personality type" for a social system or sub-system then will be that which predisposes to conformity with the major role-expectations of the sex role patterns in that part of the society, will be that is, the type which, in personality terms, is most congruous with these expectations.
The variability from this modal type may be, in principle, analyzed with respect to any one or any combination of the pattern variables. Where the modal type is achievement-oriented some individuals may incline to passivity; where it is also universalistically oriented some may, while retaining the achievement-orientation, incline to particularism and so on. Hence the permutations and combinations of Table 2 should be kept in mind for reference purposes in this type of analysis. The strength of the socialization mechanisms is, however, sufficiendy great so that it would seem very improbable that the completely antithetical types would be as common as those which varied from the modal type with respect to one, or possibly two, of the variables.
In addition to this general consideration, however, something can be said about .specme factors which would tend to influence the distribution of more or less variant8 types. Of these, three may be mentioned. First, the source of the deviation from the modal type may have been an identification with a model alternative to that which might be regarded as normal. Of course in these terms there are many different shadings possible because of the diversity of concrete adult personalities in any child's situation. But some of these alternatives may be relatively definitely structured. Perhaps the most obvious of these possibilities is the identification with a model of the wrong sex, so far as sex-role orientations are concerned, since both sexes are so readily available and so crucially important. This is apt to be a highly complicated matter, with, for instance, connections with the problem of homosexuality. But apart from such considerations, the value-pattern elements in the character for example of the parent of opposite sex may be taken over instead of
8 The term variant in a meaning similar to this has been used by Florence Khickhohn. Cf. "Dominant and Substitute Profiles of Cultural Orientation," Socio! Forces, May, 1950.
*
[ 232 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
those of the parent of the same sex. Thus in a given population one would expect to find that a certain proportion of the men leaned toward the value-patterns appropriate to the feminine role in that society or sub-system and vice versa. For example, in a sector of our own society, where universalis tic-specific values are particularly prevalent, a minority of men might lean more in the particularistic-di£fuse direction, hence be more inclined to assume roles primarily emphasizing informal organization.
1 Cross-sex identification is, of course, by no means the only possibility of finding an alternative role model. There may well be other, slightly variant persons of the same sex.0 Here perhaps particularly uncles, aunts and substantially older siblings may be highly important if they are substantially different from the parent of the same sex. Also in a complex and heterogeneous society like our own, an identification process started in such a direction may well take on association with various sub-cultures within the society, including perhaps the ethnic. Such a society offers a rich fund of alternative value-patterns, often without being denned as radically deviant.
The second direction in which the distribution of variant personality types may be organized is that of the "hierarchy of regression possibilities" discussed above. The important process here would not be regression itself, but the failure in the course of socialization to make some of the last steps successfully. This would seem to apply particularly to universalistic orientation trends and the affectively neutral-specific combination. Regression to particularistic orientations is one of the most important possibilities in a universalistically oriented role-system, and further "overemotional" types in situations which call for affective neutrality are familiar. Á failure on these levels may, of course, be a result of failure in the early years to achieve a diffuse affective attachment to the mother, but it might be manifested in these other types of orientation context. It should be kept in mind that the relevant structure of the regression hierarchy will vary according to the value-orientation pattern in question; it is not constant for all types, not even for the sex roles within a social sub-system—thus the manifestation of affec-
0 Which may, o£ course, relative to the modal type, include the parent of the same sex.
Basic Personality Structure                   [ 233 ]
tivity by crying in certain types of situation is "childish" for a man, but not for a woman. It must, of course, also be kept in mind that we are here speaking of regression in relation to the order and conditions of acquisition of value-orientation patterns, not of object-attachments as such. Though the two are, of course, closely related, the fact that psychoanalysts particularly so often have the latter in mind when speaking of regression should not be a source of confusion. Indeed the failure to distinguish these two things is characteristic of much psychoanalytic thinking. The capacity, through generalization, to abstract a value-orientation pattern from the original object through identification with which it was first acquired, is obviously one of the most important results of successful socialization.
It is highly probable that no process of socialization occurs without an important part being played by the special mechanisms of defense and adjustment. But this exposition has deliberately attempted to abstract from such considerations in order to throw the operation of1 the mechanisms of socialization into full relief. It seems obvious, however, that in seeking role-models alternative to the parent of the same sex and in failing to attain what is for the role system in question the normal order of steps of value-acquisition, that it is extremely likely that such mechanisms will be involved in the total process in important ways. Here attention will, however, be called to only one important aspect of their operation. We have seen that conformity-ahenation is inneren dy a primary dimension of all interaction systems. The assumption of a role by the socializee means ipso facto that he comes to be faced with a conformity problem, and therefore the development of an alienative predisposition toward alters expectations is always an immediate possibility. Those elements of such alienation which are built into the personality in the course of the elementary socialization process we may call the primary alienative (and conversely conformative) need-dispositions. Both the mechanisms of defense and those of adjustment, where such a need-disposition exists, may be various. These will be analyzed more fully when the problems of deviance and social control are taken up. But here it may merely be noted that alienation is always a possible product of something going wrong in the process of value-acquisition through identification.
[ 234 ]      ^e Learning °f Social Role-Expectations
It may he presumed that in the genesis of alienative need-dispositions the negative affect is in the first instance directed against the object of attachment as a person. But the phenomenon of interest here is the more generalized alienation from the value-patterns involved in tbe role-expectation. This, then, would motivate the actor to avoid conformity with these patterns, whenever encountered, either by withdrawal or by actively seeking a counter-orientation. This can be a source of motivation to seek alternative identifications and may also reinforce regressive tendencies. In any case the possibilities of primary alienation are among the most important factors giving direction to the distribution of variability from the modal personality type.
What will be called secondary alienation is not built into the primary value-orientation patterns of the personality, but is a consequence of the fact that a personality with a given value-orientation pattern in his character structure is faced, in a specific role, with role-expectations which are uncongenial to his need-dispositions and that, therefore, he is motivated to try to avoid conformity with them, though of course this component of his motivation may be outweighed by others such as a fear of the consequences of sanctions.
Even without primary alienative need-dispositions the diversity of personality types within a given role-system is such that further mechanisms would be necessary in order to secure the level of uniformity of behavior which is required by most roles in a social structure. There are three sets of facts, however which cut down considerably the need for further mechanisms on the socialization level. These may be briefly mentioned before taking up the latter.
First, there are the mechanisms of social control, which operate to secure conformity with role-expectations in spite of need-dispositions to avoid that conformity. The simplest and most obvious of these are the reward-punishment mechanisms which may give sufficient rewards for conformity and punishments for deviance to tip the balance in favor of conformity. This aspect of reward and punishment will, however, have to he taken up later.
Secondly, to a widely varying degree for different roles and in different social systems, there is institutionalized a range of tolera-
Basic Personality Structure                 [ 235 ]
tion, so that conformity does not need to mean absolute uniformity of behavior. Put a litde differendy, along with prescriptions and prohibitions, there are also permissions. Very often, however, there is a certain relativity in the permissiveness in that there may be, as some anthropologists say, "preferred patterns," that is, a hierarchy among the permitted ones. Perhaps the most important case of this is that where there are differentiated levels of achievement within a role, as is true for example of most modern occupational roles. Then there will be differential rewards correlated with the differential achievements, so that the actor whose grade of achievement is low, while he may not be deviant, is still "paying a price," in that he fails to get the higher rewards, both, for example, in money earnings and in approval. Finding his place on such an achievement ladder may, however, constitute a tolerable adjustment for a variant personality, and this is an important kind of flexibility in the relation between the social system and the individual. Of course this is stul more sure where the place occupied within the permitted range is a "matter of taste" without clear hierarchical distinctions.
Finally, the third element of flexibility is the very important one, which again varies from society to society, .of the existence of a system of alternative role-opportunities so that there is no one set of role-expectations which every individual who starts at a given status-point must conform with or pay the cost of deviance in sanctions. There seems to be litde doubt that in a complex and mobile society like our own, one of the major sorting-out factors between alternative role-opportunities is to be found in differences of the value-orientation patterns of different personalities. When the major family status factors have been taken into account, and such obvious performance-capacity factors as I.Q., there is still a substantial residual variance with respect to occupational career orientation.10 It seems highly probable that one of the major factors in this residual variance is the variability of basic personality structure within the population concerned, which is not a function of the modal role-expectation patterns of their initial status.
10 This tas been clearly demonstrated in an unpublished study of the social mobility of high school students in the Boston area by S. A. Stouffer, Florence Khiclchohn, and the present author.
[•236 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
§ THE SITUATIONAL ROLE-SPECIFICATION OF ORIENTATIONS
these three types of mechanism of accommodation in the social system to the non-role-adapted diversity of personality types do not, however, even taken together, account for actual motivation to the degree of conformity with role-expectations normally found in a stähle social system. In addition to sheer rational adaptation to the exigencies of situations, there is still another highly important set of mechanisms of socialization which may be called the situational role-specification11 of orientations.
It may be recalled that the constellation of value-orientation patterns, which we have called basic personality structure, has in particular two features. First, being defined only in pattern variable terms, it is extremely general. Second, the identifications out of which it has been constructed are early identifications, which in the great majority of cases are superseded before adulthood. These two facts are closely connected. If there are general criteria of maturity, one of the most important is probably the combination of the stability of basic orientation patterns with relative flexibility of object choice, and action patterns, that is, relatively high capacity for substitution and reality testing. In this sense, as well as in the sense that attachments have concretely changed, it is necessary for the adult to become emancipated from his childhood identifications.
But in this transition it is necessary for the actor to acquire more specific orientations relative to the specific situations and expectations of his adult roles; there is a further process of socialization on a new level. A very important part of this consists in the acquisition of the more complex adult culture of sophisticated knowledge, technical skills, and canons of expressive orientation, tastes and standards of taste. It may be presumed that in detail the paramount learning mechanism in these acquisition processes is imitation, since in the higher societies the level of complexity and sophistication of what has to be learned is such that individual creativity as the primary process is out of the question. It is, of
11 Specification and specificity in the present usage should not be confused with specificity in the pattern variable sense. The context should make the distinction clear.
The Situational RoleS-pecipcation of Orientations    [ 2,37 ]
course, above all about this complex cultural content that the processes of formal education come to be organized.
But this is not to say either, that identification ceases to be an important learning mechanism on this more mature level, or that it is only specific cultural content which still has to be learned.
First let us taken an example, which will be developed more at length in a later chapter in other contexts. Suppose we have an individual in whom the general value-orientation pattern of achieve-ment-universalism, specificity, neutrality and collectivity-orientation is well established in his basic personality structure. First, as a male, he must learn that a man is expected, when he "grows up" to become the incumbent of an occupational role, to "do a job," to "earn his living" and very probably to support a family. He learns that the occupational system is hierarchically graded, and that if he is properly ambitious for "success" he should aim to reach one of the higher levels in the occupational system. We have, then, the connection of a highly generalized achievement-orientation with the much more specific, but still very generalized goal of success in an occupational system.
The basic personality orientation patterns are indeed a function of the social system in which the individual was sociahzed. But they are too general directly to embody the specific structure of the situation as a complex of alternative role-opportunities or the specific cultural definitions of what constitutes occupational success. The father may, in this respect, also be a highly important role model, but much more in terms of his specific role in the occupational system and his specific attitudes toward his own and other occupations and toward the specific context of what is meant by success. If the father were an American physician on the one hand, or a Chinese gentleman-scholar on the other, it would make a very impottant difference on this level, in part at least, independently of the father's significance as a primary role-model on the level previously discussed. Resorting to an alternative role model would, on this level, not have quite the same significance as on the primary level. For example, in American society upward mobility is to a degree institutionalized. If a father in the lower status levels is ambitious for his son, and other conditions are given, he might
[ 238 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
well be a highly appropriate primary role model and a completely inappropriate secondary role model for the son.
The degree of specificity of the orientation may be still further increased. Within this rather general orientation to occupational success the individual in question may incline toward a professional career and within that toward the medical profession. In this case he must, of course, orient himself to an extremely complex process of formal training, but also toward the definition of the specific role of physician (and the many sub-types within it), to what success in medicine or the relevant branch means, and the like.
Or we may take a different example. A need-disposition for diffuse affective attachments is presumably a component of the basic personality structure of all normal people in our society. But besides this orientation structure, much needs to be learned for adjustment, for example, to the role of marriage in our type of society. The predisposition to seek an object of the opposite sex and to fuse erotic gratifications in the diffuse attachment may be regarded as given in the basic personality structure. But the status of marriage, the responsibility for children, the standards with respect to an acceptable home, the mores with respect to the style of life of a married couple, / and all the rest are not directly derivable from the basic personality structure. Certain patterns in basic personality structure are, of course, important prerequisites for a successful marriage, but the specific definition of the role and its specific values is another matter.
Every society then has the mechanisms which have been called situational specifications of role-orientations and which operate through secondary identifications and imitation. Through them are learned the specific role-values and symbol-systems of that particular society or sub-system of it, the level of expectations which are to be concretely implemented in action in the actual role.
Relative to the orientations of basic personality structure these are much more specific. But they are generalized in another sense in that they inculcate definitions of expectation which apply to all incumbents of the type of role in question in the particular social system. Thus this set of mechanisms has two primary functions. First is the specification of more generalized motivational orientation patterns to the point where they connect up with the surfi-ciendy concrete definition of the situation in the actual social
The Situational Role-Specification of Orientations    [ 239 ]
system actually to motivate conformity with concrete role-expectations. The second is, in combination with the system of sanctions and mechanisms of social control, to counterbalance the variability of basic personality structure, so that a level of uniformity emerges which would not be possible were concrete adult role-orientations a simple and direct manifestation of the basic personality structure.12 Of course this second function, the motivation of uniformity of role-behavior, is only possible because there is an important range of flexibility in the average personality. The "determination" of character in the early process of basic personality formation is not a predetermination of all future behavior in detail, but only of a basic directional orientation. There is still considerable plasticity so that, when allowance has been made for ranges of toleration and alternatives of role-opportunity it is only those toward the extremes of the range of variability of basic-personality structure who are not variant hut deviant, in the sense that their need-dispositions not merely make it a bit harder to conform, but psychologically impossible. Of course this line between the variant and the deviant is, in most societies, by no means rigid and many factors of post-childhood experience may throw the balance one way or the other. There are also mild and/or temporary deviances which do not place the individual in an irrevocably deviant role, but may afford some relief from the pressures to conformity.
It is to be presumed that with respect to the role-specification mechanisms as with respect to those of value-acquisition, there is, in a given social role-system, a hierarchy of learning stages. Thus from a variety of points of view in our society experience in the course of formal education is to be regarded as a series of apprentice-
12 It may be noted that neglect of such considerations is one of the most serious shortcomings many of the views current in the "Culture and Personality" school of thought where there is an attempt to connect culture patterns and child training practices in such a direct way. First, this view does not allow for the fundamental fact of the variability of basic personality structures as a direct result of socialization in the same "culture" or structured role system. Secondly, however, it fails to see the significance of the second great class of socialization mechanisms. It tends to think of the role-behavior of the adult as the direct "acting out" of need-dispositions on the basic personality structure level, thus treating institutions apart from the details of child-training practices as epiphenomena. This view is imphcit in Kardiner's concept of the distinction between "primary" and "secondary" institutions.
[ 240 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
ships for adult occupational roles, even apart from the degrees to which the actual content of instruction, e.g., arithmetic and linguistic skills, can he directly used there. Thus to a much higher degree than in the family, in school the child learns to adjust himself to a specific-universalistic-achieverhent system. He is brought into explicit competition with his classmates, and his standing with respect to the achievement orientation pattern is overtly symbolized in grades, as well as in the other rewards and punishments administered by the teacher, and in her attitudes. So far as the child accepts the role-expectations of the school system, attainment of good marks, which is one form of success, becomes what may be called a situationally generalized goal. This is a point at which a great many possible motivational factors may converge. One child may become highly interested in the subject-matter he is learning itself, another more interested in the favorable attitudes of the teacher, still a third in surpassing his classmates. But these different motivations may all converge on a common direction of actual behavior, namely the striving for marks. This illustrates how the social system operates to socialize different personality orientations so that in spite of the diversity of their basic personalities, they may still fulfill the same set of role-expectations, at least within the limits of tolerance. Of course it must not be forgotten that there are those who f ail to fulfill these expectations altogether. But that is another story.
There is, then, a sense in which the school system is a microcosm of the adult occupational world, and experience in it is a main field of operation of the second stage mechanisms of socialization, the specification of role-orientations. There are, of course, a whole series of stages within this before full adult status is achieved. Here only one further aspect will be mentioned, that of the place of new identifications. It seems probable that the predominance of women teachers in the early grades in American school systems is important not merely because of the fact that on comparable levels of training and technical competence they can be secured to work for less pay than men, and thus save economy-minded school boards and* taxpayers money. There is probably considerable significance in the role of the woman teacher as an object for identification, obviously a significance connected with the process of emancipation from earlier attachments to the mother.
The Situational Role-Specification of Orientations    [ 241 ]
It is suggested that this importance lies in a delicate balance between similarities to and differences from the mother. The fact of being a woman and of having a kindly, protective attitude toward the children is the most important similarity. A woman can by and large permit herself greater tenderness and solicitude than can a man. But there are also striking differences. The teacher is responsible for a class of some twenty or more children. They are almost of an age and therefore much more directly in competition with each other than siblings are, even in large families. The teacher cannot give each one the solicitude that would be normal in a mother. Moreover the relation is focused on the specific content of the curriculum; it is not general supervision and care, and it is sharply restricted to the school period. It is much more universalistic in content and specific in focus than the relation to the mother. Moreover the child does not have the same level of rights hy ascription that he has vis-ä-vis his mother; he can more readily be held to achievement standards.
We know that dependence on the mother is particularly intense in the American kinship system, and we also know that emancipation from that dependence is particularly important for the adult in an achievement-oriented individualistic society. Too abrupt and drastic a transition might involve intolerable strain with neurotic consequences. The woman teacher as an identification figure may therefore perform a very important function in American socialization.
To connect with the mother'it is significant that the teacher be a woman; but it may be equally important that she should not be too much like the mother, or there would not be any new element in the pattern of her influence on the child. Perhaps this situation has something to do with the prevalence of the "irrational prejudice" against married women as teachers. Symbolically at least, since they are or should be mothers, for teachers to be married women might be dimly felt to be too close an assimilation between the mother role and the teacher role. Perhaps the traditional American "old maid" school teacher has her functions.
Finally, it may be remarked that a very important step in respect to identifications as well as otherwise comes with the transition to "secondary" education, now usually in Junior High School. This is
[ 242. ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expéctations
the breaking up of the one class per school grade into a different class —and teacher—for each subject. Then the child no longer has the one identification figure for his school life, he can no longer speak of "my teacher" hut only of "my English teacher" and "my science teacher." This is another big step toward the acquisition of uni-versalistic orientations, in that the focus is on competence in the subject matter rather than the more diffuse, general, and hence parent-like superior knowledge and standing of the teacher. The teacher approaches the role of a technical expert, not of a general prestige and authority figure. It is perhaps significant, that it is at this point that the American child generally first encounters men as teachers to a significant degree.
It should be clear that socialization does not in this sense cease with the attainment of adult status. Societies differ a great deal of course in the degree to which they call upon their members for major role changes after the childhood period, but many, like our own, do so to a considerable extent. Even to take one nearly universal example, namely marriage, the content of the role is continually changing, partly as a function of the individual's own age and that of his spouse. The childless stage of marriage means in fact a different role from that which is assumed with the advent of children. The number and ages of the children change the character of the role, as of course happens drastically in our society when the "stage of the empty nest" is reached. Similarly in those occupational roles which have a typical "career line," the expectations shift quite substantially as new stages in the career are reached. Here one of the most important problems of adjustment is that concerned with starting a career in a position of low responsibility and in the course of it coming to assume large responsibilities. In one phase it is a shift from subordination to many people to superOrdination over many. It is well known that such shifts place considerable strains upon individuals, but it remains a fact that many accomplish them successfully; they can hardly do so without undergoing a complicated learning process.
Finally, many societies are involved in processes of social change. Such changes may, even over the span of active adult life, be considerable, so that the expectations of an early period must be considerably readjusted to meet the requirements of a later one. Here
The Profit Motive                          [ 243 ]
again the process can he successful only through the operation of learning mechanisms in the context of sociahzation, of further role-specification of orientations.
§ AN EXAMPLE: THE "PROFIT MOTIVE"
est conclusion we may develop a somewhat fuller illustration of the operation and functions of the mechanisms of situational role-specification of orientations by examining certain aspects of the place of the so-called "profit motive" in modern liberal societies. The popular term is placed in quotation marks because in the light of the present theoretical analysis of role-motivations it is apt to be somewhat misleading. Some psychologists have spoke of a primary acquisitive drive or instinct. Whatever the major orientation pattern of the modern "businessman" may be, it is not in any simple sense a manifestation of such a drive.
The profit motive is rather, in the above sense, a situationally generalized goal which is learned in the course of what has been called the secondary socialization process. It is not general to human beings, but is very specifically culture-bound to certain types of roles in specific social systems. It is not bound to any particular basic personality type,18 though in certain respects it is certainly more congenial to some than to others. Its situational generalization, however, has precisely the function of malting it a possible common orientation of action deriving from a diversity of "psychological" motivational roots, and combinations of them.
The structural focus of the orientation to profit is, of course, the phenomenon of instrumental exchange, which, as we have seen, has some place in every social system. Since there is in the structure of the situation inherent motivation to secure relatively advantageous terms in exchanges—not to be so oriented in any sense could be compatible only with the extreme of masochism, or of drastic other worldliness, and even there one might say that the masochist sought advantage in what others considered to be disadvantageous.
18 One of the cruder versions of the idea that it does manifest such a type is the conception of some psychoanalytic amateur sociologists that "capitalism" is a manifestation of the "anal character." There is certainly a grain of truth in this idea, hut hardly more. It completely overlooks the focal problems of the organization of the social system.
[ 244 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Ex-pectations
In any case, then, in this most general sense the profit motive is "endemic" in all social relationship systems. f However, differentiation. pXiheJnsrrumental complex, its segre-# < gation from diffuse solidarities and above all the development "öl ((moril^ enormously extendilHe range of relevance of exchange. The availability of money as a generalized medium of exchange makes it possible through the securing of advantageous monetary terms to enhance the means available to gratify all need-dispositions with reference to which purchasable means may be important. In a market economy like ours the range of monetary purchasability is extremely wide. It is particularly important to be clear that the relevance of this range of exchangeability has virtually nothing to do with what is ordinarily considered the "ethical quality" of the goals to which monetary resources are a means. Thus every religious movement seeks to "raise money," that is to make a profit, for its particular purposes, just as much as the man who wants to bet his earnings on the races or to drown his sorrows in drink. To have more money rather than less is simply, with only a few exceptions, to be in a more advantageous position to realize whatever goals the actor may have in mind. In this sense the "profit motive" is nothing but a primary aspect of what may be called "practical rationality."
But, of course, this is not all. Means-objects inevitably acquire symbolic significance, and the quantifi ability of money as a possession means that money lends itself peculiarly to the symbolization of prestige. Since it is useful, in one sense its possession is inevitably a reward as well as being a facility for the attainment of other rewards. Hence money, income, or wealth, i.e., resources convertible into or measurable in money terms, are, in an economy with a high development of monetary exchange, an important reward symbol. As such profit may be a measure of otherwise valued achievement acquisition, or it may be a direct goal of success-striving, so that other forms of achievement content become instrumental to monetary gain.
Further, there are complex relations between money as a reward symbol and other components of the reward system, money as a symbol of achievement being one. Another obvious one is the connection between monetary resources and the style of life, in such a
The Profit Motive                        [ 245 ]
way that money is the means of purchasing valued items of the style of life, but conversely, the display of style of life items may be a way of telling the public that one has a large income—the case which Veblen called "conspicuous consumption." Incidentally among certain Bohemian groups this relationship is inverted, the style of life is, among other things, meant to advertise that the actor is contemptuous of the "flesh pots" of the bourgeois world, that he accepts and glorifies "honorable poverty."
Whatever the range of variability with respect to these symbolic significances of money income and earnings, there is in a developed market economy—even in socialism—as we have noted, a strong tendency for integration of the income scale with the general prestige scale of the social system. This aspect must in turn be integrated with certain possibilities of orientation to monetary gain, which are inherent in the structure of the situation in a system of instrumental division of labor. The following possibilities may be noted:
1)  The interest in gain may be a purely personal orientation, the actor merely taking advantage of an opportunity presented in the situation. Such opportunities necessarily arise in a money economy.
2)  It may become a feature of an institutionalized role for an individual who is as such a unit in an ecological complex of market relationships. There are two principal sub-types of this, a) where he is an artisan or independent professional practitioner who has to engage in financial transactions for disposal and acquisition of facilities, but these are conditional to his main occupational goal which is to "produce" or to "provide service"; and b) where he is an independent "businessman," e.g., a merchant, whose role is institutionally denned as to "make money."
3)  It may be orientation in a membership role within a collectivity. In any collectivity, most roles are not primarily oriented to profit-malting; they are oriented rather to cooperation in the sense of Chapter III. Cases would be professional technicians or ordinary "workers." Only certain representative roles, which are concerned with mediation of the affairs of the collectivity vis-ä-vis the outside situation can be oriented to profit. These again are of two main types, a) In a collectivity which as a.unit is not oriented to profit,
[ 246 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
the problems of exchange for disposal, remuneration and provision of facilities still remain. Roles may he specialized relative to these functions. When it becomes an obligation of the role to secure advantageous terms on behalf of the collectivity, the incumbent is oriented to profit. Examples would be the treasurer of a university or a hospital, b) In a collectivity, which as a unit is oriented to profit, a "business firm," profit has primacy as the paramount obligation of the top executive roles. But in both these cases profit-making becomes the role-obligation of a role on hehalf of the collectivity; it is not orientation to "personal gain" in the usual sense.
The question of the orientation of the individual actor to the collectivity in which he participates presents still a further structural aspect of the problem. He must secure his personal remuneration and must settle terms with the collectivity, with respect to the assumption or continuation of his role within it. This is, of course, the place where -personal orientation to profit can operate in relation to organizations in the occupational world. There is naturally a connection between the "value" of a man's services to the collectivity and the terms he is able to secure for his services to it. But the connection is seldom simple and direct, and certainly when he occupies one of the above two types of roles he generally does not put his earnings on behalf of the firm or organization direcdy into his own pocket.
There is, thus, a whole range of possible significances of orientation to financial "gain" in a market economy. But the most important common denominator of these is not motivational in the usual sense, it is not a "propensity of human nature." It is, rather, an aspect of the structuring of the situation of action.,It concerns a highly generalized mode of action in which a highly generalized class of advantages is to be sought, which funnels all manner of motivations into a common channel. On the level of structure there is a wide variety of different role elements which are articulated in different ways'into the monetary market system. These are, first, the purchasing interests of "consumers," a purely "instrumental" interest. Second, the disposal interests and facility-procuring interests of independent "producers," though they may be only secondarily oriented to "maldng money." Third, the interests of employed persons in securing income through the contract of employ-
Trie Profit Motive                        [ 247 ]
ment. Fourth, the orientation of independent individuals to maldng money "on their own." Fifth, the role of conducting market transactions on behalf of an organization, though the organization is not primarily profit-oriented and sixth, the corresponding type of role where the organization is primarily profit-oriented. Only four and six are in any usual sense "capitalistic" or "profit maldng" orientations.
But in addition to these aspects of the problem we have the symbolic place of money income in the reward system of the society, as a symbol of achievement and of success, and of course as a means of exercising power.
We can speak properly of individuals as oriented to profit, then, so far as by socialization they have become integrated within this system of role-expectations and situational opportunities. Within any given role in the system there is room for a variety of different nuances of personal orientation, of different attitudes toward money in each of the many different respects in which it enters into the structure of the situation. But as the basis of a uniformity of the orientation of action the profit motive is a situationally generalized goal, its generality comes from its place in the definition of the situation, and the integration of this with the individual's orientations, not from any pre-socialization features of the motivation of the individual.
It is, furthermore, not of the same order of generality as the orientation-directions which are grounded in the elementary structure of the interaction relationship, such as the need-dispositions for affection, for security or for a sense of adequacy. It is precisely this difference which justifies treating the profit motive as a "secondary" product of the socialization process. There are many societies where, even in the most general non-monetary sense, orientation to favorable exchange terms has a relatively minimal significance. For it to acquire a significance remotely approaching that in the modern industrial type of society, even in its socialist version, means that relatively specific features of the specific social structure have to he incorporated into the orientation of the personality on the secondary socialization level. There has to he a role-specification of orientations going far beyond the most generalized basic personality orientations of the primary socialization level, and to a certain extent
[ 248 ]      The Learning of Social Role-Expectations
cutting across them. It is by such mechanisms that motivation adequate to the more detailed role expectations of a social system, perhaps particularly those involved in the adaptive structures which are not direct manifestations of the primary value-orientations, are built up.                                     f
The above, as has several times been noted, treats only one half of the problem of motivational process in the social system. The other half is the analysis in motivational terms of the sources of tendencies to deviance, and the mechanisms of their control. To this we now turn.
DEVIANT   BEHAVIOR AND THE MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL
IT HAS been evident from the beginning of this work that the dimension of conformity-deviance was inherent in and central to the whole conception of social action and hence of social systems. One aspect, that is, of the common cultural patterns which are part of every system of social interaction, is always normative. There is an expectation of conformity with the requirements of the pattern, if it be only in observing the conventions of a communication pattern, for example, by spealdng intelligibly. The complementarity of expectations, on which such great stress has been laid, implies the existence of common standards of what is "acceptable," or in some sense approved behavior. In the preceding chapter we have dealt with the processes by which motivational structures required for behavior in conformity with such normative social expectations are built up. We must now turn to the other side of the coin, the processes by which resistances to conformity with social expectations develop, and the mechanisms by which these tendencies are or tend to be counteracted in social systems.
It is a cardinal principle of the present analysis that all motivational processes are processes in the personalities of individual actors. The processes by which the motivational structure of an individual personality gets to be what it is are, however, mainly social processes, involving the interaction of ego with a plurality of alters. Thus th^ sectors of the motivation of the individual which are concerned with his motivation to deviant behavior, are the outcome of his processes