• Sociology of personality concerns the relationship between social structure and individual
  • 3 analytical approaches
    • The societal influence on the individual
    • The individual influence on the society
    • The mutual influence between society and the individual
  • However, the main soc approach focuses on the social group based on individual behavior
  • Meaning in order to understand certain behaviors we must go beyond the analysis of individual personalities and examine the impact of various social structures and one’s relation to it

Models of Society: Three sociological perspectives

• Sociologists study macro theoretical perspectives on society vs. psychology which depends on grand theories of personality
• Three perspectives= the consensus, the conflict, and the interaction p. 92
• The consensus refers to structural-functionalism
• Neither the consensus or conflict perspective represent the empirical reality of society
• There is no society that is free of conflict nor one that is predominantly conflict orientated
• All societies contain aspects of both
• The interaction perspective views society as an ongoing process of human interaction
• One’s influence then depends on the individuals subjective interpretation of the meaning of structure
• Social structure does not exist on its own nor does the self
• They are interdependent and cannot exist without the other
  • Three theoretical perspectives chart p. 94

Functionalism and Personality

            Durkheim’s Anomie Theory

• Functionalism= Auguste Comte (father of sociology) & Herbert Spencer & Emile Durkheim
• Common View: the organismic analogy of human society= society has a structured system composed of many interrelated parts that serve various required functions for survival and maintenance of the whole
• Malfunctions serve as a threat to society
• Basic Tenet of Functionalism chart p.95
• Each individual within a functionalist society must conform and adjust to social norms in order to maintain the stability of the social system
• Misfits people are seen as malfunctioning, dangerous and deviant
• Durkheim believed that suicide rated varied based on social integration and social change
• He classified suicide based on its social causes= egotistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic
• Egoistic- occurs among individuals who lack close social attachment and meaningful interaction with others
• Altruistic (3 categories) – is the opposite of egoistic because this individual has excessively high social interaction and integration
  • Suicides of men on the threshold of old age or extremely sick
  • Suicides of women on their husbands death
  • Suicides of followers and servants on the death of their chiefs (kamikaze pilots)
• Anomic- occurs under a social condition in which regulations of individuals by society is weakened due to sudden social change
• Anomie refers to a condition of normlessness or norm ambiguity in society (lack of rules/laws)
• Divorced men are more vulnerable to anomic suicide than divorced women
• Fatalistic- (polar of anomic) occurs among the individuals who experience excessive social regulation= prison or slavery, childless women or young husbands
• Excess regulation to the point of being violently choked by oppressive discipline
• Ex: suttee (a Hindu wife who committed suicide after her husband’s death who was also oppressed by society) = both altruistic and fatalistic
• “suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of the social groups of which the individual forms a part”

Durkheim and Beyond

• His legacy to study individual behavior has been evident in many contemporary sociological theories and research

Merton’s Typology of Individual Adaptation

• Robert K. Merton extended Durkheim’s anomie theory of suicide to the social and cultural sources of deviant behavior
• Aimed to discover how some social structures exert a definite pressure upon a person which influences them to engage in non-conforming conduct (deviant behavior)
• Focused on the relationship of Culturally defined goals 2. Institutionalized means to attain the goals
• Ex: the attainment of the American dream between different cultures
• Based on availability of resources and opportunities this can cause disfunction between goals and attainment pushing towards anomie and deviance
• Thus, he formed one conforming and four alternative modes of behavior
  • Conformity- most common mode of adaptation where one has internalized cultural goals and also has access to legitimate means of attaining the goals
  • Innovation-the most prevalent type of lower class deviance- an individual has assimilated the cultural emphasis upon a goal without internalizing means for its attainment
  • Ritualism- abandoning the superior goals of success and rapid social mobility to the point where one’s aspirations can be satisfied
  • Retreatism- least common- passive mode of adaptation where one withdrawals from both aspiring cultural goals and employing institutional means
  • Rebellion- seeks to transform both existing cultural goals and institutionalized means into new ones (rebellion vs. ressentiment- Max Scheler’s)
• Merton’s theory of deviance is based mainly on the dysfunction of culturally shared goals and institutional means

Parson’s General Theory of Social Action and Personality System

• Talcott Parsons attempted to build a grand theory of social system
• Constructed the ideal-typical structure of social action and its functionally interrelated systems
• Three interrelated systems- Social systems, personality systems, and cultural systems
  • Social- organized about the relations of actors to each other
  • Personality- systems of motivated action organized about the individual actor
  • Cultural- symbolic patterns created by the individual actors and are transmitted among the social system and personality system
• Key element of the personality system is need-dispositions= tendencies to orient and act with respect to objects in certain manners and to expect certain consequences from these actions
• Pattern Variables- dichotomous alternatives that account not only for the variations in the dominant modes of personality but also for setting normative priorities in the social systems and to pattern core values in cultural systems
  • Affective-affective neutrality= the amount of emotional involvement allowed to enter an interactive solution
  • Universalism-particularism= the standards of evaluation of others in an interactive situation
  • Diffuseness and Specificity= the nature of obligations in interactive situations
  • Achievement and ascription= rests on whether status incumbents are judged on what they do rather than on who they are
• Parson’s perspective is that each individual is a passive actor whose need dispositions are largely determined by the dominant patterns of value orientations within society and culture

Riesman’s Three Character Types

• Studied the changing American character in terms of mode of conformity
• Believes character types correspond to social change (social growth and decline)
• The society of high growth tends to develop a social character among the members whose mode of conformity= tradition-directed
• They are traditionally molded/ customized by society which has guided their behavior
• Transitional growth= when a society has high birth rates and declining death rates
  • This creates an inner-directed social character
  • Influenced early in life by elders and directed toward generalized inescapably destined goals
• Demographic transition= low birth rates and low death rates
  • Creates the other-directed character
  • They are not controlled by an internal gyroscope and are influenced by incoming signals sent by others (they tend to follow the crowd)
• Functionalist tradition tends to overemphasize the function of individuals as they conform to cultural norms (goals vs means)

Marxian Theory of Social Classes, Class Consciousness, and Alienation

• Human history= the history of class struggle
• Classes= bourgeoisie (modern capitalist) and proletariat (modern wage labourers)
• Class position- one’s relation to the means of production
• Class consciousness- becoming aware of their own class interests
• Capitalist develop the bourgeois ideology to justify their position and maintain the status quo that continues to serve their collective interests
• Creates a false consciousness that this ideology represents the interests of all classes
• Thus, it legitimizes and perpetrates their exploitation of the working class, keeping them from achieving their true class interests and collective destiny
• True Consciousness- the desire for the abolition of capitalism
• Theory of alienation- the estranged human conditions of the working class under capitalist system of production
  • Meaning the work is external to the worker/ not a part of his nature/ unfulfilling

Beyond Marx

• Lack of class consciousness in the U.S
  • Economic expansion, specialization and mobility and the corresponding diversification of job experience and economic interests
  • Diversity within occupational and class levels because of ethnicity, sex, gender, religion, age and race
  • The tendency in American culture to formulate goals and to explain success and failure within individualistic terms

Class, Ethnicity, and Political Behavior

• Richard Hamilton found patterns of political orientation between classes and ethnic groups based on income and race

Class and Socialization

• Melvin Kohn’s main goal was to examine the influence of social class position on parental values and the effects of such values on their behavior in respect to child socialization
  • Member of different social classes develop different social realities, hopes, fears, aspirations, and desires= this influences their social behavior and socialization as children through adulthood
• Social class is a power predictor of human values and behavior
  • Lower class with have a different social reality of society than the upper class

Class and Mental Health

• Marx’s alienation theory generated many studies on the relationship between class and mental health
• Melvin Seeman’s Five Alternative Meanings of Alienation
  • Powerlessness- There is not much I can do about most of the important problems that we face today
  • Meaninglessness- things have become so complicated in the world today that I really don’t understand what is going on
  • Normlessness- in order to get ahead in the world today, you are almost forced to do something that is not right
  • Cultural estrangement- I am not interest in the tv programs, movies, and magazines that most people seem to like
  • Social estrangement- I often feel lonely
  • Estrangement from work- I don’t really enjoy most of the work that I do, I feel that I must do it in order to have the things I need and want
• This type of alienation can serve to explore the various interaction variables within social class

Simmel’s Legacy of Social Ambivalence: The Marginal Personality

• Simmel views class conflict as many different forms of human conflict and ambivalence embedded in social life
• This dialectic approach form pairs of opposites; one cannot exist without the other
• Explains the stranger as fixed within a particular group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries
• His position in the group is determined by the fact that he has not belonged to the group from the beginning (a unity of nearness and remoteness)
• Parks- The Maginal Man
  • Is one who has internalized the norms of a particular group but is not completely recognized by others as being a legitimate member of that group
• Kerckhoff and McCormick hypothesis that given the knowledge of (below) one could predict which segments of the marginal group will exhibit the highest incidence of marginal personality characteristics
  • 1) the group status 2) the individuals group identification 3) the degree of rejection experienced by the individuals and the group as a whole
• Found that: 1) marginal personality traits with Indian children who identified with the white majority
• 2) Identification with the white majority was more prevalent with the children who were least Indian looking in appearance

Weber’s Legacy I: Status Inconsistency and Personality

• Believe that in addition to class, status and party constitutes for structural domination
• Wealth, social honor and political power and interrelated
• This stimulates sociologists to research the relationship between status inconsistency and personality
• Examples of research p. 113-114

Weber’s Legacy II: Rationalization, Depersonalization, and Commitment

• Modern bureaucracy depersonalizes the individual through its principle of rationalization
• Weber disagrees with Marx as he believes that all modern bureaucracies operate on the principle of goal-oriented rationalization that comes with depersonalization and oppressive routines
• He envisioned the future Western man imprisoned in an iron cage of his own making

The Greening of America: A New consciousness of the ‘60s

• Charles A. Reich used Weber’s concepts of dehumanization and rationalization in his book The Greening of America
• Believed he could explain the nature of the American crisis in the ‘60s
  • Disorder, corruption, hypocrisy, war, poverty, distorted priorities, and law-making by the private sector
  • Uncontrolled technology, destruction of the environment, decline of democracy and liberty, powerlessness
  • Absence of community and loss of self
• Supposed a new consciousness should emerge to overcome the crisis
  • The whole man creates his own life and thus creates the society in which he lives
  • This individual consciousness or Weltanschauug (world view) is also a mass phenomenon since it forms the underlying economic, sociocultural, and political conditions of society in a particular period
• Lag and manipulation are the factors that produce consciousness characterized by unreality
• Consciousness I is rooted in individualism- free enterprise, individual hard work, and self-made success
• Consciousness II is equivalent to the how the individual makes his way through the world directed by others
• Consciousness III seeks liberation and transcendence
• This new consciousness seeks to restore the non-material elements of man’s existence
• Green manifesto= too simplistic and idealistic

Habits of the Heart: American Culture and Character

• Concerns the American individualism that Tocqueville describes with a mixture as admiration and anxiety
• Interested in cultural traditions and practices that serve to limit and restrain the destructive side of individualism
• Biblical individualism- derives from the early Puritan settlers belief of moral freedom and liberty of the individual under God
• Civic or Republican individualism- emerged out of the quest for political freedom and independence from oppressive monarchial and aristocratic authority
• Utilitarian individualism- emerged from the belief that everyone has a chance to succeed if one pursues vigorously his/her self interest
• Expressive individualism- emerged as a reaction to utilitarian individualism
• The ambiguity and ambivalence of American individualism derive from both cultural and social contradictions
• One’s subjective meaning and definition of the situation affect their objective reality
• This interactive aspect between social structure and self is the primary perspective on the study of personality

Interactionist Perspectives on Personality

• Functionalism and conflict theory are macrosociological focused on the influence of large social systems and core values of those systems on the individual
• Personality is considered the dependent variable of social structure
• In interactionist, personality is a function of the interaction between society and self
• Coser explains how Simmel believes the socialized individual always remains in a dual relation with society
• Thus, the individual is at the same time within society and outside it; he exists for society as well as for himself
• For Simmel, individuals are both objects and subjects within a network of communicative interaction

Symbolic Interactionism

• 1^st: human beings act towards things- objects, institutions, other human begins- on the basis of the meaning that the things have for them
• 2^nd: the meaning of such things are derived from, or arise out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows
• 3^rd: these meanings are handled in and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters
• Symbolic interactionist perspective- 1) subjective meaning of the actor 2) symbolic interaction 3) on-going process of modification and interpretation

Mead: Mind, Self and Society

• Self and society= twin born; one cannot exist without the other
• Self emerges through communication of individuals and groups
• Society emerges through the patterning process of interaction between the individuals
• Thus he believes that the behavior of an individual can be understood as the behavior of the whole group
• Similar to William James “social self” and Charles Cooley’s the looking glass self
• Belief that an object could not exist without a subject
• Society on exist because the human mind is capable of conceptualizing an objective entity
• Subjective “I” and objective “me”
  • The “I” is the spontaneous self
  • The “me” is the socially objectivated self (conceived based on the views of others)
• This concept is considered sociological and humanistic
• The self arises through social experience
• Animals use signs as well, but not on as deep of a level
• Animal gestures are solely based on instinct, whereas human gestures involve reflexive communication
• Significant gestures involve taking the role of the other in order to convey significant meaning
• Symbols allows to visualize one’s performance from the standpoint of others
• In non-symbolic interaction, human beings respond directly to one another
• In symbolic interaction, humans interpret each other’s attitudes and act based on the meaning of that particular interpretation
• According to Mead, Role-taking is the essential process for the development of the mind
• The process begins in the play stage
  • The child begins to play and take on different roles (pretend to be a policeman, fireman, etc.)
  • Very young children can also take after other’s behavior (imitation)
  • Only take on one role at a time, and the range of roles is usually limited; oftentimes significant others
• The next stage is the game stage where the children are capable of assuming many different roles
  • The child learns the rules of the game. As the child gets older, more games are played, more rules are learned
  • This means the child takes more generalized attitudes of others; the generalized other
• The final stage in the development of self, according to Mead, is when the self matures through a process of assuming the attitudes of others from significant others to generalized others (the community as a whole)
• The human mind is essentially a series of symbolic interactions between self and others
  • And when these interactions are patterned or become the general rules of the game for the whole community, the concept of social structure emerges.
• Thus, society is a process, and so are the self and the mind.
• In the end, Mead’s concepts appeared to emphasize that society shapes mind and self, whereas mind and self affect society
• This brings about some interesting questions:
  • Why can certain people take the attitudes of the generalized other well (adjusted persons), while others cannot (maladjusted persons)?
  • What causes this variation? Could that be the problem of the individual personality characteristics?

William Isaac Thomas: Social Organization and Social Personality

• I. Thomas was well known for his famous theorem: “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”
  • In other words, one’s subjective meaning of the objective reality ultimately determines one’s behavior
  • Similar to Weber’s concept of “verstehen” and Merton’s recent concept of “self-fulfilling prophecy”
• Thomas’ more significant contributions to sociology of personality are a number of studies done on the relationships between social organization, personality, social change, and social problems from a cross-cultural perspective found in his monumental book The Polish Peasant In Europe and America
• Similar to Mead, Thomas’ main focus was on the interaction between the individual and society.
• The main difference between them, however, was that Thomas took pains to analyze the interaction between social organization (“social values”) and social personality (“individual attitudes”) in relation to a macrosocial process; social change
• As the study of social organization requires institutional analysis, the study of social personality calls for a typological (or situational) analysis, according to Thomas.
  • In an effort to formulate his typology of social personality, Thomas classified the basic human predispositions into four wishes:
• The desire for new experience
• The desire for security
• The desire for response
• The desire for recognition
• Thomas eventually succeeded in developing three ideal types of social personality which turned out to be in fact the core of his theory and research on social personality. The three types of social personality are the Philistine, the Bohemian, and the Creative Man.
  • The Philistine was the individual who adapted his activities completely to the prevailing definitions and norms; choosing security over new experiences and individuality (a conformist)
  • The Bohemian was unable to fit into any frame, social or personal, because his life was spent trying to escape definitions and avoid suppressions instead of building up a positive organization of ends attitudes (a rebel)
  • The Creative Man reconciled his desire for new experience with the desire of society for stability by redefining situations and creating new norms of superior social value (an innovator)
• Thomas left a remarkable sociological legacy in the study of social-personality; attitudes shared by a group of individuals who interact with a particular social organization or situation
• In Thomas’ words, “In analyzing the expericnes and attitudes of an individual we always reach data and elementary facts which are not exclusively limited to this individual’s personality but can be treated as mere instances of more or less general classes of data or facts, and thus can be used for the determination of laws of social becoming.”
• In sum, these are the three main contributions Thmoas made toward the development of the sociology of personality:
  • Conceptualization and typology of social personality
  • Emphasis on the reciprocal dependence of social organization and social personality
  • Situational analysis of values and attitudes in the context of social change

Mead, Thomas, and Beyond

• Jonathan Turner has included in his recent work a most thorough comparative analysis of Blumer/ Kuhn’s theoretical and methodological approaches. The following highlight some important points relevant to personality:
  • There is considerable disagreement over the degree of structure and stability in human personality.
  • Blumer emphasized that humans have the capacity to view themselves as objects and to insert any object into an interaction situation. If humans can invoke any object into a situation, they can radically alter their definitions of that situation, and hence, their behaviors (qualitative method)
    • Blumer’s method involves two modes of inquiry:
  • Exploration: defined as a flexible procedure in which the scholar shifts from one to another line of inquiry, adopts new points of observation as his study progresses, moves in new directions previously unthought of, and changes his recognition of what are relevant data as he acquires more information and better understanding.
  • Inspection: defined as an intense focused examination of the empirical content of whatever analytical elements are used for purposes of analysis, and this same kind of examination of the empirical nature of the relations between such elements.
    • In contrast, Kuhn emphasized the importance of people’s “core self” as an object. The core self will shape and constrain the way people will define situations by circumscribing the cues that will be seen and the objects that will be injected into social situations. And if it is possible to know the expectations of those groups that have shaped a person’s core self and that provide a basis for validation, then human behavior could, in principle, be highly predictable (quantitative method)
  • This led to the most widely used instrument for measuring self-conceptions of diverse group of people in terms of sex, age, race/ethnicity, and occupational groups known as the “Twenty Statement Test (TST); which was first administered to 288 students at the University of Iowa, which was just a single sheet of paper headed by these instructions:
    • “There are twenty numbered blanks on the page below. Please write twenty answers to the simple question ‘Who Am I?’ in the blanks.
    • Responses were categorized into two responses:
      • Consensual references
      • Subconsensual references
    • Some of Kuhn and McPartland’s significant findings include:
    • The consensual component of the self-attitudes are at the top of the hierarchy of self-attitudes.
    • Persons’ self-attitudes vary widely both in the consensual and subconsensual dimensions.
    • These variations can be measured by a quantitative method (the Guttman scaling technique).
    • Religious affiliation references are significantly more salient among self-attitudes of members of non-conventional religious groups (small sects) than among members of conventional religious groups (large denominations)