Showing papers in "American Journal of Sociology in 1928"

Human Migration and the Marginal Man

Abstract: Migrations, with all the incidental collision, conflicts, and fusions of peoples and of cultures which they occasion, have been accounted among the decisive forces in history. Every advance in culture, it has been said, commences with a new period of migration and movement of populations. Present tendencies indicate that while the mobility of individuals has increased, the migration of people has relatively decreased. The consequences, however, of migration and mobility seem, on the whole, to be the same. In both cases the "cake of custom" is broken and the individual is freed for new enterprises and for new associations. One of the consequences of migration is to create a situation in which the same individual-who may or may not be a mixed blood-finds himself striving to live in two diverse cultural groups. The effect is to produce an unstable character-a personality type with characteristic forms of behavior. This is the "marginal man." It is in the mind of the marginal man that the conflicting cultures...

Attitudes Can Be Measured

Abstract: The object of this study is to devise a method whereby the distribution of attitude of a group on a specified issue may be represented in the form of a frequency distribution. The base line represents ideally the whole range of opinions from those at one end who are most strongly in favor of the issue to those at the other end of the scale who are as strongly against it. Somewhere between the two extremes on the base line will be a neutral zone representing indifferent attitudes on the issue in question. The ordinates of the frequency distribution will represent the relative popularity of each attitude. This measurement problem has the limitation which is common to all measurement, namely, that one can measure only such attributes as can be represented on a linear continuum, such attributes as volume, price, length, area, excellence, beauty, and so on. For the present problem we are limited to those aspects of attitudes for which one can compare individuals by the "more and less" type of judgment. For example, we say understandingly that one man is more in favor of prohibition than another, more strongly in favor of the League of Nations than another, more militaristic than some other, more religious than another. The measurement is effected by the endorsement or rejection of statements of opinion. The opinions are allocated to different positions on the base line in accordance with the attitudes which they express. The ordinates of the frequency distribution are determined by the frequency with which each of the scaled opinions is endorsed. The center of the whole problem lies in the definition of a unit of measurement for the base line. The scale is so constructed that two opinions separated by a unit distance on the base line seem to differ as much in the attitude variable involved as any other two opinions on the scale which are also separated by a unit distance. This is the main idea of the present scale construction. The true allocation of an individual to a position on an attitude scale is an abstraction, just as the true length of a chalk line, or the true temperature of a room, or the true spelling ability of a child, is an abstraction. We estimate the true length of a line, the true temperature of a room, or the true spelling ability of a child, by means of various indices, and it is a commonplace in measurement that all indices do not agree exactly. In allocating an individual to a point on the attitude continuum we may use various indices, such as the opinions that he endorses, his overt acts, and his past history, and it is to be expected that discrepancies will appear as the true attitude of the individual is estimated by different indices. The present study is concerned with the allocation of individuals along an attitude continuum based on the opinions that they accept or reject.

Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and The How

Abstract: Public opinion, narrowly defined, is the thought of a society at a given time toward a given object; broadly conceived, it is the power of the group to sway the larger public in its attitude. Public opinion can be manipulated, but in teaching the public how to ask for what it wants the manipulator is safeguarding the public against his own possible aggressiveness. The method of the experimental psychologist is not as effective in the study of public opinion in the broad sense as is that of introspective psychology. To create and to change public opinion it is necessary to understand human motives, to know what special interests are represented by a given population, and to realize the function and limitations of the physical organs of approach to the public, such as the radio, the platform, the movie, the letter, the newspaper, etc. If the general principles of swaying public opinion are understood, a technique can be developed which, with the correct appraisal of the specific problem and the specific aud...

Population of the United States, 1925 to 1975

Abstract: In view of the interest in population growth in the United States and the practical value that accurate estimates of future growth would have, there is here presented an estimate of the population of the United States by ten-year periods up to 1975, the data being given separately for urban and rural populations and also by nativity groups. In other population estimates which have appeared from time to time, the census enumerations are generally used for calculating absolute increases, rates of increase, or as a basis for computing growth curves. In this estimate the total population is used as a point from which to start. Future trends are estimated separately for such factors as birth-rates, death-rates, immigration, and rural-urban migration. The total population at future dates is therefore the calculated result of several predicted factors, rather than an original prediction in itself. The results show a less rapid population increase for the future, making the reckless expansion of industrial plants...

An Attitude on Attitude Research

Abstract: The development of sociology as a natural science has been hindered by: (1) emphasis upon its normative rather than upon its descriptive aspects; (2) too much attention to subjective factors, such as ideas, ideals, motives, sentiments wishes, and attitudes, and too little attention to objective, overt behavior; (3) the inaccuracy, indefiniteness, and anarchistic confusion of sociological concepts. A critical examination of the concept "attitude" reveals its scientific shortcomings from all three points of view. It is all things to all men; it is seldom used consistently by any one writer; it is normative, valuative, subjective; it refers to verbal responses, opinion, habits, vegetative processes, tendencies to act, impulses to act, inhibitive impulses, feelings, wishes, values, motor sets, and various combinations of these. The attempt to differentiate "attitudes" and "values" is shown to be impossible in practice. Most so called "attidues" research is really "opinion" research. The concept is lergely in ...

Hotel Life and Personality

Abstract: Statistics of hotels and the hotel population.-Due largely to a lack of agreement as to the meaning of the term "hotel," the various sources for statistics of hotels in the United States are inadequate and contradictory. A study based on hotel directories-a type of source obviously incomplete in its enumeration of hotels-indicates a larger relative number of hotel rooms in leading cities of the Pacific Coast than in the other large cities of the country. Since no definite statistical information is available for the hotel population in general, a special study was made of hotel dwellers in Seattle. This study gave the percentage of occupancy, the weekly and seasonal enables, and the sex and age composition of the population in 437 hotels. There were two and one-half times as many couples without children as couples with children. Characteristics of hotel life.-In the large metropolitan hotel the guest is only a number and is characteristically detached from the place in which he sleeps. In some cases this...

Intermarriage Among Jews in Switzerland 1888-1920

Abstract: The Jews of Switzerland both men and women manifest a growing tendency to marry outside of the fold. They intermarry with Protestants and Catholics. Considered by decades, or taken for the entire period 1888-1920, the number of Jewish mixed marriages is relatively increasing faster than the number of homogeneous marriages. In 1910 the greater share of the intermarriages was supplied by the alien Jewish element of Switzerland, while in 1920 the Jewish citizens of Switzerland made up the greater part of the mixed group.

Personality Types and the Division of Labor

Abstract: The objects of occupational selection are persons most of whom have been reared in families in which they have inherited sets of social objects and attitudes more or less common to the community The division of labor operates on these persons, in an urbanized world, by mobilizing them from their milieu natal (Durkheim) and making them available at the points where competition will give them a place The completeness of this mobilization varies in different types of occupations: the completeness of personality change of those who enter the occupation varies with it Sometimes the mobilization of the person is of another sort, involving conversion, long professional training, and development of esoteric skill and interests The more mobile and esoteric the occupational type, the more completely are familial and local ties and mores left behind The person finds a "life-organization" in the occupational group, social objects and attitudes, and definitions of his whishes A division of labor may be sacred or

Political Leadership Among North American Indians

Abstract: Political leadership among North American Indians was largely based on psychological rather than on institutional or formal mechanisms. The greatest leaders arose in the struggle with the whites for the continent. Their motives were both economic and personal. The most important personality traits of the great leaders were: striking appearance, intellectual ability, positive emotional traits such as kindness, affability, etc., dignity, moral courage, oratorical ability, courage, pride, military prowess, ambition, loyalty, diplomacy, personal magnetism, etc. The techniques used by the leaders included: the challenge, the use of epithets, ridicule, sarcasm, etc., the use of calumny and slander, the use of flattery, conspicuous dress, force, threats, magic, or oratory. The characteristics and techniques of leaders were largely determined by the nature of Indian human nature.

The Social Survey and the Charity Organization Movement

Abstract: The social survey represents a practical technique, as contrasted with scientific research. It has grown out of such social activities as the newspaper, industrial arbitration, municipal research, and charity organization, of which the common method is fact-finding. Studied from this point of view the social survey is seen to be a method of social control as well as of investigation. The charity organization movement, which began in England and later developed in America, grew out of the attempt to organize the charitable effort of the community in order to meet the problem of poverty. At first a reaction against indiscriminate relief-giving, it soon developed new positive techniques, of which one of the most important was the careful investigation of each case. Fact-finding and community action, emphasized in this movement, are also fundamental techniques of the social survey. The two movements, charity organization and the social survey, thus present suggestive points for comparison. In addition they ar...

The Management of Tensions

Abstract: The development of personality may be studied from the point of view of the individual's learning how to manage his physiological tensions. Learning is to be considered as the process of structural and functional modification wherein the organization of internal process and of overt behavior is achieved. An organism may be viewed as a structure engaged in the capture, storage, and release of energy, the human organism at birth being least organized functionally of all the mammals, unable to execute movements beyond a few reflexes, and evidencing highly unstable physiological functioning. The child, during its long infancy, must achieve a relatively co-ordinated, integrated, and stabilized organism, physiologically and psychologically. One of the first tensional problems of infancy is presented by hunger, in the face of which the child must learn to sustain and diffuse tensions, which results in the regularization of activities. The hunger problems are made more acute at the time of weaning and the introduction of solid food, because of the substitution of a new for an accustomed stimulus. The holds for the pressure tensions incident to the elimination of waste and the muscular tensions which are released through sleep, or later through relaxation. The child is functionally complete and efficient at birth in the sympathetic reaction or so-called emotional response. As a result of shock or blocked activity a physiological condition of "panic" arises which presents tensional problems, to which the child must learn to react in terms of socially sanctioned behavior. The physiological instability of the human infant at birth presents tensional problems which are solved through the child's learning to react to gestures of those in his social world, and particularly language, which serve as substitutes for the tactual intimacies of infancy. Childhood and youth are periods which should be occupied with learning to sustain and diffuse tensions and to achieve ever more remote tensional releases according to the demands of social life. The period of adolescence represents a severe crisis to the personality, since it calls for a readjustment due to sex tensions which, if not adequately sublimated, may bring about faulty adjustment. The socialization of the individual is to be viewed as a continuation of parental and other adult instruction under which the child learns to observe the taboos and to use the institutional practices as the group-sanctioned patterns for tensional management. Status involves the relationship a person bears toward the persons around him as shown by the degrees of immunity he enjoys from their invasion of his person or goods and the taboos he must observe toward them. The ways in which individuals learn to meet these problems furnish the basis for the twofold classification of personalities into (1) the status type, and (2) the objective type. The former are predominantly concerned with the status they can create and sustain with other, even at the sacrifice of the consummations deemed most important. The latter have little or no difficulty in learning to manage their tensional problems and in facing their personal relations, and being therefore unaware of their personal relations, they will in their pursuits be primarily concerned with objective goals and the means for achieving them. The former resemble the schizoid type, and the latter the circular, cyclic, or syntonic type. This classification seems more promising and fundamental than the usual one according to occupation, interests, and other criteria, since it focuses attention first upon the organic tensions a person brings to life, and second upon the way he learns the social rules for adjusting those tensions.

Inventions and Discoveries

Abstract: Many social changes are occasioned by mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries. Although the reporting of discoveries is not well developed, and although it is difficult to forecast their significance, an attempt is made to select 100 inventions and discoveries, largely in applied science, for 1927, and mainly from the United States, which may be socially significant. The list is from the fields of medicine (with 13 listed), vitamins and ultra-violet light (7), medical instruments (4), biology (11), agriculture (9), chemistry (9), metals and mechanical devices (5), engineering (8), physics (4), electricity (3), radio (7), aviation (6), geology (3), safety devices (6), and from miscellaneous fields (7).

The Interrelation of Emotion and Intelligence

Abstract: The effect of "emotional instability" upon the measurement of intelligence is well known; the accurary of the measurement is impaired. Emotional factors strongly effect the "fruitfulness" and "direction" of the intelligence; but we still insist upon treating intelligence as a thing apart. Evidence is offered that intelligence is part of a total organic attitude involving also attitudes of mind, emotional conditions, ingrained habits, and conditioned behavior. In children of high-school age this total attitude is the essential factor in counseling and segregation. The greater the emotional contribution to the total attitude, the more subordinate is the intelligence. This attitude is a changing complex in response to situational factors. Transient situations may produce emotional disturbances reflected in lower results in mental testing at such times. The inequalities in mental tests from a given child are an index to his emotional capacity. The total organic attitude becomes more complex through the operat...

Non-Naturalization: A Study in Political Assimilation

Abstract: The economic, social, and political advantages of citizenship are so closely interrelated that it is difficult to isolate them for purposes of analysis. A survey of 200 typical industrial concerns in 1924 showed that a few large concerns have a definite policy concerning the citizenship status of their employees. Declarants are given preference in seeking employment and special privileges are given to citizens. A survey of 1,400 foreign-born persons in the city indicated that foreigners can establish more harmonious marital relationships by becoming naturalized. An analysis of federal and state statutes reveal many special benefits granted to citizens. The reasons for becoming naturalized given by foreign-born persons interviewed shows that after economic advantages the foreign-born persons gave as their most common reason for becoming naturalized "desire to become identified with community." The right to vote was the next most important benefit derived from citizenship.

The Lutheran Community and American Society: A Study in Religion as a Condition of Social Accommodation

Abstract: The Christian projection entails the dominance of its own system of co-ordinates over the social process. It postulates a guest relationship, an outsider with his own sense of nearness and distance. In the Lutheran form it accounts for the terms of accommodation of the German to his American environment. The relationship between the in-group as rationalized by Paul and Luther has conditioned the interaction of Germans in their in-group, a community, and with the out-group, a society. With its categories of interaction, Lutheran theology defines the situation in either case; it thus dominates the organic articulationand integration of American society; it conditions the process of assimilation of the German American therein.

The Culture Area Concept as a Research Lead

Abstract: The interest of social scintists in the culture area idea is that they see in it the suggestion of a lead to the objective study of contemporary culture. However, if the culture area as conceived by anthropologists is a true lead, then the culture phenomena involved should be universal and not peculiar to primitive cultures alone. While it is true that, so far, the existence of such areas has not been demonstrated outside of aboriginal Norht America, there are indications that regional differences in contemporary culture are of the same type. In response to the query as to how one is to go about the study of contemporary culture in an anthropological way, it is proposed that a start be made with such traits as farm architecture, home industries, etc. It is, however, inadvisable to carry over the historical interest of the anthropologist, for the historical aspect of contemporary culture is taken care of by the antiquarian; rather should the study of contemporary culture concern itself with the functional ...

Changing Personality Traits of Second Generation Orientals in America

Abstract: The behavior of the American-born Orientals differs markedly from that of their immigrant parents. This is not due to biological causes, even though bodily changes have been observed. Cultural fact...

The Logic of Sociology

Abstract: There is a lack of unanimity in sociology as to its methods and principles. This is due to the wide diffusion of the idea that science is homogeneous. Scientific conceptions are not ultimates, but figments of the human mind. Science becomes successful when general principles are established. Sociology is in this stage of the establishment of general principles. The method of a science depends upon its aims and subject matter. Sciences with similar aims and objects tend to coalesce. Philosophy tends to become the mediating discipline between the diverse groups of sciences. There are divergent ways of securing order in the data of a science, such as the historical approach, the approach of natural history (description and classification), by the application of abstractions, either to the order of events or the order of things or complete abstraction from the event giving us formal science (e.g., Logic). The combination of the historical approach with the application of abstractions (laws) constitutes the ap...

The Political Attitudes of the Lutheran Parish in America: A Study in Religious Sectionalism

Abstract: The element of dominance in the integration pattern of an important American section, the German element is seen in the social philosophy of its theoloy. Its principle of identification entails a supranational loyalty, a limited allegiance to the nation, a conditional obedience to the state. The system of relationships entailed in the theological categories in terms of which the social process has been institutionalized entail gradients of integrations and of action for functional associations such as the local community and the party. Participation in the process is conditioned to the norms of adequate function implied in the calling concept; these norms determine the articulation of leadership and initiative on the institutional, its selection on the personal side. The prevailing ideal of a normative relationship prevents reintegration of society along class lines, while it facilitates the ascendancy of the institutional overhead at the expense of the group or the individual.

The Family Budget as a Tool for Sociological Analysis

Abstract: This study discusses the use of budgetary analyses by the rural sociologists for the purpose of grasping and understanding some of the chief effects of urbanization or ruralization upon the behavior of social groups. Studies of budgetary behavior have been carried on with profit for more than two hundred and fifty years, yet much is still to be done. The works of Engel and LePlay suggest that an understanding of many effects of urbanization upon social behavior may be grasped through the use of budgetary analyses. Studies made by the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station suggest that the organization of the rural budget is primarily about their land and real property. On the other hand, urbanization increases the organization of the budget about the individualand adds to the number of choices and decisions that must be made. Further, a summary of some characteristics of living or budgetary behavior indicates that the value of such studies is increased by the use of intercorrelations of many fields of ...

The City-Manager Plan

Abstract: Most of the studies of the city-manager plan in operation have given a favorable verdict. The St. Joseph (Missouri) study in 1925, the Sacramento (California) study in 1920, Louis P. Head's study in 1927, and Professor Leonard D. White's study in 1926 are some of the major inquiries conducted. Dayton, Cleveland, and Cincinnati show ample evidence of success of the plan and a favorable public opinion. In Kansas City the plan is still on trial. Most of the traditional objections to the plan, including the claim that it is undemocratic, are without substantial foundation. The increasing continuity of service and level of salaries are gratifying indices of the fact that the professional city manager is coming into his own.

The Sense of Isolation in Mental Disorders: Its Religious Significance

Abstract: The inability to socialize and thus assimilate a new experience vital to the individual's standing in his own eyes is a primary factor in mental disorders of the functional type. Attempts at cure, whether they be self-induced or whether they belong to any of the recognized psychotherapeutic techniques, are essentially attempts to deal with the sense of isolation and inner disharmony. Much group behavior is likewise to be explained only as we take into account the need for mutual support and justification in those matters by which individuals judge themselves. The common weakness often result in rationalizing group philosophies and attitudes inimical to social progress. Even the Church, which stands for that which is universal and enduring in human society, resorts to protective devices and stands in constant need of renewal. Such renewal comes ever through men who have solved their conflicts, not by easy socialization, but by achieving a reconciliation with that which represents to them society at its best.

Foreign Trade and Investments

Abstract: American foreign trade in 1927 showed, with few exceptions, the same general trends that have characterized it since the post-war depression. While volume of both exports and imports increased, the excess value of exports over imports greatly increased over 1926. Exports of finished manufactured products showed the chief gains, but manufactured goods regained their premier position in the import trade also. While Europe remained by far the most important market of American products, that region continued to decline in relative importance. Canada showed the most marked increases in the export trade, the Far East held its large gains previously made, and exports to South America declined. The most significant fact in the 1927 trade was the continued expansion of exports in the face of the large receipts of interest and dividend payments due the United States. This situation is explained largely by the unprecedented expenditures of American tourists abroad, and the continued large foreign investments of Amer...

An Interpretation of the Heredity Background of Two Groups of Mental Deviates

Abstract: This paper presents the common pitfalls and limitations of attempts to determine the relative importance of heredity and environment in effecting individual differences in general mental ability. Data are given for two groups of children; one group is made up of children commonly alleged to be feebleminded (I. Q. 70 and below); the other is composed of children who are often termed geniuses (I. Q. 140 and above). Facts regarding the racial origin, the physical heredity, and the mental heredity of each group are presented and conspicuous differences between the groups are described. These facts are interpreted first in the language of the hereditarians and eugenists; they are then explained according to the common methodology of the environmentalists. The limitations of the extreme postulates of both schools are set forth and the writers then attempt to interpret their data in a valid scientific manner.

The Sociologist and the Educator

Abstract: Institutional education has two problems that sociology might be concerned with: the content to be inculcated, and the method of imparting it. The first of these concerns the curriculum, and while sociology can describe group needs it can do little if anything to formulate norms. Methods of instruction involve some sociological problems in addition to the well-known psychological ones. There is a third field, that of moral training in the broad sense, in which sociology, and particularly social psychology, feels confident to offer needed help.