Showing papers in "Journal of Social Issues in 1971"

Developing Senses of Law and Legal Justice

Abstract: A theory of legal development, derived from cognitive developmental theory, is explicated using U.S. kindergarten to college and cross-national preadolescent data. Paralleling evidence on universal moral levels, the development of individual orientations vis-a-vis legal or rule systems reveals consistent movement from a preconventional law-obeying, to a conventional law-maintaining, to a postconventional lawmaking perspective. In both the U.S. and cross-national samples, “law and order” conventional reasoning is modal reflecting that socialization experiences can accelerate, retard, or crystallize the growth of legal values and roles. Implications of the theory and findings are discussed for legal socialization.

Exploration in Semantic Space: A Personal Diary1

Abstract: Following a brief bit of personal history about the origins of the author's interest in the measurement of meaning (M), three models of M—spatial analogue, factor analytic measurement, and underlying behavior theoretic—are described and integrated. Extension of the semantic differential technique (SD), which was developed during the 1950s and applied to many samples of American English speakers and to some 25 language-culture communities around the world during the 1960s, is reported. Evidence for the universality of Evaluation, Potency, and Activity as affective features of M is given, along with a discussion of the powers and limitations of this technique. Application of comparable SDs in the development of a 620-concept Atlas of Affective Meanings for 23 cultures is described, along with the problems of interpretation.

The Value Gap between Police and Policed

Abstract: This article describes a study on the value patterns of a midwestern municipal police force, and compares police values with those of representative samples of black and white Americans. The data on police values support the hypotheses that personality factors and social backgrounds are more important than occupational socialization in understanding police value systems. The police values are not necessarily representative of American value patterns, either black or white, suggesting that either more differential recruitment and/or more direct resocialization procedures are needed for improving police-citizen relations in this country. Language: en

Childhood Origins of Tolerance for Dissent.

Abstract: The origins of children's attitudes toward freedom of dissent were investigated using questionnaire data from 1384 children in grades 5 through 9. Political socialization of attitudes toward free speech apparently does occur during late childhood and early adolescence. Most children acquire support for the abstract principle of free speech in slogan form, without learning its concrete implications. Support for free speech in concrete instances is dictated largely by the child's attitude toward the dissenting out-group in question and only rarely by the general principle of free expression. There are indications that the child's confidence in his ability to think divergently contributes to tolerance, presumably by reducing the personal threat posed by deviant out-groups. Language: en

The Potential for Violence in Germany

Abstract: Three variations of Milgram's experimental test of obedience behavior were carried out in Munich, West Germany. Milgram's base-line condition, a model variation, and also a third variation which removed experimenter compliance pressures were performed. Large differences were observed under the three experimental conditions: 85% of the base-line, 52% of the modeling, and 7% of the “non-pressured” subjects administered all 30 shocks to their immobilized victims. Nearly all subjects were completely convinced of the genuineness of the experiment. These and Milgram's published results with American subjects are compared and an attempt is made to put the findings into an empirically justified perspective.

The Moral or Educative Influence of Criminal Law

Abstract: The threat of punishment contained in criminal law does not only work through fear, but may also have moral or educative effects. This article analyzes these effects and assesses the scanty evidence regarding their importance; it also includes a discussion of the relevance of psychological theory and research for an evaluation of the deterrent effects of criminal law. Although psychological theory and experiment may give suggestions, concepts, and research methods of interest to the lawyer, there is little which can be of direct application. The questions confronting the lawyer are so specific that they ask for specific research. Language: en

Law and the Fireside Inductions: Some Reflections of a Clinical Psychologist1, 2,

Abstract: Legislators and judges have relied upon the "fireside inductions" (common sense, anecdotal, introspective, and culturally transmitted beliefs about human behavior) in making and enforcing law as a mode of social control. The behavior sciences conflict at times with the fireside inductions. While the sources of error in "common knowledge" about behavior are considerable, the behavior sciences are plagued with methodological problems which often render their generalized conclusions equally dubious. Legal applications of generalizations from experimental research on humans and animals in laboratory contexts often involve risky parametric and population extrapolations. Statistical analysis of file data suffers from inherent interpretative ambiguities as to causal inference from correlations. Quasi-experiments in the "real-life" setting may often be the methodologically optimal data-source. Language: en

Majority Involvement in Minority Movements: Civil Rights, Abolition, Untouchability1

Abstract: Social movements seeking to change the subordinate status of ethnic minorities have drawn activists from both the minority and dominant groups. Conflict has at times developed between movement members of these two groups. In a comparative analysis of three movements—the civil rights movement, the anti-slavery cause in the U.S., and the movement to abolish Untouchability in India—the sources of tension appear quite similar. Ideologically, minority group activists viewed themselves as more radical and committed to that particular cause than did their dominant group co-workers and were more for a strategy of minority group self-help. Organizational conflict arose as majority members disproportionately assumed decision-making positions in the movement. A third source of tension developed because some movement members were carriers of prejudices and hostilities of the larger social milieu. Outsiders frequently played essential roles in the early phases of these movements, but pressures developed on majority members to reduce involvement or withdraw altogether.

The Relationship of Commitment-Free Behavior and Commitment Behavior: A Study of Attitude Toward Organ Transplantation

Abstract: A highly reliable Likert-type summated rating scale was constructed to measure attitude toward organ transplantation, judged to be a contemporary topic with ambiguous normative guidelines. Subsequently, a sample of subjects was presented the opportunity to sign a legal document providing for posthumous donation of their organs. Responses to the criterion situation provided an eight-point Guttman scale of commitment behavior. There was a substantial relationship between attitude scores and criterion behavior as expressed in a Pearson correlation coefficient of .58.

Powerlessness, Social-Political Action, Social-Political Views: Their Interrelation Among College Students.

Abstract: Powerlessness, as measured by externality on the I-E Scale, was investigated as an individual difference between college students who take social-political action and those who do not. Questionnaires, including Rotter's I-E Scale, measures of social-political activity, and measures of social-political views were administered to UCLA undergraduates. For males, externality was positively correlated with social-political activity, particularly protest activity, and with left-wing views. These correlations primarily reflected the externality of left-wing activists and the internality of non-left-wing nonactivists. For females, I-E scores were unrelated to views or to action. Implications for the meaning of the I-E Scale and the nature of student activism were discussed.

Legal Guarantees of Individual Freedom: A Cross-National Study of the Development of Political Thought

Abstract: American, British, and German adolescents between the ages of 11 and 18 were asked to weigh the merits of two potentially intrusive laws and to state whether or not individual freedoms ought to enjoy certain legal safeguards. Older subjects were both more aware that the proposed laws might constitute an invasion of privacy and more interested in obtaining legal guarantees of individual liberties, even in the event of an emergency. While the developmental results were more striking than the cross-national ones, the concern for preserving individual liberties was especially marked among American adolescents. These findings are taken as evidence for the development of an “ideology” or “feeling for ideals” during adolescence.

The Legal Threat as an Instrument of Social Change

Abstract: Noting that it is important to distinguish threats aimed at shoring up existing norms from those that seek to change customary patterns of behavior, the article discusses a number of conditions influencing the outcome of threats that attempt to produce social change. Among the factors considered are variations in the type of custom, the rationale for change, the social characteristics of the threatened audience, and the extent of law enforcement. The implications of these factors for socializing change are presented.

Socialization of Attitudes Toward the Legal System.

Abstract: Socialization to the legal system was explored with data on attitudes toward policemen, the Supreme Court, and the fairness of laws obtained from approximately 9000 elementary school children tested in 1961–62. Analysis of variance was used to examine differences by school grade, sex, social class, and intelligence. Four models of the process of socialization were also discussed. Lower-middle class children tended to give higher ratings to the policeman than either upper-middle or lower class children, a precursor perhaps of the current “law and order” emphasis in adults from this group. There was also a significant increase with age in the amount of difference between the attitudes of boys and girls.

The Idea of Right as a Social and Legal Concept

Abstract: The legal system consists of authorizations and rights, as well as commands. Some claims of right are demands for major changes in society. These claims may act as an important alternative to violence; on the other hand, denial of such claims may lead to serious frustration. This is particularly so because although the essence of a right is that it is theoretically without limits as to supply, in actual practice no right can be absolute, and rights are in constant conflict. The use of claims of right to bring about social change seems to be rapidly increasing in the United States; and the socialization process that leads to a consciousness of right should be further explored.

The Institutionalization of Conflict: Jury Acquittals

Abstract: Legal systems, like other social systems, sometimes adjust to the circumstances of human life otherwise than through the procedures for controlled change explicitly built into them. One primary way is through the institutionalization of powers, rights, privileges, and duties that engender conflict for individuals who must reach their decisions with respect to such powers, rights, privileges, and duties. A prime example is the jury role in acquittals. The obligation to defer to the court's instructions, while binding on the juror, exists side by side with a protected power and privilege to override that obligation. The result is the legitimated interposition of the juror's judgment between the consequences of the court's instructions and the fate of the defendant. There follows the possibility of a justified departure from rules by agents acting in role, a possibility that may serve social ends of major significance.

Mutual Perceptions of Racial Images: White, Black, and Japanese Americans.

Abstract: Mutual and self-perceptions of the racial images of white, blacks, and the Japanese Americans were studied among adults, college students, and school children in California. For adults and college students, Katz and Braly's adjective list was used, in which subjects were asked to choose 5 traits out of 84 to describe each racial group. Children were instructed to describe racial images in their own words. The hypothesis that whites occupying the dominant position are endowed with positive traits and minority groups with negative traits was only partially supported. Minority acceptance of the negative image ascribed by the dominant group, which was generally true in the 1930 Katz and Braly work, did not hold in this study. Whites were portrayed as materialistic and pleasure loving; blacks as musical, aggressive, and straightforward; and the Japanese as industrious, ambitious, loyal to family, and quiet.

Legal Structures and Restoring Equity1

Abstract: Psychological research suggests that harmdoers typically respond in one of two ways after injuring another: (a) sometimes harmdoers make voluntary reparation to the victim, or acquiesce when forced to make reparation; (b) sometimes harmdoers engage in defensive behavior. Instead of acknowledging responsibility for the victim's predicament, they try to justify their harmdoing. They may insist that the victim deserves to suffer or may deny that he was really injured by their actions. This article examines the factors that tend to encourage or prevent individuals from voluntarily reestablishing equitable relationships, and considers the extent to which current legal practices encourage or discourage the equitable resolution of legal disputes.

Political Libertarianism at Berkeley: An Application of Perspectives from the New Student Left

Abstract: Longitudinal data from the University of California at Berkeley are analyzed to test the relevance of New Left explanations of student protest politics when applied more generally to the study of student libertarianism. After first noting the predominance of change (more often in a libertarian direction) among the Berkeley panel, analysis turns to several prominent New Left themes purporting to help account for student activism in the sixties. These include a concern with students' class origins, dissatisfaction with the modern university, rejection of conventional achievement values, and intellectual competence. Except for dissatisfaction with the university, all of these themes are found to be of relevance in understanding student libertarianism. It is argued that the well-known association between social class background and student activism not only does not extend to the realm of attitudes regarding political tolerance, but has also been over-emphasized in its own right. The analysis suggests that a complex pattern of intellectualism and ascetic idealism may underlie the emergence of political tolerance among college undergraduates.

Race of Interviewer and the Language Elaboration of Black Interviewees1

Abstract: The interviews given job-seekers by the state employment service of a large midwestern city were examined. Each of 75 black job-seekers was interviewed once by a black interviewer and once by a white interviewer, with race-order of interviewers counterbalanced. On six measures of language elaboration, black interviewers elicited more elaboration from the black job-seekers than did white interviewers. Four of the interviewer-race differences were statistically significant (p < .05); however, an experimental bias casts doubt on one of those four. Explanations and implications are offered, and directions are suggested for further research.

The Lost Promise of Reconciliation: New Left vs. Old Left

Abstract: The dialogue between the Old and New Left during the past decade has resulted less in reconciliation than in rupture. This process has made quite clear and explicit the chief differences between the two movements, which are only roughly divided along generational lines. The differences discussed here are of four general kinds: (a) social roots and orientations, (b) political positions, (c) strategy and tactics, and (d) representative personalities and forums. References are made to the other articles in this issue where they fit into the schematic contrast here presented.

African Identity of the Negro American and Achievement

Abstract: Correlates and consequences of African as compared to American identity of Negro Americans in a remedial junior college program were investigated. The major findings were: (a) males were more likely than females to identify themselves as coming from an African family background, and (b) those who identified themselves as American achieved higher grades than those identifying themselves as African. The major explanations concern the ambivalence of the African “protest identity” and issues concerned with the criterion variable of achievement. It was suggested that a positive identity will be related to successful socialization or achievement in a particular culture only when the identity is congruent with the core values of that culture.

On Being Strangled by the Stars and Stripes

Abstract: Radical movements such as those of the New and Old Lefts are a particular type of social movement whose genesis, composition, and morphology can be explained by extant theory and research. The fate (or career) of radical movements in this kind of society, however, is a special process resulting from the twin forces of co-optation and repression which, in varying combinations, define the relationship between the radical movement and its host society. As a result of the interplay of these forces, any radical movement can be expected to pass through five stages: incipiency, coalescence, institutionalization, fragmentation, and demise. Such a career model is here applied to the histories of the Old and New Lefts, with explicit reference to the papers in this issue to indicate where they support the model.

The New Left and American Politics After Ten Years

Abstract: A participant observer interpretively sketches the nature and history of the New Left movement, from its genesis in the civil rights movement in the early 60s to its recent factional divisions, focusing primarily upon how New Left groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society have viewed their own aspirations and efforts and (to a lesser extent) those of the Old Left (here called “corporate liberals”). Particular attention is given to the significance and contributions of the two SDS documents, “The Port Huron Statement” (1962) and “America and the New Era” (1963). The paper concludes that, as a result of co-optation and of the failure of the liberals to embrace the New Left program as a whole, the movement is now largely defunct; nevertheless, the legacy of the New Left will be historically significant.

To Wear a Nostradamus Hat: Drugs and America

Abstract: A review of historical patterns in drug use suggests common forms of use, likely social responses to innovation, the conditions under which drug use patterns change and the notion of “abuse” is most probable, and the conditions under which most unpredictable drug use and outcomes will occur. Examination of contemporary patterns of use yields evidence of a number of trends, one of which is the growth of use of quieting rather than stimulating substances in America. Although the major function of drugs is and will be to enhance sociability, the prediction is that our society will produce more redundant people who will be at risk of disabling use and effects. Several possible sociopolitical outcomes of these trends are considered, some optimistic and some pessimistic. The importance, for anticipating the future, of the existence of a sense of destiny is suggested.

On Hanging Loose and Loving: The Dilemma of Present Youth

Abstract: A polemic in which it is argued that the use of drugs among contemporary American youth is but one of many different behaviors and mystiques pervading their life. Thus, a fascination with the encounter, with ethnicity, with expressive politics, with nomadism, with sexuality, as well as with drugs, suggests that youth are engaged in a frustrating dialectic between freedom and commitment. The search for freedom is not political but rather a groping for sensate and affectual liberation. The dilemma posed by the inevitable constraints of commitment generates an awesome paradox which accounts for the anguish of the generation.

Drugs That Turn on the Law.

Abstract: In order to deal effectively with the problem of narcotics addiction, it is necessary to determine precisely what harms we wish to control. To protect the public from the violent crime that seems to be associated with drug addiction, it may be appropriate to resort to the model of "civil commitment," to provide compulsory treatment to those drug users who are thought likely to inflict harm on others as a result of their addiction. On the other hand, to protect the user from drugs which are harmful only to him, it may be appropriate to resort to the regulatory model by which we control the distribution of other hazardous consumer goods. Neither interest is well served by the criminal model on which we now rely. Language: en

A Study of Participants in an Anti-Vietnam War Demonstration1

Abstract: What attitudinal and cognitive factors prompt an individual to participate in protests designed to change government policy? This study found that participants in a large-scale anti-Vietnam war demonstration believed that a good citizen should play an active role in the political process. They also responded more positively toward ideological than traditional U.S. symbols, were oriented toward the international rather than national political system, and were concerned more with humanity in general than with any particular political system. Nonstudent protestors leaned toward socialism and America's Populist traditions and felt less politically efficacious than student demonstrators.

Current Research on Marijuana

Abstract: Pharmacological studies of marijuana during the past three years have confirmed most of the clinical effects of the drug reported before. The outstanding effects are an initial alteration of mood characterized by euphoria, followed by alteration of consciousness characterized by sleepiness. Other mental effects reminiscent of those observed with psychotomimetic drugs, such as alterations in time perception, visual perception, auditory perception, changes in ability to remember or keep track of things, and depersonalization, may be observed after higher doses of the drug. In general, the severity of effects parallels the dose of drug closely, so that generalizations about effects of marijuana must be qualified according to the dose used. As most use of marijuana in Western society employs relatively small doses, the drug may appear to be more innocuous than would be the case if the dosage pattern should be changed by use of increasingly potent materials.

New Left As Right: Convergent Themes of Political Discontent

Abstract: Boundaries between the New Left and the traditionalist and libertarian factions of the conventional Right are today often obscured by newly emerging issues. This study attempts to clarify some of the new meanings applied to Left and Right, based on comparative survey data from thirdparty activists of the Los Angeles Peace and Freedom County Council and major party activists of the Los Angeles Democrat and Republican County Central Committees, and on participant observation and content analysis of statements presented by representative spokesmen of the New Left and conventional Right. Three basic points of growing convergence between the two political camps are: (a) a joint attack on the increasingly centralized and bureaucratized structure of authority in government and society; (b) a growing existential theme of personal worth, human dignity, and social justice; and (c) the offering of localized and personalized solutions.

Perspectives on Drug Use

Abstract: Man has always used chemical substances to change mood, feeling, and perception; he probably always will. The substances used will depend upon the changes he desires or values and his perception of the effects of available substances in relation to those changes. Substances now widely used fall into three general categories: (a) Ups, (b) Downs, and (c) those which change the way one perceives one's self or one's physical and social environment. All drug use, legal or illegal, involves risk at some dosage level for some individuals under some circumstances; determination of what risks are to be tolerated for what benefits is clearly a value judgment. The important issue then becomes who shall make these value judgments and according to what system of values. Language: en