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Sociology I 45
learning by reinforcement could subsume most of the hdings. Other authors
have joined the discussion on a more specific level. Some experiments show that
people can live happily with an inconsistent plan, and other writers have pointed
out that dissonance might be a pleasant state of arousal because it drives one
on to new explorations. Still others have proposed translating the findings
through a theory of frustration. These counter-arguments are instructively
summarized in Berkowitz.z18 From a sociological point of view this discussion
does not seem too important. Important is that the social psychologist has
discovered a number of heretofore unsuspected interesting patterns.
Adult socialization
In the preceding pages, we have selected two more recent ideas that social psy-
chologists have contributed to sociological analysis. Both provided rather
short-range mechanisms: the desire to enhance one’s self-esteem and to avoid
dissonant experiences. But life does not consist only in disconnected episodes.
There is also a coherent trend, a life cycle during which society and individual
must mesh. Philosophers have tried to reconstruct the hypothetical genesis of
this relation. Psychoanalysts have assumed that there is a basic antagonism
between individual needs and society’s demands. Social psychologists have seen
here a process of interaction to which they assigned the label of socialization.
In its generality the problem is not new. The way in which children grow into
the adult culture has been a problem of empirical research for a long time. A
more recent idea is that this process does not stop with childhood, nor with
adolescence. Adults must constantly change as they face new tasks in their
private and professional lives. Especially in the United States, this adult social-
ization has been a focus of attention. Conferences have been held, and opinions
have been published. One of the leaders, Orville Brim, President of the Russell
SageFoundation, has formulated the program of what might even be termed a
movement along the following lines:219
If an individual is to meet adult role-expectations, he must acquire three
things: knowledge, skill, and dispositions in the two dominant areas of be-
haviour and values. These are shown in Brim’s paradigm:
Knowledge
Ability
Motivation
ml
Behaviour Values
In each case, the first column (A, C, E) refers to overt performance, the second
(B, D, F) to goals or ends. Thus, Cell C signifies that the individual can behave
in the required fashion whereas Cell D refers to the individual’s ability to possess
specific goals. Brim’s general premise is that childhood socialization is focused
upon the ‘Values’ column whereas adult socialization shifts to the ‘Behaviour’
column. Brim even goes further, exemplifying childhood socialization by Cell F
where the child learns how to change his basic bioIogicaI needs into cultural
motives produced by the expectations of significant others; Cell A represents the