Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

146 P. F. Lazarsfeld
center of adult socialization activities where society teaches the approved ways
of pursuing the values that have been learnt in childhood. Only in exceptional
cases will adult socialization effort be geared to changes in motives or values.
Thus, some correctional institutions are set up to retrain individuals who have
demonstrated a severe lack of appropriate motivation toward social goals.
Cell F refers to those rebels, revolutionaries or dissenters who may end up in
prisons or hospitals.
The study of such deviants as alcoholics, drug-addicts, and criminals focuses
partially upon early experience - broken homes, adolescent gangs, etc. Partly,
however, it may be viewed as adult socialization gone awry and, characteristi-
cally, the notion of resocialization has been introduced. It is therefore not sur-
prising that the Brim Scheme can be utilized to bring new order into the problem
of deviance.
From the six types of socialization content, six types of deviance may be
derived. Cell C then becomes the individual who is unable to comply with the
prescribed behaviour whereas Cell D describes the individual who cannot hold
to the required value (although it is assumed that he wishes to do so - unlike
Cell F). These are pure types, for the sake of illustration, though it is probable
that most deviance involves both behaviour and values as well as combinations
of knowledge, ability and motivation. Consider the pacifist during wartime,
who knows how a soldier is expected to act but is neither willing to take up
arms nor to be successful at murdering the enemy.
Actual studies can be classified according to certain broad content areas.
One is organized around the problem of work. The Swiss Kurt Liischer has sum-
marized much of the pertinent literature in his monograph on the process of
occupational socialization.2zo Americans have been much interested in the way
that professions inculcate their candidates with the attitudes necessary for the
performance of their work - a problem quite different from that of learning the
skills of their trade. Thus Ren6e FoxZzl has noticed that medical students must
be prepared for the fact that they wil face many cases of illness where diagnosis
is uncertain or cure not yet available. Her paper on ‘Training for Uncertainty’
based on medical school observations and diaries shows the many ways in which
the schools cope with this problem.
Soviet social psychologists seem to be especially intrigued by a problem
characteristic of their society. A socialist state is interested in giving greatest
latitude to the growth of each individual personality. Nevertheless, work has to
be performed which is not in itself interesting or gratifying. In this vein, we
may consult a detailed report on a symposium held in Moscow in 1966 on ‘The
Personality and Labour’.z22 Half the contributors are Westerners (including the
USA) and half are from Communist countries. The latter emphasize the need
for creativity in work; creativity is defined as the ability to propose more effi-
cient methods of work or to invent new products or techniques, all geared toward
the collective good. It was found, for example, that when young workers were
trained to recognize the social importance of their work, their creative produc-
tion was increased.
Another area of concentration concerns turning points in the life cycle. Mar-