The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology

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The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern SociologyAuthor(s): Dennis H. WrongReviewed work(s):Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 183-193Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2089854 .

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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEWApril 1961 Volume 26, Number 2

THE OVERSOCIALIZED CONCEPTION OF MAN INMODERN SOCIOLOGY*DENNIS H. WRONG

Brown UniversitySociological theory originates in the asking of general questions about man and society. Theanswers lose their meaning if they are elaborated without reference to the questions, as hasbeen the case in much contemporary theory. An example is the Hobbesian question of howmen become tractable to social controls. The two-fold answer of contemporary theory is thatman "internalizes" social norms and seeks a favorable self-image by conforming to the "expec-tations" of others. Such a model of man denies the very possibility of his being anything buta thoroughly socialized being and thus denies the reality of the Hobbesian question. TheFreudian view of man, on the other hand, which sociologists have misrepresented, sees manas a social though never a fully socialized creature. Sociologists need to develop a morecomplex, dialectical conception of human nature instead of relying on an implicit conceptionthat is tailor-made for special sociological problems.

GERTRUDE STEIN, bed-ridden itha fatalillness, is reported to have suddenlymuttered, "What, then, is the an-swer?" Pausing, she raised her head, mur-mured, "But what is the question?"and died.Miss Stein presumably was pondering theultimate meaningof humanlife, but her brieffinal soliloquy has a broader and humblerrelevance. Its point is that answersare mean-ingless apart fromquestions. If we forget thequestions, even while rememberingthe an-swers,our knowledgeof them will subtly de-teriorate, becoming rigid, formal, and cate-chistic as the sense of indeterminacy,of rivalpossibilities,implied by the very putting of aquestionis lost.Social theory must be seen primarily as aset of answers to questions we ask of socialreality. If the initiating questions are forgot-ten, we readilymisconstrue he task of theoryand the answers previousthinkers have givenbecome narrowly confining conceptual pris-ons, degenerating nto little more than a spe-cial, professionalvocabularyapplied to situa-

tions and events that can be described withequal or greater precision in ordinary lan-guage. Forgetfulness of the questions thatare the starting points of inquiry leads us toignore the substantive assumptions "buried"in our concepts and commits us to a one-sided view of reality.Perhaps this is simply an elaborateway ofsaying that sociological theory can never af-ford to lose what is usually called a "senseof significance;" or, as it is sometimes put,that sociological theory must be "problem-conscious." I choose instead to speak oftheory as a set of answers to questions be-cause reference to "problems"may seem tosuggest too close a linkage with social criti-cism or reform. My primary reason for in-sisting on the necessity of holding constantlyin mind the questions that our concepts andtheories are designedto answer is to precludedefining the goal of sociologicaltheory as thecreation of a formal body of knowledge sat-isfying the logical criteriaof scientific theoryset up by philosophersand methodologistsofnatural science. Needless to say, this is theway theory is often definedby contemporarysociologists.

* This is a slightly revised version of a paperread at the meetingsof the AmericanSociologicalAssociationn New York City, August 30, 1960.183


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184 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWYet to speak of theory as interrogatorymay suggest too self-sufficiently intellectualan enterprise. Cannot questions be satisfac-torily answered and then forgotten, the an-swers becoming the assumptionsfrom which

we start in framing new questions? It mayconvey my view of theory more adequatelyto say that sociologicaltheory concernsitselfwith questions arising out of problems thatare inherent in the very existence of humansocieties and that cannot thereforebe finally"solved" in the way that particular socialproblems perhaps can be. The "problems"theory concerns itself with are problems forhuman societies which, because of their uni-versality, become intellectually problematicfor sociologicaltheorists.Essentially, the historicist conception ofsociological knowledge that is central to thethought of Max Weberand has recently beenably restated by BarringtonMoore, Jr. andC. Wright Mills ' is a sound one. The mostfruitful questions for sociology are alwaysquestionsreferring o the realities of a partic-ular historical situation. Yet both of thesewriters, especially Mills, have a tendency tounderemphasize he degree to which we gen-uinely wish and seek answersto trans-histor-ical and universal questions about the natureof man and society. I do not, let it be clear,have in mind the formalistic quest for social"laws" or "universal propositions," nor theeven more formalistic effort to construct all-encompassing"conceptual schemes." Mooreand Mills are rightly critical of such efforts.I am thinking of such questions as, "Howare men capable of uniting to form enduringsocieties in the first place?"; "Why and towhat degree is change inherent in human so-cieties and what are the sourcesof change?";"How is man's animal nature domesticatedby society?"Such questions-and they are existentialas well as intellectual questions-are the rai-son d'etre of social theory. They were askedby men long before the rise of sociology. So-ciology itself is an effort, under new and un-precedented historical conditions, to findnovel answers to them. They are not ques-

tions which lend themselves to successivelymore precise answers as a result of cumula-tive empiricalresearch,for they remaineter-nally problematic.Social theory is necessarilyan interminabledialogue. "True understand-ing," Hannah Arendt has written, "does nottire of interminable dialogue and 'viciouscircles'becauseit trusts that imaginationwilleventually catch at least a glimpse of thealways frightening light of truth."2I wish briefly to review the answersmod-ern sociological theory offers to one suchquestion,or ratherto one aspect of one ques-tion. The question may be variously phrasedas, "What are the sources of social cohe-sion?"; or, "How is social order possible?";or, stated in social-psychological erms,"Howis it that man becomestractableto social dis-cipline?" I shall call this question in its so-cial-psychological aspect the "Hobbesianquestion"and in its more strictly sociologicalaspect the "Marxist question." The Hob-besian question asks how men are capable ofthe guidance by social norms and goals thatmakes possible an enduringsociety, while theMarxist question asks how, assuming thiscapability, complexsocieties manage to regu-late and restrain destructive conflicts be-tween groups. Much of our current theoryoffers an oversocializedview of man in an-sweringthe Hobbesianquestion and an over-integrated view of society in answering theMarxist question.A number of writers have recently chal-lenged the overintegratedview of society incontemporarytheory. In addition to Mooreand Mills, the namesof Bendix, Coser,Dahr-endorf, and Lockwood come to mind.3 My

1 Barrington Moore, Jr., Political Power and So-cial Theory, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1958; C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination,New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.

2 Hannah Arendt, "Understanding and Politics,"Partisan Review, 20 (July-August, 1953), p. 392.For a view of social theory close to the one adum-brated in the present paper, see Theodore Abel,"The Present Status of Social Theory," AmericanSociological Review, 17 (April, 1952), pp. 156-164.3 Reinhard Bendix and Bennett Berger, "Imagesof Society and Problems of Concept Formation inSociology," in Llewellyn Gross, editor, Symposiumon Sociological Theory, Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peter-

sen & Co., 1959, pp. 92-118; Lewis A. Coser, TheFunctions of Social Conflict, Glencoe, Ill.: TheFree Press, 1956; Ralf Dahrendorf, "Out of Utopia:Towards a Re-Orientation of Sociological Analysis,"American Journal of Sociology, 64 (September,1958), pp. 115-127; and Class and Class Conflict inIndustrial Society, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-versity Press, 1959; David Lockwood, "Some Re-


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OVERSOCIALIZED CONCEPTION OF MAN 185intention, therefore, is to concentrate on theanswersto the Hobbesian question in an ef-fort to disclose the oversocialized view ofman which they seem to imply.Since my view of theory is obviously verydifferent from that of Talcott Parsons andhas, in fact, been developed in opposition tohis, let me pay tribute to his recognition ofthe importanceof the Hobbesian question-the "problemof order,"as he calls it-at thevery beginning of his first book, The Struc-ture of Social Action.4 Parsons correctlycredits Hobbes with being the first thinkerto see the necessity of explainingwhy humansociety is not a "warof all against all;" why,if man is simply a gifted animal, men refrainfrom unlimited resort to fraud and violencein pursuit of their ends and maintain a stablesociety at all. There is even a sense in which,as Coserand Mills have both noted,5Parsons'entire work representsan effort to solve theHobbesian problem of order. His solution,however,has tended to become precisely thekind of elaboration of a set of answersin ab-straction from questions that is so character-istic of contemporarysociological theory.

We need not be greatly concerned withHobbes'own solution to the problemof orderhe saw with such unsurpassedclarity. What-ever interest his famous theory of the originof the state may still hold for political scien-tists, it is clearly inadequate as an explana-tion of the origin of society. Yet the patternas opposed to the details of Hobbes' thoughtbearscloser examination.The polar terms in Hobbes' theory are thestate of nature, where the war of all againstall prevails, and the authority of Leviathan,createdby social contract. But the war of allagainstall is not simply effaced with the crea-tion of political authority: it remains anever-present potentiality in human society,at times quiescent, at times erupting intoopen violence.WhetherHobbes believed thatthe state of nature and the social contractwere ever historical realities-and there isevidence that he was not that simple-mindedand unsociological, even in the seventeenth

century-is unimportant; the whole tenor ofhis thought is to see the war of all against alland Leviathandialectically, as coexistingandinteracting opposites.6As R. G. Collingwoodhas observed, "Accordingto Hobbes . . . abody politic is a dialectical thing, a Heracli-tean world in which at any given time thereis a negative element." The first secularsocial theorist in the history of Westernthought, and one of the first clearly to dis-cern and define the problem of order in hu-man society long before Darwinism madeawareness of it a commonplace, Hobbes wasa dialectical thinker who refused to separateanswersfromquestions, solutions to society'senduringproblemsfrom the conditionscreat-ing the problems.What is the answerof contemporarysocio-logical theory to the Hobbesian question?There are two main answers, each of whichhas come to be understood in a way thatdenies the reality and meaningfulness of thequestion. Together they constitute a modelof human nature, sometimes clearly stated,more often implicit in accepted concepts,that pervades modern sociology. The firstanswer is summed up in the notion of the"internalization of social norms." The sec-ond, more commonly employed or assumedin empirical research, s the view that man isessentially motivated by the desire to achievea positive image of self by winning accept-ance or status in the eyes of others.The following statement represents,brieflyand broadly, what is probably the most in-fluential contemporary sociological concep-tion-and dismissal-of the Hobbesian prob-lem: "To a modern sociologist imbued withthe conception that action follows institu-tionalized patterns, opposition of individualand common nterests has only a very limited

marks on 'The Social System'," British Journal ofSociology, 7 (June, 1956), pp. 134-146.4 Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action,New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1937, pp. 89-94.5 Coser, op. cit., p. 21; Mills, op. cit., p. 44.

6 A recent critic of Parsons follows Hobbes inseeing the relation between the normative orderin society and what he calls "the sub-stratum ofsocial action" and other sociologists have called the"factual order" as similar to the relation betweenthe war of all against all and the authority of thestate. David Lockwood writes: "The existence ofthe normative order . . . is in one very importantsense inextricably bound up with potential conflictsof interest over scarce resources . . .; the veryexistence of a normative order mirrors the continualpotentiality of conflict." Lockwood, op. cit., p. 137.7 R. G. Collingwood,The New Leviathan,Oxford:The Clarendon Press, 1942, p. 183.


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186 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWrelevanceor is thoroughlyunsound."8 Fromthis writer's perspective, the problem is anunreal one: humanconduct is totally shapedby common norms or "institutionalizedpat-terns." Sheerignorancemust have led peoplewho were unfortunateenough not to be mod-ern sociologists to ask, "How is order pos-sible?" A thoughtful bee or ant would neverinquire, "How is the social order of the hiveor ant-hill possible?" for the opposite of thatorder is unimaginable when the instinctiveendowmentof the insects ensures its stabilityand built-in harmony between "individualand common interests." Human society, weare assured, is not essentially different, al-though conformity and stability are theremaintained by non-instinctive processes.Modern sociologists believe that they haveunderstood these processes and that theyhave not merely answered but disposed ofthe Hobbesian question, showing that, farfrom expressing a valid intimation of thetensions and possibilities of social life, it canonly be asked out of ignorance.It would be hard to find a better illustra-tion of what Collingwood, following Plato,calls eristical as opposedto dialectical think-ing: 9 the answer destroys the question, orrather destroys the awarenessof rival possi-bilities suggested by the question which ac-counts for its having been asked in the firstplace. A reversal of perspective now takesplace and we are moved to ask the oppositequestion: "How is it that violence, conflict,revolution, and the individual's sense of co-

ercion by society manage to exist at all, ifthis view is correct?"10 Whenever a one-sided answer to a question compels us toraise the opposite question, we are caught upin a dialectic of conceptswhich reflects a dia-lectic in things. But let us examine the par-ticular processes sociologists appeal to inorder to account for the elimination from hu-man society of the war of all against all.

THE CHANGING MEANING OFINTERNALIZATION

A well-knownsection of The Structure ofSocial Action, devoted to the interpretationof Durkheim's thought, is entitled "TheChanging Meaning of Constraint."11Parsonsargues that Durkheim originally conceivedof society as controlling the individual fromthe outside by imposing constraints on himthrough sanctions, best illustrated by codesof law. But in Durkheim's later work hebegan to see that social rules do not "merelyregulate 'externally' . . . they enter directlyinto the constitution of the actors' ends them-selves." 12 Constraint, therefore, s morethanan environmental obstacle which the actormust take into accountin pursuitof his goalsin the same way that he takes into accountphysical laws: it becomes internal, psycho-logical, and self-imposed as well. Parsons de-veloped this view that social norms are con-stitutive rather than merely regulative ofhuman nature before he was influenced bypsychoanalytic theory, but Freud's theory ofthe superego has become the source andmodel for the conception of the internaliza-tion of social norms that today plays so im-portant a part in sociological thinking. Theuse some sociologists have made of Freud'sidea, however, might well inspire an essayentitled, "The Changing Meaning of Inter-nalization," although, in contrast to the shiftin Durkheim'sview of constraint,this changehas been a change for the worse.

8 Francis X. Sutton and others, The AmericanBusiness Creed, Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1956, p. 304. I have cited this study and, onseveral occasions, textbooks and fugitive articlesrather than better-known and directly theoreticalwritings because I am just as concerned with whatsociological concepts and theories are taken tomean when they are actually used in research,teaching, and introductory exposition as with theirelaboration in more self-conscious and explicitlytheoretical discourse. Since the model of humannature I am criticizing is partially implicit and"buried" in our concepts, cruder and less qualifiedillustrations are as relevant as the formulations ofleading theorists. I am also aware that some oldertheorists, notably Cooley and MacIver, were shrewdand worldly-wise enough to reject the implicationthat man is ever fully socialized. Yet they failed todevelop competing images of man which were con-cise and systematic enough to counter the appealof the oversocialized models.9 Collingwood, op. cit., pp. 181-182.

10 Cf. Mills, op. cit., pp. 32-33, 42. While Millsdoes not discuss the use of the concept of inter-nalization by Parsonian theorists, I have arguedelsewhere that his view of the relation betweenpower and values is insufficiently dialectical. SeeDennis H. Wrong, "The Failure of American Soci-ology," Commentary, 28 (November, 1959), p. 378.11 Parsons, op. cit., pp. 378-390.

12 Ibid., p. 382.


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OVERSOCIALIZED CONCEPTION OF MAN 187What has happenedis that internalizationhas imperceptiblybeen equated with "learn-ing," or even with "habit-formation" n thesimplest sense. Thus when a norm is said tohave been "internalized" by an individual,

what is frequentlymeant is that he habituallyboth affirms t and conformsto it in his con-duct. The whole stress on inner conflict, onthe tension between powerful impulses andsuperegocontrols the behavioral outcome ofwhich cannot be prejudged, drops out of thepicture. And it is this that is central toFreud's view, for in psychoanalytic terms tosay that a norm has been internalized,or in-trojected to become part of the superego, isto say no more than that a person will sufferguilt-feelings if he fails to live up to it, notthat he will in fact live up to it in his be-havior.The relation between internalization andconformity assumed by most sociologists issuggested by the following passage from arecent, highly-praised advanced textbook:"Conformityto institutionalizednormsis, ofcourse, 'normal.' The actor, having internal-ized the norms, feels something like a needto conform.His consciencewould botherhimif he did not." 13 What is overlookedhere isthat the person who conforms may be evenmore"bothered," hat is, subject to guilt andneurosis, than the person who violates whatare not only society's norms but his own aswell. To Freud, it is precisely the man withthe strictest superego, he who has mostthoroughly internalized and conformed tothe normsof his society, who is most wrackedwith guilt and anxiety.14

Paul Kecskemeti, to whose discussion Iowe initial recognitionof the erroneous viewof internalizationheld by sociologists, arguesthat the relations between social norms, theindividual'sselection from them, his conduct,and his feelings about his conduct are farfrom self-evident. "It is by no means true,"he writes, "to say that acting counterto one'sown normsalways or almost always leads toneurosis. One might assumethat neurosisde-velops even moreeasily in personswho never

violate the moralcode they recognize as validbut repress and frustrate some strong in-stinctual motive. A personwho 'succumbs totemptation,'feels guilt, and then 'purgeshim-self' of his guilt in some reliable way (e.g.,by confession) may achieve in this way abetter balance, and be less neurotic, than aperson who never violates his 'norms' andnever feels conscious guilt." 15Recent discussions of "deviant behavior"have been compelled to recognize these dis-tinctions between social demands, personalattitudes towards them, and actual conduct,although they have done so in a laboriouslytaxonomic fashion.'6 They represent, how-ever, largely the rediscoveryof what was al-ways central to the Freudian concept of thesuperego.The main explanatory function ofthe concept is to show how people repressthemselves,imposingchecks on their own de-sires and thus turning the inner life into abattlefield of conflicting motives, no matterwhich side "wins," by successfully dictatingovert action. So far as behavior is concerned,the psychoanalytic view of man is less deter-ministic than the sociological. For psycho-analysis is primarilyconcernedwith the innerlife, not with overt behavior, and its mostfundamental insight is that the wish, theemotion, and the fantasy are as importantas the act in man's experience.Sociologists have appropriatedthe super-ego concept, but have separatedit from anyequivalent of the Freudian id. So long asmost individuals are "socialized,"that is, in-ternalize the norms and conform to them inconduct, the Hobbesian problem is not evenperceived as a latent reality. Deviant be-havior is accounted for by special circum-stances: ambiguousnorms,anomie, role con-flict, or greater culturalstress on valuedgoalsthan on the approved means for attainingthem. Tendencies to deviant behavior arenot seen as dialectically related to conform-

13 Harry M. Johnson, Sociology: A SystematicIntroduction, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.,1960, p. 22.14 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discon-tents, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958,pp. 80-81.

15 Paul Kecskemeti, Meaning, Communication,and Value, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1952, pp. 244-245.16Robert Dubin, "Deviant Behavior and SocialStructure: Continuities in Social Theory," AmericanSociological Review, 24 (April, 1959), pp. 147-164;Robert K. Merton, "Social Conformity, Deviation,and Opportunity Structures: A Comment on theContributions of Dubin and Cloward," Ibid., pp.178-189.


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188 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWity. The presence in man of motivationalforces bucking against the hold social disci-pline has over him is denied.Nor does the assumption that internaliza-tion of norms and roles is the essence of so-cialization allow for a sufficient range of mo-tives underlying conformity. It fails to allowfor variable "tonicity of the superego," inKardiner's phrase.17 The degree to whichconformity is frequently the result of coer-cion rather than conviction is minimized.18Either someone has internalized the norms,or he is "unsocialized,"a feral or socially iso-lated child, or a psychopath. Yet Freud rec-ognized that many people, conceivably amajority, fail to acquire superegos. "Suchpeople," he wrote, "habitually permit them-selves to do any bad deed that procures themsomething they want, if only they are surethat no authority will discover it or makethem suffer for it; their anxiety relates onlyto the possibility of detection. Present-daysociety has to take into account the preva-lence of this state of mind."19The last sen-tence suggests that Freud was aware of thedecline of "inner-direction of the Protes-tant conscience, about which we have heardso much lately. So let us turn to the otherelements of human nature that sociologistsappeal to in order to explain, or rather ex-plain away, the Hobbesian problem.

MAN THE ACCEPTANCE-SEEKER 20The superego concept is too inflexible, toobound to the past and to individual bio-

graphy, to be of service in relating conductto the pressures of the immediate situationin which it takes place. Sociologists rely moreheavily therefore on an alternative notion,here stated-or, to be fair, overstated-inits baldest form: "People are so profoundlysensitive to the expectations of others thatall action is inevitably guided by these ex-pectations."21Parsons'modelof the "complementarityofexpectations,"the view that in social interac-tion men mutually seek approval from oneanother by conforming to shared norms, is aformalized version of what has tended to be-come a distinctive sociological perspective onhuman motivation. Ralph Linton states it inexplicit psychological terms: "The need foreliciting favorable responses from others isan almost constant component of [personal-ity]. Indeed, it is not too much to say thatthere is very little organized human behaviorwhich is not directed toward its satisfactionin at least some degree." 2The insistence of sociologists on the im-portanceof "social factors"easily leads themto stress the priority of such socialized orsocializing motives in human behavior.23It

17 Abram Kardiner, The Individual and His So-ciety, New York: Columbia University Press, 1939,pp. 65, 72-75.18 Mills, op. cit., pp. 39-41; Dahrendorf, Classand Class Conflict in Industrial Society, pp. 157-165.19 Freud, op. cit., pp. 78-79.20 In many ways I should prefer to use theneater, more alliterative phrase "status-seeker."However, it has acquired a narrower meaning thanI intend, particularly since Vance Packard appro-priated it, suggesting primarily efforts, which areoften consciously deceptive, to give the appearanceof personal achievements or qualities worthy of

deference. "Status-seeking" in this sense is, asVeblen perceived, necessarily confined to relativelyimpersonal and segmental social relationships. "Ac-ceptance" or "approval" convey more adequatelywhat all men are held to seek in both intimate andimpersonal relations according to the conception ofthe self and of motivation dominating contemporarysociology and social psychology. I have, neverthe-

less, been unable to resist the occasional temptationto use the term "status" in this broader sense.21 Sutton and others, op. cit., p. 264. RobertCooley Angell, in Free Society and Moral Crisis,Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958, p.34, points out the ambiguity of the term "expecta-tions." It is used, he notes, to mean both a factualprediction and a moral imperative, e.g. "Englandexpects every man to do his duty." But this veryambiguity is instructive, for it suggests the processby which behavior that is non-normative and per-

haps even "deviant" but nevertheless "expected"in the sense of being predictable, acquires over timea normative aura and becomes "expected" in thesecond sense of being socially approved or de-manded. Thus Parsons' "interaction paradigm" pro-vides leads to the understanding of social changeand need not be confined, as in his use of it, to theexplanation of conformity and stability. But thisis the subject of another paper I hope to completeshortly.22 Ralph Linton, The Cultural Background ofPersonality, New York: Appleton-Century Co.,1945, p. 91.23 When values are "inferred" from this em-phasis and then popularized, it becomes the basisof the ideology of "groupism" extolling the virtuesof "togetherness" and "belongingness" that havebeen attacked and satirized so savagely in recentsocial criticism. David Riesman and W. H. Whyte,the pioneers of this current of criticism in its con-temporary guise, are both aware, as their imi-


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OVERSOCIALIZED CONCEPTION OF MAN 189is frequently the task of the sociologist tocall attention to the intensity with whichmen desire and strive for the good opinion oftheir immediate associates in a variety ofsituations, particularly those where receivedtheories or ideologies have unduly empha-sized other motives such as financial gain,commitment to ideals, or the effects on en-ergies and aspirations of arduous physicalconditions.Thus sociologistshave shown thatfactory workers are more sensitive to theattitudes of their fellow-workers than topurely economic incentives; that voters aremore influenced by the preferences of theirrelatives and friends than by campaign de-bates on the "issues;" that soldiers,whatevertheir ideologicalcommitmentto their nation'scause, fight more bravely when their pla-

toons are intact and they stand side by sidewith their "buddies."It is certainly not my intention to criticizethe findings of such studies. My objection isthat their particular selective emphasis isgeneralized-explicitly or, more often, im-plicitly-to provide apparent empirical sup-port for an extremely one-sided view ofhuman nature. Although sociologists havecriticizedpast efforts to single out one funda-mental motive in human conduct, the desireto achieve a favorableself-image by winningapproval from others frequently occupiessuch a position in their own thinking. Thefollowing "theorem"has been, in fact, openlyput forwardby Hans Zetterbergas "a strongcontender for the position as the majorMotivational Theorem in sociology": 24

An actor'sactionshavea tendency o becomedispositionshat are relatedto the occurence[sic] of favoreduniformevaluationsof theactorand-orhis actions n his actionsystem.25Now Zetterberg is not necessarily main-taining that this theoremis an accurate fac-tual statement of the basic psychologicalroots of social behavior. He is, character-istically, far too self-conscious about thelogic of theorizing and "concept formation"for that. He goes on to remark that "themaximization of favorable attitudes fromothers would thus be the counterpartin so-ciological theory to the maximization ofprofit in economictheory."26 If by this it ismeant that the theorem is to be understoodas a heuristic rather than an empirical as-sumption, that sociologyhas a selective pointof view which is just as abstract and partialas that of economics and the other socialsciences, and if his view of theory as a set oflogically connected formal propositions isgranted provisional acceptance, I am inagreement. (Actually, the view of theorysuggested at the beginningof this paper is aquite differentone.)But there is a further point to be made.Ralf Dahrendorf has observed that struc-tural-functional theorists do not "claim that

order is based on a general consensus ofvalues, but that it can be conceived of in

tators and epigoni usually are not, of the extentto which the social phenomenon they have de-scribed is the result of the diffusion and populariza-tion of sociology itself. See on this point RobertGutman and Dennis H. Wrong, "Riesman's Ty-pology of Character" (forthcoming in a symposiumon Riesman's work to be edited by Leo Lowenthaland Seymour Martin Lipset), and William H.Whyte, The Organization Man, New York: Simonand Schuster, 1956, Chapters 3-5. As a matter offact, Riesman's "inner-direction" and "other-direc-tion" correspond rather closely to the notions of"internalization" and "acceptance-seeking" in con-temporary sociology as I have described them.Riesman even refers to his concepts initially ascharacterizations of "modes of conformity," al-though he then makes the mistake, as RobertGutman and I have argued, of calling them char-acter types. But his view that all men are to somedegree both inner-directed and other-directed, aqualification that has been somewhat neglected bycritics who have understandably concentrated onhis empirical and historical use of his typology,suggests the more generalized conception of forcesmaking for conformity found in current theory.See David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and ReuelDenny, The Lonely Crowd, New York: DoubledayAnchor Books, 1953, pp. 17 ff. However, as Gutmanand I have observed: "In some respects Riesman'sconception of character is Freudian rather than neo-Freudian: character is defined by superego me-chanisms and, like Freud in Civilization and ItsDiscontents, the socialized individual is defined bywhat is forbidden him rather than by what societystimulates him to do. Thus in spite of Riesman'sgenerally sanguine attitude towards modern Amer-ica, implicit in his typology is a view of society asthe enemy both of individuality and of basic drivegratification, a view that contrasts with the atleast potentially benign role assigned it by neo-Freudian thinkers like Fromm and Horney." Gut-man and Wrong, "Riesman's Typology of Charac-ter," p. 4 (typescript).

24 Hans L. Zetterberg, "Compliant Actions," ActaSociologica, 2 (1957) p. 189.25 Ibid., p. 188.26 Ibid., p. 189.


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190 AMERICANSOCIOLOGICALEVIEWtermsof such consensusand that, if it is con-ceived of in these terms, certain propositionsfollow which aresubject to the test of specificobservations." 7 The same may be said ofthe assumptionthat people seek to maximizefavorable evaluations by others; indeed thisassumption has already fathered such addi-tional concepts as "reference group" and"circle of significant others." Yet the ques-tion must be raised as to whether we reallywish to, in effect, define sociology by suchpartial perspectives. The assumption of themaximizationof approval from others is thepsychological complementto the sociologicalassumption of a general value consensus.And the formeris as selective and one-sideda way of looking at motivation as Dahren-dorf and others have argued the latter to bewhen it determines our way of looking atsocial structure. The oversocialized view ofman of the one is a counterpartto the over-integrated view of society of the other.Modern sociology, after all, originated asa protest against the partial views of mancontained in such doctrinesas utilitarianism,classical economics, social Darwinism, andvulgar Marxism. All of the great nineteenthand early twentieth century sociologists28saw it as one of their major tasks to exposethe unreality of such abstractions as eco-nomic man, the gain-seeker of the classicaleconomists; political man, the power-seekerof the Machiavellian tradition in politicalscience; self-preserving man, the security-

seeker of Hobbes and Darwin; sexual orlibidinal man, the pleasure-seeker of doctri-naire Freudianism; and even religious man,the God-seeker of the theologians. It wouldbe ironical if it should turn out that theyhave merely contributed to the creation ofyet another reified abstraction in socializedman, the status-seeker of our contemporarysociologists.Of course, such an image of man is, likeall the othersmentioned,valuable for limitedpurposes so long as it is not taken for thewhole truth. What are some of its deficien-cies? To begin with, it neglects the otherhalf of the model of human nature presup-posed by current theory: moral man, guidedby his built-in superego and beckoning ego-ideal.29 n recent years sociologists have beenless interestedthan they once were in cultureand national character as backgrounds toconduct, partly because stress on the con-cept of "role"as the crucial link between theindividual and the social structure has di-rected their attention to the immediate situa-tion in which social interaction takes place.Man is increasinglyseen as a "role-playing"creature, respondingeagerly or anxiously tothe expectations of other role-players in themultiple group settings in which he findshimself. Such an approach,while valuable inhelping us grasp the complexity of a highlydifferentiated social structure such as ourown, is far too often generalized to serve asa kind of ad hoc social psychology, easilyadaptable to particularsociologicalpurposes.But it is not enough to concede that menoften pursue "internalized values" remain-ing indifferentto what others think of them,particularly when, as I have previously ar-gued, the idea of internalization has been"hollowed out" to make it more useful asan explanationof conformity.What of desirefor material and sensual satisfactions? Can

27 Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in In-dustrial Society, p. 158.28 Much of the work of Thorstein Veblen, nowgenerally regarded as a sociologist (perhaps thegreatest America has yet produced), was, of course,a polemic against the rational, calculating homoeconomicus of classical economics and a documen-tation of the importance in economic life of thequest for status measured by conformity to arbi-trary and shifting conventional standards. Early inhis first and most famous book Veblen made anobservation on human nature resembling that whichlooms so large in contemporary sociological think-ing: "The usual basis of self-respect," he wrote,"is the respect accorded by one's neighbors. Only

individuals with an aberrant temperament can inthe long run retain their self-esteem in the faceof the disesteem of their fellows." The Theory ofthe Leisure Class, New York: Mentor Books, 1953,p. 38. Whatever the inadequacies of his psycho-logical assumptions, Veblen did not, however, over-look other motivations to which he frequently gaveequal or greater weight.

29 Robin M. Williams, Jr. writes: "At the presenttime, the literature of sociology and social psy-chology contains many references to 'Conformity'-conforming to norms, 'yielding to social pressure,'or 'adjusting to the requirements of the referencegroup.' . . . ; the implication is easily drawn thatthe actors in question are motivated solely in termsof conformity or non-conformity, rather than interms of 'expressing' or 'affirming' internalizedvalues . . ." (his italics). "Continuity and Changein Sociological Study," American Sociological Re-view, 23 (December, 1958), p. 630.


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192 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWchanical certainty alike in every varyingculture."33So much for Freud's "imperious biologicaldrives!" When Freud defined psychoanalysisas the study of the "vicissitudes of the in-stincts," he was confirming,not denying, the"plasticity" of human nature insisted on bysocial scientists. The drives or "instincts" ofpsychoanalysis, far from being fixed disposi-tions to behave in a particular way, areutterly subject to social channelling andtransformation and could not even revealthemselves in behavior without social mold-ing any more than our vocal chords canproduce articulate speech if we have notlearned a language. To psychoanalysis manis indeed a social animal; his social natureis profoundly reflected in his bodily struc-ture.34But there is a difference between theFreudian view on the one hand and bothsociological and neo-Freudian conceptionsof man on the other. To Freud man is asocial animal without being entirely a so-cialized animal. His very social nature isthe source of conflicts and antagonisms thatcreate resistance to socialization by thenorms of any of the societies which haveexisted in the course of human history. "So-cialization" may mean two quite distinctthings; when they are confused an over-socialized view of man is the result. On theone hand socialization means the "trans-mission of the culture," the particular cul-ture of the society an individual enters at

birth; on the other hand the term is usedto mean the "process of becoming human,"of acquiringuniquely humanattributes frominteraction with others.35 All men are so-cialized in the latter sense, but this doesnot mean that they have been completelymoldedby the particularnorms and values oftheir culture. All cultures, as Freud con-tended, do violence to man's socializedbodily drives, but this in no sense meansthat men could possibly exist without cultureor independently of society.36 From such astandpoint, man may properly be calledas Norman Brown has called him, the "neu-rotic" or the "discontented" animal and re-pression may be seen as the main charac-teristic of human nature as we have knownit in history.37But isn't this psychology and haven'tsociologists been taught to foreswear psy-chology, to look with suspicion on what arecalled "psychological variables" in contra-distinction to the institutional and historicalforces with which they are properly con-cerned? There is, indeed, as recent criticshave complained, too much "psychologism"in contemporary sociology, largely, I think,because of the bias inherent in our favoredresearchtechniques. But I do not see how, atthe level of theory, sociologists can fail tomake assumptions about human nature.38

33 John Dollard, Criteria for the Life History,New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935, p. 120.This valuable book has been neglected, presumablybecause it appears to be a purely methodologicaleffort to set up standards for judging the adequacyof biographical and autobiographical data. Actually,the standards serve as well to evaluate the adequacyof general theories of personality or human natureand even to prescribe in part what a sound theoryought to include.34 One of the few attempts by a social scientistto relate systematically man's anatomical structureand biological history to his social nature and hisunique cultural creativity is Weston La Barre's TheHuman Animal, Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1954. See especially Chapters 4-6, but the en-tire book is relevant. It is one of the few exceptionsto Paul Goodman's observation that anthropolo-gists nowadays "commence with a chapter on Phys-ical Anthropology and then forget the whole topicand go on to Culture." See his "Growing upAbsurd," Dissent, 7 (Spring, 1960), p. 121.

35 Paul Goodman has developed a similar distinc-tion. Op. cit., pp. 123-125.36 Whether it might be possible to create a societythat does not repress the bodily drives is a separatequestion. See Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civiliza-tion, Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955; and Norman

0. Brown, Life Against Death, New York: RandomHouse, Modern Library Paperbacks, 1960. NeitherMarcuse nor Brown are guilty in their brilliant,provocative, and visionary books of assuming a"natural man" who awaits liberation from socialbonds. They differ from such sociological Utopiansas Fromm, op. cit., in their lack of sympathy for thede-sexualized man of the neo-Freudians. For themore traditional Freudian view, see Walter A. Weiss-kopf, "The 'Socialization' of Psychoanalysis in Con-temporary America," in Benjamin Nelson, editor,Psychoanalysis and the Future, New York: Na-tional Psychological Association For Psychoanalysis,1957, pp. 51-56; Hans Meyerhoff, "Freud and theAmbiguity of Culture," Partisan Review, 24 (Win-ter, 1957), pp. 117-130.37 Brown, op. cit., pp. 3-19.38"I would assert that very little sociologicalanalysis is ever done without using at least an im-plicit psychological theory." Alex Inkeles, "Person-ality and Social Structure," in Robert K. Merton


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CRITERIA OF MEDICAL PERFORMANCE 193If our assumptions are left implicit, we willinevitably presuppose of a view of man thatis tailor-made to our special needs; whenour sociological theory over-stresses the sta-bility and integration of society we will endup imagining that man is the disembodied,conscience-driven,status-seeking phantom of

current theory. We must do better if wereally wish to win credit outside of ourranks for special understandingof man, thatplausible creature39 whose wagging tongueso often hides the despair and darkness inhis heart.

and others, editors, Sociology Today, New York:Basic Books, 1959, p. 250.39 Harry Stack Sullivan once remarked that themost outstanding characteristic of human beingswas their "plausibility."

STRATIFICATION AND HOSPITAL CARE:II. THE OBJECTIVE CRITERIA OF PERFORMANCE *

MELVIN SEEMAN JOHN W. EVANSUniversity of California (Los Angeles) United States Information Agency

This is the second of two papers which involve a "triangulation" on medical performance inan effort to test the proposition that organizational stratification is related to hospital care.The triangulation consists of the measurement of performance from the subjective, reputa-tional, and objective points of view. The present paper presents evidence based upon the ob-jective medical records. The evidence is organized around a conception of the hospital as aninstitution performing seven key functions. Criterion measures related to these seven func-tions are examined, and it is shown that units which differ in their degree of stratification alsodiffer in their performance with respect to a number of these criteria (e.g., the length of pa-tient stay, and the use of the consultation process). Taken together, the two papers show thatwhen performance is independently measured in three fundamental ways, there is a basic con-gruence which supports the proposition that the degree of stratification of organizational unitsis related to variations in task performance.

THIS paper s part of an effort o under-stand the medical consequences of so-cial structurein the hospital. Our basicquestion is, "What does the stratification ofhospital units have to do with the characterof their medical performance?" We haveshown, in an earlier paper, that there aresuch consequences.Internes report that theirown medical behavior and the performanceof the ward are different on highly stratifiedunits as against units that are low in stratifi-cation; and at the same time the interne's

medicalsuperiorsrate the performanceof theinterne differently on these differently strat-ified units.'In the present paper, we focus our atten-tion upon objective outcomes that are con-tained in the medical record.Thus, this paperis part of a "triangulation" n which medicalperformance on a set of hospital wards ismeasured from three different standpoints:the subjective (interne self-reports), the rep-utational (ratings of internes by their supe-riors), and the objective (medical records).2

* This paper reports on one phase of the hospitalstudy going on within The Ohio State UniversitySystems Research Group. The Group is engaged inan interdisciplinary effort to develop methods forunderstanding complex systems, in the hospital andelsewhere. The present work is supported by thePublic Health Service, Division of Nursing Re-sources (GN-4784).

1 M. Seeman and J. W. Evans, "Stratification andHospital Care: I. The Performance of the MedicalInterne," American Sociological Review, 26 (Feb-ruary, 1961), pp. 67-80.2 These three standpoints are a basic measurementtrio in a wide variety of fields. For example, thenames of Centers, Warner, and Mills stand, respec-tively, for subjective, reputational, and objective

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