234 Values, Motives, and Systems of Action

 

5   Conclusion

 

                We have now set forth the main conceptual scheme of the theory of action and its elaboration in each of the three areas of systemic organization.  In conclusion we shall summarize briefly, underscore a few specific features of the scheme, and indicate some of the problems toward which future effort might be directed. 

 

                Logically the scheme is founded on certain categories of behavior psychology.  These contain by implication the main categories of the frame of reference of the theory of action.  The implications, however, have not heretofore been drawn in a manner which would be adequate to the study of human personality, cultural, and social systems, although the categories developed previously by Tolman in his study of animal behavior have brought these implications within reaching distance. 

 

                The present analysis began with the set of fundamental definitions which constitute the frame of reference for the analysis of the structure of human action.  The dynamic properties of this frame of reference have not been treated with the same degree of explicitness as the more descriptive aspects. 

We have devoted more attention to the derivation of complex concepts descriptive of structure than we have to the formulation of the dynamic hypotheses implicit in some of these concepts.  However, it seems to us that a whole system of dynamic hypotheses is implicit in our conceptual scheme and that these hypotheses are susceptible of treatment by the same kind of systematic deductive procedure which has been used in constructing the descriptive side of the scheme. We have regarded it, however, as more urgent to develop

the descriptive side first. 

 

                The basic frame of reference deals with action as a process of striving for the attainment of states of gratification or goals within a situation.  The polarity of gratification and deprivation, and hence of the two fundamental tendencies of action - seeking and avoidance - are inherent in this conception.   So also is the reference to the future, which is formulated in the concept of expectations.   Finally, the selective nature of the orientations of action, which is formulated in the concept of the pattern variables, is similarly logically inherent in the basic conception of action. 

 

Conclusion 235

 

                In our construction of the categories of the theory of action, we distinguished three major modal aspects of the frame of reference which have been called motivational orientation, value-orientation, and the structure of the situation.  These are all elements of the "orientation" of an actor to a situation; each of them is involved in any action whatever.  Only when objects are both cognized and cathected does "drive" or "need" become motivation in action.  But the completely isolated elementary "unit action" is an abstraction.  Actions occur only in systems which necessitate evaluations of alternative paths of action and commitments to those alternatives which have been chosen.  Selection or choice is an essential component of action as we view it.  Selectivity is a function both of the goal-orientedness of the actor and the differentiation of the object situation.  Selectivity in orientation moreover entails simultaneous orientation toward criteria of the validity of the substantive selections.  There thus seems to be no doubt of the fundamental independent significance of value standards, and this justifies the granting to value-orientation a conceptually independent place in the frame of reference. 

 

                Moreover, it is of the first importance that the structure of the situation be analyzed not only in terms of the classes of concrete objects, but of the modalities of objects, especially of the quality and performance modalities.  The modality classification, already widely applied in more concrete studies,

has crucial theoretical significance in the analysis of the role-expectations, cultural orientations, and need-dispositions. 

 

                The basic frame of reference is in principle applicable to the hypothetically isolated actor in a nonsocial situation.  In a situation in which a plurality of actors are in interaction, the scheme must be further differentiated to take into account the fact of complementarity of expectations - but this involves no modification in the basic frame of reference, merely a more elaborate deductive treatment. 

It is through the complementarity of expectations in interaction that the symbols essential to human action are built up, that communication on the humanly significant levels, and therefore culture, become possible.  It is with analysis of action on these levels of complexity that the scheme is primarily concerned. 

 

                Following the delineation of the fundamentals of the frame of reference in terms of the three major aspects of action, the first major theoretical step was taken with the derivation from that frame of reference of a systematic scheme for defining and interrelating the choice-alternatives toward which there is evaluative orientation of action.  The alternatives toward which the evaluative orientation is focused are called the pattern variables.  It is clear that the pattern-variable elements could not have been derived if the

independent significance of value-orientation had not been established beforehand.  But the pattern variables are not a product solely of value-orientations; they involve relations among the different components of the frame of reference. 

 

236 Values, Motives, and Systems of Action

 

                The pattern variables had previously been developed in a less systematic fashion in connection with the analysis of certain concrete problems of social structure.  They were not originally devised for the analysis of personality and cultural systems.  However, in attempting to develop the analysis of personality

systems in the framework of the action scheme, it became clear that if personality is to be analyzed in terms of the action schema at all, the pattern variables must also be relevant to the analysis of personality. 

The further pursuit of that line of inquiry showed that the need-dispositions which had previously been classified largely in an ad hoc clinical way, could be defined in terms of the pattern variables with results which showed a remarkable correspondence with the results of clinical observation.  Finally, it became apparent that they constituted principal categories for the description of value-orientations, and not only of the empirical action systems in which value-orientations are involved.  After all, role-expectations, which are the essential element of institutionalized behavior, are drawn in general from the same general dispositions

as cultural value-orientations. The perception of this relationship provides a most important means for clarifying the conceptual relations between cultural orientations on the one hand and personality and social systems on the other, and for preparing the way for the study of their empirical interrelations. 

 

                Preliminary consideration of the pattern-variable scheme in relation to these two types of system also revealed the symmetrical asymmetry of its application to personalities and to social systems. 

 

                The definition of the main terms of the action frame of reference, and the derivation of the pattern variables from the frame of reference have thus provided a point of departure for the analysis of the three types of system into which the elements of the action scheme are organized. (Of course, the "fundamentals of behavior psychology" are assumed in the definition of the elements of action and the derivations into which they enter.) 

 

                But the concepts thus constructed are insufficient in that particular form for the analysis of systems of action.  The problem of constructive systemic concepts was first dealt with in connection with personality in Chapter II.  It is essentially a matter oj the conditions and consequences of the differentiation of action elements and their integration into a system.  The types of differentiation which are logically conceivable can, in the nature of the case, be realized only in a highly selective manner.  There are definite imperatives imposed by the conditions of empirical coexistence in the same system.  The further conceptual differentiation, to be added to the elements considered in Chapter I, is presented in the paradigm of the "functioning system" of a personality.  The structure of such a system is constituted by the interrelations of

the elements of action (formulated in the categories of the action frame of reference), their elaboration in the pattern-variable scheme.  The structure is complicated by the derivation of the origins and place in the system of certain "adjustive" mechanisms (such as needs for dominance or for aggression) and defensive mechanisms. 

 

Conclusion 237

 

                It is particularly important that motivational factors should be viewed with reference to their functional significance for personality as a system.  The concept of mechanism was introduced because it provides a conceptual tool for the analysis of motivational factors in just this light. 

 

                In the social system too the concept of mechanism is introduced because of its relevance in dealing with the dynamic aspects of systemic problems, particularly the problems of allocation and integration. In consequence of the fundamental difference in the locus of personality systems on the one hand and social systems on the other, the functional mechanisms which operate in both systems may be regarded as homologous only to a limited extent.  Only when these differences are clarified is it possible to make progress in the analysis of the nature of the empirical articulations between them. In the present monograph only a few initial considerations could be presented concerning this very complicated set of problems. 

 

                Systems of value-orientation (discussed in Chapter III) do not entail the existence of functional mechanisms because they are not empirical action systems, and hence do not have either motivational processes or the same kinds of allocative and integrative problems.  After a discussion of their place

in the general structure of culture, the problem of the consistency of systems of value-orientation was explored through relating the major combinations of the pattern variables to certain features of the situation. 

 

                The model of the system of value-orientation with a fully consistent pattern, however important for theoretical purposes, can serve only as a point of departure for the analysis of empirical value systems, as they operate in personality and in social systems.  The pattern-consistent system is both formal and elementary. In systems of action, the system of value-orientation takes rather different directions, but they could not be fully treated here.  In particular, the complications arising from orientation to many of the "adaptive" problems, such as authority or freedom from control, have not been included; they must be worked out in relation to the more concrete action structure and situation.  A further limitation on the empirical utility of the concept of the completely pattern-consistent system of value-orientation is that concrete systems of action are not oriented toward such pattern-consistent value systems.  The exigencies of the empirical action system are such that there will be areas of strain and even of sheer impossibility of full integration of a consistent value-orientation. Where these areas of strain and incompatibility are

located and how they are organized and responded to will depend on the dominant value system and on the structure of the particular situation. 

 

238 Values, Motives, and Systems of Action

 

                This means that the study of concrete systems of value-orientation should be related to the study of empirical systems of action.  The purely "cultural" type of analysis, though indispensable as a first step, can only carry us a certain distance.  Even when we are concerned with the cultural value orientation, in order to account for its inconsistencies and heterogeneities, we must consider the interdependence of that system with the motivational and situational components of personality and with the functional problems of social

systems.  Of course, even when the theory of personality is the prime object of our interest, we cannot do without the cultural analysis of value-orientations. 

 

                Finally, from the point of view of the general anthropological student of culture, the treatment of cultural problems in this monograph must appear highly selective if not one-sided.  We have intentionally placed primary emphasis on value-orientations because they constitute the strategically crucial point of articulation between culture and the structure of personalities and of social systems. In the introductory section of Chapter III we attempted to place value-orientations in relation to the other elements of cultural systems as a whole.  But this brief treatment did not attempt to do justice to the intricacy of the problems and their implications for action - for example, the role of ideas or belief systems or the role of expressive symbols.  Also the complex interdependencies between the internalized culture and culture as an

accumulation of objects other than value-orientations have merely been suggested, not analyzed. 

 

                Can any general statement be made about the significance of what has been achieved in this monograph? In the first place it should be quite clear that nearly all the concepts which have here been brought together have been current in various forms and on various levels of concreteness in the social

sciences in the twentieth century.  Whatever originality exists here can be found only in the way in which the concepts have been related to one another. 

 

                It may well be that an equally comprehensive or even more comprehensive synthesis could have been made from a different point of view, with different emphases and combinations.  But even if this is so, it might be fairly claimed that the present scheme offers the basis of an important advance toward the

construction of a unified theory of social science.  It perhaps may be said to put together more ~ements, in a more systematic way, than any other attempt yet made on this levA of abstraction.  We also think that it has been sufficiently differentiated here to show that it can be useful in the analysis of empirical problems in an open, undogmatic way. It should thus contribute substantially to the development of a common way of looking at the phenomena of human conduct. 

 

                Nothing could be more certain than that any such attempt is tentative in its definitions and in their particular derivations and combinations; it is thus destined to all manner of modifications.  A critic may well be able to find serious difficulties, or may simply prefer, for good reasons of his own, to use a different scheme. But the whole course of development of work in the social sciences to which this monograph has sought to give a more systematic theoretical formulation is such that it is scarcely conceivable that such a large racaslire of conceptual ordering which connects with so much empirical knowledge should be completely "off the rails." It seems therefore that however great the modifications which will have to be introduced by empirical application and theoretical refinement and reformulation, the permanently valid precipitate will prove to be substantial. 

 

Conclusion 239

 

                In very general terms, one of the achievements of this undertaking is the clarification of the relations between what have been called the "levels" of action.  The doctrine of "tandem emergence," most recently and fully stated by Krocber, seems to be definitely untenable.  The idea that personality is

emergent from the biological level of the organism, social systems are emergent from personality, and culture from social systems, which this view puts forth, has been shown to be wrong.  In place of this we have put forward the view that personality, culture, and social system are analytically coequal, that each

of the three implies the other two. If there is anything like emergence, it is action as the category embracing all three which is emergent from the organic workl.  One of the general implications of this contention is that the analysis of social systems and of culture is not a derivation of the theory of personality.  Nor can there be "sociology" which is precultural or independent of culture, whether it be conceived as "applied psychology" or as a Durkheimian "theory of social facts."  Finally, culture cannot stand in isolation, as something self-

sufficient and self-developing. Culture is theoretically implicated with action in general, and thus with both personalities and social systems.  Indeed the only prerequisites of any essential part of the theory of action are the organic and situational prerequisites of action in general, and not any one subsystem. 

 

                This conception of the relations of the three system-levels to each other is not in its most general form original.  But in the current discussion of these problems there has been a large amount of uncertainty and vacillation about these matters.  There has been a tendency for the proponents of each of the three disciplines concerned to attempt to close their own systems, and to declare their theoretical independence of the others.  At the same time, even among those who asserted the interdependence of the three fields, it has tended to be done in an ad hoc, fragmentary manner, without regard to the methodological and theoretical bases of such interdependence.  The present scheme may claim to have resolved in large part both of these difficulties. 

 

240 Values, Motives, and Systems of Action

 

                One of the major difficulties in relating culture to social structure has been uncertainty about the meaning of the institutionalization of culture patterns.  In the light of the present analysis, this uncertainty can be seen to derive from the fact that the meaning of institutionalization is different for the different parts of a cultural system.  A set of beliefs, of expressive symbols, or of instrumental patterns may be institutionalized in the sense that conformity with the standards in question may become a role-expectation for members of certain collectivities, as is the case, for example, when there is a high valuation of abstract art in a certain circle.  But only patterns of value-orientation - that is, in our terms, pattern-variable combinations - become

directly constitutive of the main structure of alternative types of social relationships which is the central structural focus of social systems.  This is the set of primary institutions of a social system.  The others are structurally secondary.  This differentiated analysis of the relations between culture and systems of action makes it possible to overcome the "emanationist" fallacy which has plagued idealistic social theory. 

If culture as a system is treated as closed and either conceptually or empirically independent of social structure and personality, then it follows that culture patterns "realize themselves" in personality or social structure without the intervention of motivation.  The proponents of one view invoke only a few "obvious" mechanisms connected with child training in order to explain the personality which becomes the recipient and bearer of culture.  This theory, although it alleges to show the "human element" in the great impersonal patterns of culture, assumes, quite unjustifiably, that there is in concrete reality a cultural orientation system, given separately from the system of action.  This is the exact counterpart of the view that there is a human nature independent of society and culture.  In both cases, the procedure has been to determine what the system is, and then to analyze how it affects the other systems.  The correct procedure is to treat the cultural orientation system as an integral part of the real system of action, which can be separated from it only analytically.  Culture in the anthropological sense is a condition, component, and product of action systems. 

 

                Similarly, the pattern variables seem to provide a crucial clue to the relation between personality and culture.  The distinction between cultural objects (accumulation) and cultural orientations, which has been followed in the present analysis, turns psychologically on the internalization of values and other elements of culture.  Insofar as a value pattern becomes internalized, it ceases to be an object and becomes directly constitutive of the personality.  It is "transferred" from one side of the "action equation" to the other. (It is this transferability of cultural factors which in the last analysis makes it necessary to treat them as an independent range of variation in the basic paradigm of action.)  Internalization of values in the personality is thus the direct counterpart of their institutionalization in the social system.  Indeed, as we have seen, they are really two sides of the same thing.  This institutionalization and internalization of value patterns, a connection independently and from different points of view discovered by Freud and by Durkheim, is the focus of many of the central theoretical problems of action theory.  Many elements in action, both organic and situational, are causally independent of role-value structure.  But only through their relation to this problem, can they be systematically analyzed in terms of the theory of action. 

 

Conclusion 241

 

                A second and closely related accomplishment of the present analysis is the clarification of the functional problems of the theory of action in the analysis of systems. Incompatibilities among the component actions and actors in the several systems result from their coexistence in the same situation or

the same personality. Insofar as the system remains a system, some mechanisms must come into play for reducing these incompatibilities to the point where coexistence in the system becomes possible. (These mechanisms do of course change the character of the system but they allow it to function as a system.) 

 

                Now these mechanisms cannot be derived simply from the theory of motivation in general.  Some conception of functional imperatives - that is, constituent conditions and emmpirically necessary preconditions of on-going systems, set by the facts of scarcity in the object situation, the nature of the organism, and the realities of coexistence - are necessary. 

 

                We have stressed that these mechanisms are to be defined by the systemic conditions which give rise to them and the systemic consequences or functions which are effected by their operation.  There are, of course, certain dangers in the use of such functional analysis.  The overtones of teleology must be guarded against particularly in dealing with the social system.  There are dangers of hypostatization of the "system" and its "needs" which can be insured against only by bearing constantly in mind that the system is a system of individual actors and their roles but that needs in the systemic sense are not the same as the need-dispositions of the actors or even homologous with them - although there are complicated empirical interrelations among them.  Systemic needs can never be reduced to need-dispositions although systemic needs are the resultant of the coexistence in determinate relationships in a situation of a plurality of actors each of whom has a system of need-dispositions.  If it is remembered that the mechanisms which are the systemic modes of responding to the "needs of the system" are empirical generalizations about motivational processes - a sort of shorthand for the description of complex processes which we do not yet fully understand - we may feel free to employ functional analysis without involvement either in metaphysical

teleology or in hidden political and ethical preferences.  Neither of these is in any way logically entailed in the kind of functional analysis which we have presented here. 

 

                In addition to the two general directions in which we believe progress has been made, there have been a good many categories and hypotheses of a more specific sort which have emerged or which have been reformulated in the course of this analysis. Rather than attempt a summary of these, however,

've will conclude with a brief suggestion of three general lines of development along which it might be fruitful to move in the formulation of general social science theory. 

 

242 Values, Motives, and Systems of Action

 

                One field which is basic to our work here and development of which is necessary for further progress deals with the nature and role of symbols in action.  The present monograph has not specifically dealt with these problems.  But symbolism has emerged as almost a kind of counterpoint theme

throughout the discussion and requires much more explicit attention than it has received.  There are many points at which such an analysis could begin.  It should not center so much in the "origins" of symbols as in their actual role in the interactive processes which have been central to this analysis.  A central problem will be the relation among the symbolic elements in cognitive and in cathectic orientations.  Every one of the psychological mechanisms discussed operates through responses to symbols.  For instance, the mechanism of generalization which operates when ego comes to attribute significance to alter's attitudes as distinguished from his "overt acts" is possible only through a process of symbolization.  There is probably no problem in the analysis of action systems which would not be greatly clarified by a better understanding

of symbolism.  Motivation in particular will be better understood as a knowledge of symbolism advances. Indeed, there is much to be said for the view that the importance of culture is almost synonomous with the importance of what in motivational terms are sometimes called "symbolic processes."  There is at the very least an intimate connection. 

 

                Second, it is important to press forward with systematic structural classification of types and their component elements, in all three types of system.  The bearing of this task on the structural-functional character of the theory of action should be clear.  Our dynamic generalizations have to be formulated

relative to their structural setting.  The present state of knowledge does not allow the establishment of dynamic generalizations which both cut across many different social and personality structures and are sufficiently concrete to be very helpful in the solution of concrete problems.  Thus we may say that "in the long run only behavior which is adequately rewarded will tend to persist," but if we do not concretely know what the reward structure and its relation to the value and role structure of the requisite social system are,

this helps us very little.  Indeed it may get us into a great deal of trouble if we tacitly assume that the concrete rewards of our society will exist in another society.  Only when we know what the concrete reward system is does the generalization become useful.  We cannot rest content with a pure ad hoc empiricism in this respect. 

 

                We must try to systematize the relations between different types of reward systems which means systematizing the classification of the cultures and social structures within which the rewards are given. 

This is the most promising path to the extension of the empirical relevance of generalizations from the one structural case to families of structural cases.  It is the way to transcend the "structural particularism" of the particular personality, the particular culture, or the particular social structure.  We think that some of the

procedures we have proposed provide starting points for such classificatory systematization, and that further work in this direction is likely to be productive. 

 

Conclusion 243

 

                The development of a classification of types of structures is necessary particularly for the elaboration of middle principles, that is, propositions of lower ranges of generality (and consequently greater concreteness).  The working out of a typology of structures will enable us to know what we are holding constant in our concrete investigations into middle principles.  And it will also make much more feasible the absolutely indispensable unification of theory of the present level of generality and theory on the level of middle principles. 

 

                Finally, the last direction of development has been emphasized so often that it does not need to be extensively discussed again.  This is the dynamic analysis of the role or role-constellation where value pattern, social structure, and personality come together.  This, without doubt, is the most strategic point at which to attempt to extend dynamic knowledge in such a way that it will promise a maximum of fruitful general results for the theory of action.  The establishment of the crucially strategic place of this complex should not, however, lead one to underestimate the difficulty of the theoretical problems surrounding it. 

 

                It has repeatedly been pointed out that this difficulty above all derives from the undoubted fact that in spite of the basic structural homology of personalities and social systems, the two are not directly, reciprocally translatable.  This translation can be accomplished only through certain "transformation equations," of which unfortunately many constituents are still unknown.  The basic grounds of this difficulty have been explored at various points in the course of the foregoing analysis.  Among other things this anal-

ysis provides canons of criticism of the various oversimplified solutions of the problem which are current. But in addition to attaining critical vantage points, real progress has been made in defining the nature of the problems, and here and there is a glimmer of positive insight. It may confidently be hoped that Intensive and competent work toward pushing forward this frontier of our knowledge should yield results of some value. Here, above all, the resources of modern social science can be mobilized for the task of extending and

ordering our knowledge of human conduct.