Commitment and Conformity in the American College

• Published in: Journal of social issues 1967-07, Vol.23 (3), p.34-51
• Main Authors: Trent, James W., Craise, Judith L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: America/American/Americans; California/Californian/ Californians; College/Colleges/Collegians; Commitment/Commitments; Conform/Conforming/Conformist/ Conformists/ Conformity; Student/Students
• ISSN: 0022-4537; 1540-4560
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1967.tb00585.x

4 major hyp's explored are that (1) although diff forms of discontent may be observed among current Coll students across the nation, the committed & informed intellectual dissent that takes the form of student activism characterizes only a small minority of students in a few academically elite Coll's & U's; (2) that pol'al & soc apathy, conformity to established norms & lack of intellectual interests, appear to be as characteristic of most Coll students of this generation as of students in the past; (3) that activists as a group are higher in intellectual disposition & autonomy than are other students, esp those in applied fields; & yet, that (4) youths who persist in Coll on the whole develop in traits more characteristic of activists than do their peers who do not attend Coll. Data from a variety of sources are used to test these hyp's, including: a review & analysis of relevant res & a direct comparison of standard mean/average scores obtained from Omnibus Personality Inventory scale data on a selected group of Berkeley Free Speech Movement members at the U of California, 1965 Berkeley seniors, & a nat'l group of Coll persisters & nonColl peers drawn from a sample of nearly 10,000 HSch graduates across the country, as well as an account of the responses of this nat'l group to selected items on a multiple-choice questionaire & an open-ended interview. Student activists are the most autonomous & intellectually disposed of all the groups compared. Further, an analysis by major of the nat'l Coll sample alone shows that students in the applied & professional fields are even less intellectually disposed & autonomous than liberal arts majors, who themselves do not begin to approach the greater development of these traits shown by student activists. When the nat'l Coll sample is compared to the group not attending Coll at all, however, they score signif'ly higher on both intellectual disposition & autonomy than the nonColl group. Since these are precisely the traits which to a more intense degree distinguish student activists from other Coll students, questions are raised concerning the role Coll's can play in the further development of these traits among their students. Modified AA.