LEARNING THEORY AND THE ACQUISITION OF VALUESl

The processes by which a child ac-quires the values of his culture and his various overlapping subcultures is, as a recent review of the subject points out (Dukes, 1955), still rather obscure. This obscurity is certainly not due to lack of interest in the topic. Psychol-ogists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, sociologists, pediatricians, and educa-tors have all given attention to the question of how children come to share the attitudes, ideals, and ethical stand-ards of those around them. Nor is this interest undeserved, for few topics are of greater practical importance. Perhaps this very convergence of interest from many directions is partly responsible for the difficulties involved in studying the topic. This area of research has become a battleground for conflicting terminologies, with one term often having a multiplicity of half-distinct meanings, and with what appears to be the same meaning often bearing different labels, Although many terms contribute to this confusion, three are of particular interest here: identification, introjection, and inter-nalization. All involve some relation between an individual, hereinafter de-signated the subject (S), and another person or personalized entity, the model or M, such that 6"s behavior is in some way patterned after M's. However, these terms may refer either to a stat