The Social Psychology of Marriage

Abstract

ject by the artificiality of the experimental situation makes it unnecessary for the observer to attribute much complexity to the subject. It is such a simplified version of learning theory which these social scientists employ and such a simplified picture of the experimental situation to which they compare culture. The crude hedonism which infers reward from overt acts in unconstructed social situations directs attention away from the questions to be answered in understanding individual behavior. These include the relation of the social and psychological aspects of individual behavior, especially the relation of psychological motivation to social role, and the problem of creativeness or change, both social and psychological. To conclude, none of the writers has succeeded in getting beyond supplying new labels for events after they occur. They reason in a circle by inferring drive, cue, and reward from a selected overt act which they call response. As far as these studies are concerned, the analytic identity of culture and training situation has not been established.26