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This study examines the perceived antecedents and consequents of certain concepts that are central to life in the black ghetto and to black and white interactions in job settings, as they are perceived by samples of blacks and whites. This study had two main goals: (a) instrument development; and (b) the gathering of data on subjective culture--that is, the typical ways in which the samples tested perceive their social environment. To reach these goals, it was desirable that as many disparate samples as possible should be used. It was possible to obtain four geographically and demographically distinct samples: (1) white female college students, who filled out the questionnaire as part of a course requirement in an introductory psychology course; (2) black working-class and lower-class high school boys from the Chicago Heights area; (3) white high school boys, working-class and lower class, and some Spanish speaking adult males from Chicago Heights; and, (4) black adult subjects, classified as "hardcore unemployed," from St. Louis, Missouri. Two open-ended elicitation questionnaires were prepared. The instructions to the subjects were "translated" by five black university students into "Black English" and back into standard English to insure that they would be understood by all subjects. (Author/JM)

This exploratory study was directed at an examination of role perceptions among four groups of subjects, two white and two black. The black samples are composed of adult hardcore unemployed men and adolescent boys in a special high school training program. One of the white samples also consisted of adolescents in the same program; the other was constituted from the subject pool of the University of Illinois and includes middle-class college girls. The study was undertaken with the expectation that some of the cross-cultural similarities observed in previous studies would be replicated, but also that much would be learned about the unique ways of role perception within subcultures of the United States. Role behaviors were elicited from members of the subject population by means of an open-ended questionnaire. Stimulus role pairs were obtained by random selection from a list of 27 stimulus persons used in previous research. Each subject was asked to write three behaviors which could occur between the two persons listed. A total of 21 such pairs was used. As in previous research elicitation, questionnaires were "decentered" by asking five black consultants to translate them into "Black English" and back again. The major advantage of the decentered version in standard English is that it contains mostly words that are familiar to ghetto blacks. (Author/JM)

Subjective culture is a cultural group's characteristic way of perceiving its social environment. An important aspect of a social environment are the jobs available for the consideration of an individual. The present study is an exploratory study directed at the examination of job perceptions among a group of white and black adolescents and the hardcore unemployed. This study had two main goals: (a) instrument development, and (b) the gathering of data on subjective culture. To reach these goals it was desirable that as many disparate samples as possible should be used. It was possible to obtain four geographically and demographically distinct samples: (1) white female college students; (2) black working-class and lower-class high school boys from the Chicago Heights area; (3) white high school boys, working-class and lower-class, and some Spanish-speaking adults from Chicago Heights; and, (4) black adult subjects classified as "hardcore unemployed," from St. Louis, Missouri. The purpose of using these samples was to be able to generalize to that situation in which black males with vocational problems try to become integrated in a highly heterogeneous white establishment. White females were used because the investigators felt that they are the best examples of carriers of white middle-class culture, and thus would provide an "extreme-groups" comparison to the black sample. (Author/JM)

The research reported in this document was concerned with determining differences in subjective culture that might be associated with race, sex, social class, and age, and to cross-validate the findings of the previous four reports. Interviewers of the same race and sex as the persons studied were trained for approximately 18 hours using standard procedures, before going into the field. A factorial design was used to generate the types of people sampled. The design consisted of Race (black and white); Social Class (hardcore, working class, middle class), Sex, and Age (18 to 25, or 35 to 45 years old). Ten individuals were studied in each of the 24 cells generated by this design. The hardcore were defined as persons having few skills and little education, who in the opinion of the interviewer could work, but who report that they have not had a job for a year, although they tried to get one. The judgments required were presented in questionnaire form. The 240 persons were asked to make 128 judgments concerning the characteristics of categories of persons; 105 concerning their behavioral intentions toward such persons; 120 judgments concerning their role perceptions; 40 judgments concerning their job perceptions; 90 concerning the antecedent of certain events, and 90 judgments concerning the consequents of these events. (Author/JM)

Subjective culture is a human group's characteristic way of perceiving the man-made part of its environment. It includes the group's model attitudes, norms, values, and roles. The study of subjective culture is likely to make a contribution to our understanding of the way various groups in any culture interact with members of other groups. The present field guide may be useful to persons undertaking such studies. No research program or methodology proceeds without a general meta-theory. We therefore describe some general attributes of the present theoretical framework and some general relations between this framework and the procedures and tests made in the study of subjective culture. The present field guide presents the essential points of the theoretical framework and a discussion of the methodological issues, together with explicit statements and examples of the way subjective culture data might be collected in different cultural settings. It is hoped that the treatment of the methodological issues is sufficiently detailed, here, to allow other investigators to do similar work with cultural groups, or in settings which are easily available to them. The main examples of this field guide were taken from a study of black and white interaction in job settings. The appendices include the questionnaire employed in a study of black and white subjective culture. (Author/JM)

In order to choose among several strategies of cross-cultural training, a standard experimental paradigm is needed to inexpensively generate reliable and valid data. The research presented in this document provides what appears to be such a paradigm. It involves the presentation of intercultural conflict to subjects, under standardized conditions. The responses that the subjects make can be analyzed to determine the effects of different kinds of training on modifications of such responses. This study has several foci: (1) to explore the importance of level of abstraction of disagreement on interpersonal attraction; (2) to examine the importance of the sequence of agreements and disagreements; and, (3) to explore a paradigm which can be used in comparisons of intercultural training. The elements of subjective culture may be organized according to their level of abstraction: At the highest level there are values and at the lowest level there are specific beliefs about the means for reaching specific goals. Intermediate between these two levels are other elements of subjective culture such as norms and roles. One reason for the possibly greater importance of the more abstract of the disagreements is that when there is a disagreement at a high level of abstraction, it automatically implies disagreement at all other levels. (Author/JM)