Milton Rokeach (born in Hrubieszów as Mendel Rokicz, December 27, 1918 – October 25, 1988) was a

Polish-American Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Poles, Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing abou ...

social psychologist. He taught at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

, the

University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a Public university, public research university in London, Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by resident ...

Washington State University Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant unive ...

, and the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

. A '' Review of General Psychology'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Rokeach as the 85th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Early life

Born to Jewish parents in

Hrubieszów Hrubieszów (; uk, Грубешів, Hrubeshiv; yi, הרוביעשאָוו, Hrubyeshov) is a town in southeastern Poland, with a population of around 18,212 (2016). It is the capital of Hrubieszów County within the Lublin Voivodeship. Througho ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, Rokeach emigrated to the United States with his parents at age seven. After graduating from

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

, he received his

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

degree from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, in 1947.

Contributions to psychology

Rokeach conducted a well-known experiment in which he observed the interaction of three mentally ill patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital, each of whom believed he was

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

, from 1959 to 1961. The book he wrote about the experiment, '' The Three Christs of Ypsilanti'', was subsequently adapted into a screenplay, a stage play, two operas and a movie. Rokeach also conducted a mid-20th–century study in the

American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

in which he tried to determine the basis for racial prejudice. He found racial prejudice to be inversely related to socio-economic status and thus concluded that such bias is used in an attempt to elevate one's own status.T.L. Brink. (2008) Psychology: A Student Friendly Approach. "Unit 13: Social Psychology." pp. 30

/ref> His book ''The Nature of Human Values'' (1973) and the

Rokeach Value Survey The Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) is a values classification instrument. Developed by social psychologist Milton Rokeach, the instrument is designed for rank-order scaling of 36 values, including 18 terminal and 18 instrumental values. The task for pa ...

(see

values scales Values scales are psychological inventories used to determine the values that people endorse in their lives. They facilitate the understanding of both work and general values that individuals uphold. In addition, they assess the importance of ea ...

), which the book served as the test manual for, occupied the final years of his career. In it, he posited that a relatively few "terminal

human values In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live ( normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of di ...

" are the internal reference points that all people use to formulate attitudes and opinions, and that by measuring the "relative ranking" of these values one could predict a wide variety of behavior, including political affiliation and religious belief. This theory led to a series of experiments in which changes in values led to measurable changes in opinion for an entire small city in the state of Washington.

Awards

In 1984, Rokeach received the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award of the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...

. In 1988, he received the

Harold Lasswell Harold Dwight Lasswell (February 13, 1902December 18, 1978) was an American political scientist and communications theorist. He earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics and was a PhD student at the University of Chicago. He was ...

Award of the International Society of Political Psychology.

Bibliography

*
The Open and Closed Mind
' (1960) *'' The Three Christs of Ypsilanti'
Google Books Link
(1964) *
Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values: A Theory of Organization and Change
' (1968) *
The Nature of Human Values
' (1973) *
Understanding Human Values: Individual and Societal
(1979)'' *
The Great American Values Test: Influencing Behavior and Belief Through Television
(Ball-Rokeach, S., Rokeach, M., and Grube, J.W.; 1984)''

References

20th-century American psychologists 1918 births 1988 deaths Michigan State University faculty Washington State University faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni Social psychologists Polish emigrants to the United States American people of Polish-Jewish descent Brooklyn College alumni {{US-psychologist-stub