Milton Rokeach
- Writer
Milton Rokeach was an American social psychologist. He taught at Michigan State University, the University of Western Ontario, Washington State University, and the University of Southern California.
Rokeach is perhaps best known for his book "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti". The book describes and interprets the outcomes from bringing together to confer three men who each believed themselves to be Jesus Christ. Two takeaways from the experiment for Rokeach were observations on the nature of belief systems, as well as the rather crude coping mechanism of simple denial.
Rokeach also conducted a study on racial prejudice in the American South. He found racial prejudice to be inversely related to socioeconomic status, concluding that such bias is used in an attempt to elevate one's own status.
His final years were dedicated to research on human values. His research produced the Rokeach Value Survey, which posits that people use a relatively few "terminal human values" to formulate attitudes and opinions, and these in turn are predictive for a wide variety of behaviors, including political affiliation and religious belief. From this, he conducted experiments on human subjects in which he found that changes in values produced measurable changes in opinion.
Rokeach is perhaps best known for his book "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti". The book describes and interprets the outcomes from bringing together to confer three men who each believed themselves to be Jesus Christ. Two takeaways from the experiment for Rokeach were observations on the nature of belief systems, as well as the rather crude coping mechanism of simple denial.
Rokeach also conducted a study on racial prejudice in the American South. He found racial prejudice to be inversely related to socioeconomic status, concluding that such bias is used in an attempt to elevate one's own status.
His final years were dedicated to research on human values. His research produced the Rokeach Value Survey, which posits that people use a relatively few "terminal human values" to formulate attitudes and opinions, and these in turn are predictive for a wide variety of behaviors, including political affiliation and religious belief. From this, he conducted experiments on human subjects in which he found that changes in values produced measurable changes in opinion.
