Massification Versus Differentiation: Some Trend Data from National Surveys

A trend study using responses to questions repeated on American national surveys at intervals of eight or more years does not support the belief that differences in attitudes and behavior among various categories of the population have generally diminished recently. The data indicate that the differences between rural and urban people and between males and females may have diminished moderately but that South-non-South, low-education-high-education, manual-nonmanual, white-nonwhite, and Protestant-Catholic differences probably have increased. A s the author has pointed out in other publications, one of the more common assertions in the social science literature is that differences in attitudes and behavior among various segments of urban-industrial societies are diminishing, that a process of homogenization, standardization, and "massification" is leveling differences by region, race, religion, community size, and social level.1 This leveling, it is assumed, results from common stimuli from the mass media, increased travel, high rates of geographic and social mobility, standardization of education, the decline of subsistence agriculture, and similar influences. As is often the case with widely held beliefs, this one is not fully consistent with much of th relevant empirical evidence. For instance, research by Berger2 and Hamilton3 indicates a remaining wide gap between nmanual and nonmanual workers in the United States in values, tastes, social participation, and political orientation. Hamilton reports similar differences in West Germany,4 and Bonjean reports large differences in a small American industrial conimunity between workers and managers (but not between workers and small businessmen) in "sociopersonality" variables, such as alienatioin, self-esteem, and status concern.5 Schnore,6 and this author and Alston7 present evidence *The author is indebted to the Roper Public Opinion Research Center, the Gallup Organization, and the National Opinion Research Center for permission to use the data presented here; to The University of Texas Research Institute for financial support; and to Jon Alston, Letitia Alston, and Harriet Lesikar for assistance with the data analysis. A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, California, August 1967, under the title of "Cultural Resistance to Mass Society." 1 For example, see Harold M. Hodges, Social Stratification: Class in Aimerica (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1964), pp. 6, 168, and 279; Daniel Bell, The Entd of Ideology (New York: Collier Books, 1961), chap. 1; and Kenneth Boulding, "The Death of the City: A Frightened Look at Post-Civilization," in Oscar Handlin and John Burchard (eds.), The Historian and the City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press and Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 143. 2 Bennett Berger, Working-Class Suburb (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960). 3 Richard F. Hamilton, "The Behavior and Values of Skilled Workers," in Arthur B. Shostak and William Gomberg (eds.), Blute-Collar World (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,