Milton Rokeach

Milton Rokeach (December 27, 1918 – October 25, 1988) was a Polish-American social psychologist. He taught at Michigan State University, the University of Western Ontario, Washington State University, and the University of Southern California.

Early life

Born in Hrubieszów, Poland, Rokeach emigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of seven. After graduation from Brooklyn College, Rokeach received his Ph.D from University of California, Berkeley in 1947.

Contributions to psychology

Rokeach conducted a well-known experiment in which he observed the interaction of three mentally ill patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital - each of whom believed they were Jesus Christ - from 1959-1961. The book he wrote about the experiment, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, was subsequently adapted into a screenplay, a stage play, and two operas.

His book The Nature of Human Values (1973), and the Rokeach Value Survey (see values scales), 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" 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

Rokeach received the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award of American Psychological Association in 1984 and the Harold Lasswell Award from the International Society of Political Psychology in 1988.

Bibliography

• The Open and Closed Mind (1960)
• Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values (1968)
• The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (1964)
• The Nature of Human Values (1973)

Sources

• Psycholigie-Sociale