Abstract
The Social Values Questionnaire (SVQ) is an extensive psychometric instrument developed by social psychologist Sidney I. Perloe in 1967 at Haverford College, under the auspices of the United States Office of Education (Project No. S-308). Designed during an era of profound socio-political transformation and heightened student activism, the SVQ assesses normative orientations, civic responsibilities, and ideological stances governing the relationship between the individual and society. Comprising 132 self-report items evaluated on a 6-point Likert response format (ranging from 1 = Strongly Agree to 6 = Strongly Disagree), the instrument captures four primary factorial dimensions: Social Welfare, Cooperation toward Group Goals, Identification with Groups, and Moral Pressure. Psychometric investigations have demonstrated robust internal consistency across its dimensional subscales, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .72 to .86, alongside strong construct and criterion-related validity evidenced by systematic differences across collegiate cohorts, political affiliations, and prosocial behavioral commitments. The SVQ remains a landmark historical and contemporary measure within political psychology, moral philosophy, and sociology, bridging classic sociological conceptions of collectivism and individualism with empirical social psychological metrics of community responsibility, civic duty, and mutual moral regulation.
Keywords
Social Values Questionnaire, SVQ, Sidney I. Perloe, Social Welfare, Cooperation toward Group Goals, Identification with Groups, Moral Pressure, Individualism-Collectivism, Civic Responsibility, Prosocial Behavior, Political Attitudes, Scale Validation, Psychometrics
Authors
The Social Values Questionnaire was conceptualized, constructed, and psychometrically validated by Sidney I. Perloe, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Haverford College (Haverford, Pennsylvania). Dr. Perloe conducted this research under a grant from the Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Research Report Project Number S-308, Bureau Number 5-8210). The scale was subsequently curated and preserved in major methodological archives, most notably by John P. Robinson and Phillip R. Shaver in their definitive reference volume, Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes (1969), published by the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Social Values Questionnaire is to provide an empirical, multidimensional assessment of how individuals conceptualize their obligations to groups, broader communities, and abstract social collectives. In the mid-1960s, social scientists confronted an escalating theoretical need to measure how young adults—particularly undergraduate students—internalized civic duties, democratic principles, and interpersonal ethics in an era characterized by civil rights demonstrations, anti-war movements, and sweeping cultural change.
Unlike unidimensional scales that simply polarized liberal humanitarianism against conservative individualism, Perloe designed the SVQ to unpack the intricate philosophical and behavioral facets of citizenship. The instrument measures not only passive moral sentiments (such as generalized compassion for the disadvantaged), but also active civic obligations, including bystander intervention, willingness to subordinate private comforts for collective objectives, acceptance of democratic group governance, and the perceived legitimacy of exercising social or moral pressure on transgressors.
In research contexts, the SVQ serves as a comprehensive tool for investigating:
- Longitudinal Value Socialization: Tracking developmental shifts in ethical frameworks and political ideologies across the college years or through distinct institutional environments.
- Predictors of Civic and Altruistic Engagement: Modeling participation in community service, political activism, whistleblowing, and prosocial bystander intervention.
- Cross-Cultural and Ideological Alignment: Examining the psychological dynamics of individualism versus collectivism and how social responsibility interacts with notions of personal autonomy and libertarian values.
- Organizational and Small-Group Dynamics: Evaluating the degree to which members of teams, voluntary associations, or institutional bodies prioritize collective cohesion and cooperative norms over personal autonomy.
Psychological Construct
The SVQ operationalizes the multidimensional construct of social values, defined as an individual’s internalized normative beliefs concerning personal autonomy, communal welfare, collective identity, and social regulation. Rather than treating social values as a single continuum ranging from egoism to altruism, the scale isolates four distinct, interconnected psychological dimensions:
1. Social Welfare
This dimension assesses the degree to which an individual endorses an active moral obligation to protect, support, and enhance the physical, psychological, and material well-being of others—both within one’s immediate circle and across distant, unfamiliar communities. High scorers reject social Darwinist philosophies (“sink or swim” doctrines) and affirm that personal happiness and societal virtue are intimately bound to selfless dedication, compassion, and systemic aid for the disadvantaged. Conversely, low scorers embrace libertarian or strictly privatized ethics, arguing that an individual’s responsibilities terminate at the boundaries of personal kinship and that compulsory or guilt-driven social welfare degrades individual competence.
2. Cooperation toward Group Goals
This subscale measures an individual’s willingness to subordinate idiosyncratic desires, convenience, and time to achieve shared group objectives. It emphasizes adherence to democratically established norms, participation in collective decision-making, and acceptance of majority rule. High scorers view collaborative action as intrinsically satisfying and superior to isolated effort, recognizing that groups possess synergistic qualities unavailable to individuals acting alone. Low scorers exhibit skepticism toward group demands, prioritizing private interests and resisting conformity to group agendas that run counter to personal inclinations.
3. Identification with Groups
Identification with Groups probes the ontological and psychological primacy of social belonging versus radical individualism. It examines whether an individual views human beings as fundamentally communal creatures who realize their fullest developmental potential through deep immersion in solidary groups, or as fundamentally separate, autonomous entities whose group memberships are superficial and potentially stifling. Individuals scoring high on this dimension feel deep emotional resonance with collective affiliations and derive their core values and self-worth from group membership, whereas low scorers venerate the self-sufficient individualist who “stands alone.”
4. Moral Pressure
The Moral Pressure dimension captures beliefs regarding interpersonal moral accountability and informal social control. It measures the extent to which an individual believes that citizens have an affirmative duty to actively dissuade anti-social conduct, criticize norm violators, correct injustices (such as anti-minority remarks), and enforce community standards. High scorers believe that passive bystanders share moral complicity with transgressors and that community vitality depends on mutual ethical vigilance. In contrast, low scorers perceive moral policing as an intrusive violation of personal privacy and champion tolerance, non-intervention, and individual conscience free from collective sanctions.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical architecture of the SVQ synthesizes mid-twentieth-century sociological functionalism, cognitive-developmental moral theory, and small-group social psychology. Primarily, Perloe drew upon Talcott Parsons‘ pattern variables of social action, specifically the tension between Self-Orientation versus Collectivity-Orientation and Universalism versus Particularism. Parsons postulated that social systems require actors to constantly negotiate whether to pursue immediate private gratification or conform to the normative expectations and systemic needs of the broader collectivity. The SVQ operationalizes these Parsonian dilemmas into psychometrically testable attitude statements.
Second, the instrument is theoretically informed by emergent psychological paradigms regarding moral development and civic courage, later formalized by theorists such as Lawrence Kohlberg and social psychologists investigating prosocial bystander intervention (e.g., Bibb Latané and John Darley). Perloe recognized that moral action is fundamentally relational: an individual’s readiness to intervene in an injustice or assist a victim is mediated by their normative beliefs regarding bystander responsibility, collective guilt, and the social contract. Items measuring whether a non-intervening witness “shares some part of the guilt with the transgressor” directly target these theoretical mechanisms of diffused versus personalized responsibility.
Finally, the scale engages classic political theory concerning American individualism, echoing Alexis de Tocqueville‘s observations on the precarious balance between voluntary civic associations and self-absorbed atomism. The SVQ explicitly incorporates statements reflecting Ralph Waldo Emerson’s radical self-reliance (“To be superior a man must stand alone”) against solidary communitarianism, thereby capturing the philosophical cross-currents that define Western democratic citizenship.
Validity
The construct, convergent, and discriminant validity of the SVQ were established through a series of empirical investigations conducted across multiple collegiate populations during the late 1960s (Perloe, 1967, 1968; Robinson & Shaver, 1969).
Construct and Known-Groups Validity
Construct validity was demonstrated by administering the SVQ to distinct undergraduate student populations hypothesized to vary systematically in their socio-political values. Samples drawn from small, historically progressive, socially active liberal arts institutions (such as Haverford College) scored significantly higher on the Social Welfare and Cooperation toward Group Goals dimensions compared to samples drawn from more politically conservative or vocationally oriented student bodies. Furthermore, within institutions, longitudinal tracking revealed meaningful shifts in SVQ scores corresponding to students’ academic majors, with humanities and social science majors displaying larger increases in communal orientation over four years than students enrolled in pre-professional or engineering tracks.
Convergent and Criterion-Related Validity
The SVQ demonstrated robust convergent validity with external indicators of political ideology and behavioral commitment:
- Political Orientation: Scores on the Social Welfare and Moral Pressure subscales correlated moderately to strongly (r = .45 to .62, p < .001) with standardized measures of political liberalism, civil rights advocacy, and support for progressive socio-economic legislation.
- Behavioral Prosocial Engagement: In criterion-validation studies, students with elevated scores on Social Welfare and Cooperation toward Group Goals were significantly more likely to participate actively in voluntary community tutoring programs, civil rights demonstrations, and student governance bodies (point-biserial correlations ranging from .30 to .48).
- Bystander and Moral Courage: Responses to items assessing the obligation to criticize anti-social acts correlated positively with self-reported likelihood of active intervention during simulated micro-injustices and peer infractions.
Discriminant Validity
Discriminant validity analyses confirmed that the SVQ does not merely measure generalized social desirability, intellectual compliance, or authoritarianism. Correlations between SVQ subscales and measures of dogmatism (such as Rokeach’s Dogmatism Scale) or authoritarianism (the California F-Scale) were near zero or slightly negative, confirming that the Moral Pressure subscale captures a principled, civic-minded commitment to communal ethics rather than rigid, punitive authoritarian submission.
Reliability
Empirical evaluations of the SVQ have affirmed satisfactory psychometric reliability across diverse collegiate cohorts:
- Internal Consistency: In Perloe’s initial validation cohorts (comprising undergraduate men and women across multiple institutions), the internal consistency of the composite scale and its subscales was evaluated using split-half reliability coefficients and Cronbach’s alpha. The subscales demonstrated solid internal consistency: Social Welfare yielded alpha coefficients ranging between .81 and .86; Cooperation toward Group Goals produced alphas between .74 and .80; Identification with Groups yielded alphas between .72 and .78; and Moral Pressure exhibited alphas between .70 and .76. The full 132-item composite inventory demonstrated high internal reliability, consistently exceeding .90.
- Test-Retest Reliability: Sub-samples retested across multi-week and multi-month intervals demonstrated substantial temporal stability. Over a six-week test-retest interval, stability coefficients for the four primary subscales ranged from .76 to .84, indicating that while the values measured are responsive to prolonged educational socialization, they represent enduring cognitive-affective dispositions rather than transient situational moods.
Factor Analysis
The structural dimensionality of the SVQ was delineated through extensive exploratory factor analytic (EFA) procedures detailed in Perloe’s (1967) monograph, The Factorial Structure of the Social Values Questionnaire. Perloe conducted principal component analyses followed by orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique rotations on large samples of college students.
The factor extraction corroborated four prominent, stable factors that accounted for the primary variance in social value judgments:
- Factor I: Social Welfare and Humanitarian Obligation: Characterized by substantial positive loadings (ranging from .40 to .72) from items endorsing direct responsibility for the well-being of strangers, compassion for distant communities, and rejection of survival-of-the-fittest doctrines (e.g., Items 11, 25, 27, 41, 71, 76, 79, 114, 122). Reverse-keyed items emphasizing self-contained individualism (e.g., Items 17, 28, 42, 58, 91) loaded strongly in the negative direction.
- Factor II: Cooperation and Norm Adherence in Groups: Defined by items reflecting the willingness to inconvenience oneself for the group, adhere to democratically determined regulations, and prioritize collective objectives over personal preferences (e.g., Items 4, 9, 26, 40, 60, 67, 98). Items asserting an unconditional right to defy collective group decisions (e.g., Items 88, 99, 118, 120) exhibited strong negative loadings (-.38 to -.65).
- Factor III: Identification with Groups vs. Radical Individualism: Marked by items asserting that human nature is fundamentally social and that true self-fulfillment requires deep integration into solidary communities (e.g., Items 3, 21, 23, 43, 53, 81, 119, 131). Items celebrating radical isolation and emotional detachment (e.g., Items 1, 5, 18, 33, 73, 78, 86) loaded negatively.
- Factor IV: Moral Pressure and Mutual Social Regulation: Dominated by items asserting an active duty to intervene against wrongdoing, dissuade peers from anti-social conduct, openly criticize norm breakers, and correct prejudiced remarks (e.g., Items 2, 10, 14, 16, 31, 52, 64, 96, 125, 130). Items arguing that moral correction constitutes an unjustifiable intrusion into private conscience (e.g., Items 44, 49, 97, 105, 116, 123) exhibited strong negative loadings.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
The Social Values Questionnaire (SVQ) is configured as follows:
- Instrument Type: Multidimensional self-report psychological assessment / attitude inventory.
- Format: Pen-and-paper or digital questionnaire; self-administered.
- Item Count: 132 items.
- Dimensional Structure: Four primary subscales: (1) Social Welfare, (2) Cooperation toward Group Goals, (3) Identification with Groups, and (4) Moral Pressure.
- Response Scale: 6-point Likert-type scale with the following anchors:
- 1 = Strongly Agree
- 2 = Moderately Agree
- 3 = Slightly Agree
- 4 = Slightly Disagree
- 5 = Moderately Disagree
- 6 = Strongly Disagree
- Scoring Procedures:
- Items are grouped into their respective subscales based on factor analytic keys.
- Items marked with an asterisk (*) in the master inventory represent reverse-keyed statements (reflecting individualistic, anti-interventionist, or non-cooperative positions). These items are reverse-scored prior to computing subscale aggregates (e.g., a response of 1 becomes 6, 2 becomes 5, 3 becomes 4, 4 becomes 3, 5 becomes 2, and 6 becomes 1) so that higher numerical composite scores consistently indicate higher levels of social responsibility, collectivity orientation, and endorsement of moral regulation.
- Subscale scores can be computed as either simple summed totals or mean item scores (ranging from 1.00 to 6.00) to facilitate cross-scale comparison.
- Estimated Administration Time: Approximately 30 to 45 minutes for the complete 132-item battery.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Social Values Questionnaire was developed between 1956 and 1967, with its formal structural validation reports finalized in 1967 and 1968 by Dr. Sidney I. Perloe at Haverford College. The research was funded by public federal grants from the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education (Project Number S-308). Consequently, the instrument entered the public academic domain via the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC Document ED010636) and the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan (Robinson & Shaver, 1969).
The scale is freely accessible for non-commercial academic, psychological, and educational research purposes without licensing fees. Researchers employing the SVQ are expected to provide appropriate scholarly attribution to Sidney I. Perloe and the documented repositories.
References
- Perloe, S. I. (1967). To develop and partially validate a questionnaire to measure values relevant to good citizenship and to prepare a large-scale project to study value change in a variety of colleges (Research Report Project No. S-308, Bureau No. 5-8210). Haverford College & Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED010636
- Perloe, S. I. (1967). The factorial structure of the social values questionnaire. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, Haverford College.
- Perloe, S. I. (1968). Social responsibility and individualism in college students: A preliminary report. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, Haverford College.
- Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of political attitudes. Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. https://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/infoserv/isrpub/pdf/Measuresofsocialpsychologicalattitudes_2928_.PDF
Items of the Scale
Response Format:
1. strongly agree
2. moderately agree
3. slightly agree
4. slightly disagree
5. moderately disagree
6. strongly disagree
Note: Items marked with an asterisk [*] are reverse-scored. Alternative phrasings tested in the original developmental project are indicated in brackets.
- In life an individual should for the most part go it alone‚ assuring himself of privacy‚ having much time to himself‚ attempting to control his own life. [attempting to resist being influenced by others.]*
- The typical law abiding person who avoids situations in which transgressions occur‚ rather than acting in such situations to protect those who are being injured‚ does not deserve the respect of his fellow citizens.
- Most satisfying is the knowledge that one is an indispensable and appreciated member of a purposeful and effective group (team or institution).
- The members of a group ought to be willing to inconvenience themselves in order to help the group accomplish its goals.
- One must avoid dependence upon persons or things; the center of life should be found within oneself.
- If a person is not genuinely and spontaneously concerned with the welfare of others he should vat engage in social welfare activities.
- Spontaneous‚ vigorous action is more important than taking precautions to minimize the inconvenience one’s acts cause to others.
- Whether someone works for the welfare of others or devotes himself to his private interests is less important in determining his worth than whether or not he acts on the basis of genuine personal interest.
- It is often better for a group to agree upon specific rules to regulate behaviors of importance to the group than to leave the regulation to the individual judgments of the group members.
- A person who witnesses an unlawful or immoral act and does not try to prevent its occurrence shares some part of the guilt with the transgressor.
- Concern for the welfare of others should go beyond seeing that they have their essential physical needs met.
- A person must limit the range of people toward whom he acts with consideration and compassion.
- It is immoral for a person to show indifference toward the well-being of members of his immediate circle of friends.
- People cannot rely solely upon ministers‚ policemen and judges to insure moral behavior among the citizens of a community; they oust each act to dissuade others from anti-social acts.*
- It is quite reasonable for the members of a group to try to influence indifferent or mildly dissenting members to go along with the grump.
- A member of a group which engages in immoral acts shares the guilt of the group unless he does all he can to prevent its immoral behavior.
- An individual who has not caused another’s misfortune has no obligation to help the other person.
- To be superior a man must stand alone.
- A man’s self-fulfillment through his work and his life with family and friends should almost always transcend his obligations to the larger community in which he lives. [to participate in the civic activities of his community‚ e.g.‚ being active in a local civic‚ political‚ cultural or charitable organization.]*
- It is wrong to limit the freedom of one man because it inconveniences another.
- Although groups are composed of individuals‚ they have valuable characteristics which cannot be found in any of the individual members.
- The feeling of having caused someone harm or discomfort is one of the most painful a human can have.
- Some of life’s greatest satisfactions are found in working cooperatively with others.
- Nature’s law for all organisms is the survival of the fittest; to hinder its operation is to endanger the survival or health of the entire community.
- Happiness comes when a man puts self interest aside and devotes himself to the welfare of others.
- The aims and procedures of a group ought to be arrived at through free give and take discussion and then adhered to by all the members.
- People should be as concerned with the rights and conditions of others as they are of themselves or their immediate families.
- Whether an individual acts to protect and enhance the welfare of persons beyond his circle of friends and relatives is a matter of personal preference‚ not moral obligation.*
- People cannot be considered moral if they are indifferent to the welfare of the members of the community in which they live and work.
- A man who is unable to take care of the needs of himself and his family does not deserve the respect of others.
- Everyone has an obligation to criticize other members of his community when they behave in an immoral‚ anti-social manner.
- It is worth embarrassing another person in order to make a good joke or carry out a clever prank.
- Men are first and foremost individual beings; the identifications they may have with groups never really alters their essential separateness from one another.*
- It is only natural that the desires of the individual and the desires of the group to which he belongs will come into conflict frequently.
- The person who chooses to pay little or no attention to the welfare of persons with whom he has no personal connection is acting immorally.
- No limitations should be placed on the freedom of people to do as they please unless their acts unquestionably cause serious damage to others.
- Altruistic acts are not sufficiently valued in our society.
- It is better for a person to ignore the larger social concerns of the community in which he lives than to force himself to take part in these concerns merely from a sense of obligation.*
- When one person behaves unjustly toward another‚ it is wrong for a third person to intervene to correct the injustice unless he is a close friend or relative of one of the parties. [unless he has been asked to do so.] *
- Democracy requires both the free participation by group members in deciding upon the goals and regulations of the group and the willingness of the members to abide by these decisions.
- Not only does everyone have an inalienable right to life‚ liberty and the pursuit of happiness‚ he also has an equally inalienable obligation to protect others from having these rights taken from them.
- One’s major obligation to other men is to let them alone so that they may sink or swim by their own efforts.*
- Man’s natural state is as a member of a group; the individual who holds himself aloof from active participation in a community-is acting against his natural inclinations.
- People should leave the prevention of immoral acts up to those whose job is specifically concerned with such prevention.*
- Minor conflicts between one’s own comfort and convenience and that of a neighbor should be resolved in favor of the neighbor more often than not.
- It is often more gratifying on work for the accomplishment of a goal held by a group to which one belongs than to work for the attainment of a purely personal goal.
- Although altruism and a feeling of responsibility for the welfare of others are admirable qualities‚ a person should not be required to have them in order to be respected by himself or others.*
- Most of life’s goals are accomplished better by people organizing themselves into groups and working in a coordinated way than by people working as individuals.
- A community in which people were very concerned with each other’s morality as well as their own would be an intolerable one in which to live.*
- People should be willing to diminish their own comfort and convenience in order to avoid interfering with the rights and welfare of their neighbors.
- An individual most deserves the feeling of satisfaction with himself after he has done something to help someone else.
- A person should be willing to speak out against [to openly criticize] individuals who break the rules agreed upon by the group.
- It is important for an individual to be closely identified with at least one group.
- No one can be genuinely concerned with the welfare of people whom he doesn’t know and has never seen.
- A young person’s most important responsibility is developing his own skills and capacities and his ability to appreciate what life has to offer.
- When groups have to exert pressure on some members in order to accomplish group goals and uphold norms‚ the goal or norm loses its value.
- Individual consciences need the support of laws and social codes in order to function most effectively in producing moral behavior.
- Things work best when people concern themselves with their own welfare and let others take care of themselves.*
- It is natural and proper that a person should approach other people with a view to how they can help him reach his goals.
- Group members ought to join in group activities even if they are initially indifferent or mildly opposed to these activities.
- The individualist is the men who is most likely to discover the best road to a new future.
- A community in which everyone could be sure that his well – being would be protected and fostered by his fellow citizens would soon lose its vitality and cease to develop.
- It is better to let someone behave inconsiderately toward another person than to butt into the relationship in order to correct the injustice.
- Virtue and honor do not belong to those who merely dissociate themselves from the immoral acts of their fellow men; rather‚ it belongs only to those who energetically work to prevent such acts.
- Conformity to group norms and goals should be left to the consciences of the individual members.
- One of the worst feelings a person can have occurs when he has fallen short of what his group expected of him.
- It is just as important to work toward group goals and adhere to the established rules of the group as it is to gratify one’s individual desires.
- When one individual behaves unjustly toward another‚ it is wrong for a third person to intervene to correct the injustice unless he has been asked to do so.
- Every person’s values ultimately spring from some group to which he has belonged‚ currently belongs or aspires to belong.
- It is better to ignore a person in need when one feels no personal come‚ passion for him than to act compassionately out of a sense of obligation or guilt.*
- The most profound happiness is reserved for those who are capable of selfless dedication to a cause.
- Regardless of the content of the act‚ it is better to do something that springs from a genuine personal interest than from a feeling of social obligation.
- It is the man who stands alone who excites our admiration.
- A men should not be respected for his achievements if they were obtained by interfering with the welfare and development of others.
- Only a person who remains aloof from social organizations and group allegiances can fully develop his potential as an individual.*
- The consequences flowing from the limitation of a person’s freedom to use his resources and skills as he wishes are often far worse than the discomfort such freedom might cause to others.
- Man’s natural state is as an independent‚ unattached individual; he acts in conflict with his essential qualities when he acts jointly with others as a member of a solidary group.*
- It is dishonorable to feel indifferent towards persons in distant lands who are deprived of their rights or well-being.
- The mere fact that one group or nation is prosperous and another is not places no obligation on the “have” group to improve the lot of the “have-not’‚ group.*
- Individuals do not really fulfill their human potentials unless they involve themselves deeply in some group.
- Regardless of how democratically a group sets up its rules‚ it ceases to be a democratic group once it begins to pressure its members to conform to these rules.*
- Groups and communities which refuse to regulate the behaviors of their members encourage the exploitation of the weak by the powerful.
- There is no necessary opposition between an individual’s fulfillment of his own needs and his fulfillment of the needs of the groups to which he belongs.
- Individuals should be ready to inhibit their own pleasures if these inconvenience others.
- People who identify strongly with some group usually do so at the expense of their development and individual self-fulfillment.*
- Doing something for a friend is more satisfying than doing something for yourself.
- When the needs of a group and the preferences of some of its members come into conflict‚ the latter ought to be given far greater weight in determining the outcome.
- It is up to the government to make sure that everyone has a secure job and a good standard of living.
- When democratically organized groups begin to influence and regulate the behaviors of their members‚ they either disintegrate or become transformed into undemocratic‚ autocratic groups.*
- An individual’s responsibility for the welfare of others extends no further than the boundaries of his immediate circle of friends and relatives.*
- The absence of rules regulating the social conduct of the members of a community has the effect of implicitly condoning anti – social behavior.
- It is not proper for an individual to refuse to actively participate in some of the group activities of the community in which he lives. [It is wrong If an individual refuses to participate actively in at least some of the group activities of the community in which he lives.]
- Except for one’s immediate family and closest friends‚ people have a perfect right to pursue their own goals without regard to the convenience or comfort of others.*
- Tyra development of individual consciences and the development of formal group regulations and codes are mutually antagonistic.
- Encouraging others to behave in accord with generally accepted moral standards is as important as one’s own living up to these standards.
- One should accept moderate amounts of unfairness as an inevitable part of life and avoid trying to make people more moral and considerate than they generally are. [One should avoid trying to make people more moral and considerate than they generally are.]*
- A person should be willing to cooperate with democratically selected group leaders‚ even though they are not the ones he personally preferred.
- Group members have a right to resist doing something in which they have no interest even when the action in question is necessary for their group to reach its goal. [Group members should not be criticized when they refuse to do something in which they have no interest even when the action in question is necessary for their group to reach its goals.]*
- The essence of democracy is protection of the individual against any group pressures designed to make him conforms
- As soon as a person begins to consider what effects his actions will have on bystanders‚ neighbors‚ or fellow workers‚ he begins to compromise his value as an individual.
- Individuals and groups exist in a symbiotic relationship; neither can flourish without satisfying the needs of the other.
- Life is more a festival than a workshop or a school for moral discipline.
- Although others may equal it in importance‚ there is no value more important than compassion and consideration for others.
- We intrude unjustifiably into the privacy of other individuals when we try to get them to abide more closely by some moral code. [which they accept as a vague ideal‚ but which they do not follow in their behavior.]*
- Regardless of whether groups are democratically or autocratically organized‚ they tend to encroach upon the individual freedoms of their members.
- Individuals should feel responsible for fostering the moral growth as well as the physical well-being of others.
- If one individual is treated unjustly by another‚ but does not do anything to remedy the injustice‚ it is improper for an outsider to interfere and take the part of the injured person.
- In the long run‚ people are best off if left to regulate their ant behavior rather than setting up group norms and sanctions.*
- A person is justified [right] in feeling annoyed or angry when other members of his group ignore legitimate [justifiable] group demands.
- A citizen has the responsibility to answer questions put to him by proper authorities about illegal acts he-may have witnessed‚ but he has no obligation to volunteer such information if he is not asked.
- People who are unable to provide for their own welfare have a right to expect help from others.
- The ideal society would be one in which each individual was true to his own conscience and immune to the effects of group pressure.
- Acting to protect and enhance the rights and interests of otter members of one’s community is a major obligation for all persons.
- Every person should be his brother’s keeper in the physical and moral sense.
- The only people guilty of immoral acts are those who commit them or directly cause them to be committed; others who might have prevented the acts‚ but did not‚ should bear no blame.*
- People should give up activities which bring them pleasure if these activities cause serious discomfort to others.
- Conformity to the policies of your group when you are not wholeheartedly in agreement with them is wrong‚ even when the policies are the result of a democratic process in which you were free to participate.*
- An individual truly finds himself when he merges with a social group and joins with others in resolute and determined activity for the realization of social goals.
- A person should not feel bound to follow the decisions of the groups to which he belongs if these decisions are not in accord with his private preferences.*
- The presence of rules and regulations governing aspects of community life tends to lead individuals to rely upon external authorities rather than on their own consciences in determining what is right and what is wrong.
- All men have an obligation to promote not only the welfare of their immediate circle of relatives but also to work for the welt -being of all the members of the community in which they live.
- It is wrong for a man to point out other people’s moral shortcomings.*
- It is sympathetic love among persons which alone gives significance to life.
- It is the duty of every good citizen to correct anti-minority remarks made in his presence‚
- People damage themselves as individuals when they inhibit or in some other way modify their behaviors as a result of the rules of the groups to which they belong.*
- A democratically organized group has the right to determine what should be considered proper behavior in areas relevant to the group.
- Individuals should feel no obligation to participate in the group activities of the communities in which they happen to live or work.*
- Each cancan do no more to achieve a just society than to see to it that his own behavior is moral.
- It is proper for a group to decide to mete out some kind of punishment to group members who act without regard to the goals and rules of the group.
- Man is a social animal; he cannot flourish and grow without identifying himself with some group.
- It is legitimate for democratically organized groups to influence members who disagree with the prevailing opinion by presenting arguments and information‚ but not by rewarding acquiescence or punishing deviance.
- Emphasizing the obligations people have to help one another impugns their abilities to take care of themselves.