Changes in Student Attitudes Toward Bureaucratic Role Prescriptions During the 1960s

Abstract

Evidence is presented that college students of the late 1960s, as contrasted with those of the early 1960s, had low levels of competitive motivation, and negative attitudes toward authority figures, assuming managerial roles in large bureaucracies, accepting administrative responsibility, and assuming masculine roles. No consistent differences were found in attitude toward assuming a differentiated role or power motivation. The data support an hypothesis that students' attitudes changed, rather than the hypothesis that the addition late in the decade of a small group of students with extreme attitudes accounted for the results. These findings have implications for the study of student activism and for a theory of value-transmission across generations. It appears that the Protestant ethic is declining in influence, but that it is not being replaced by a social ethic.