In a complex world overloaded with stimuli, how does the individual manage to maintain the integrity of the self while responding to inherently contradictory demands for behavior? A broad theory, of a multiequal institutional world in which no single institution dominates, is presented. Each individual can find one or more central life interests within a single institution in which to invest the bulk of affective energies. All other behaviors are enacted as required behaviors with a minimum of affect invested in them. Through this duality of response the contradictory demands on behavior among several institutions can be mediated. The sociopsychological mechanisms underlying these dual responses are set forth. It is concluded that the social world of the person, however complex, can be ordered through the operation of central life interests, to maintain self-integrity even while behaving in contradictory ways.
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One of my students undertook a unique attempt to study empirically Mead's “taking the role of the other”—one of the basic ideas underlying central life interests. See: O'Toole, Richard and Robert Dubin 1968“Baby feeding and body sway: An experiment in George Herbert Mead's ‘taking the role of the other”. J. of Personality and Social Psychology10: 59–65
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The idea of the multiequal institutional complex was first set forth in: DubinRobert1973“Work and non-work: Institutional perspectives,” in DunnetteM. D. (ed.) Work and Non-work in the Year 2001. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole
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My general approach to theory construction as employed in this article is treated in detail in: DubinRobert1978Theory Building. New York: Free Press
