ic systems, with the focus on shared values. Animportant concept for the cultural system in socialization, or the process where societal values areinternalized by a society’s members. For Parsons, socialization is an important force inmaintaining social control and holding a society together(Wallace and Wolf 1999). The next levelin Parsons’s scheme is the social system.The social system’s basic unit is “role interaction”, which refers to how individual actorsinteract in relation to their roles in society. Parsons defined the social system as two of moreindividuals, or collectivities, interacting in a situation which has at least a physical ofenvironmental aspect, whose actors are motivated toward personal gratification, and whoserelation to their situations, including each other, is defined and influenced by the cultural system. The basic unit of the personality system is the individual actor, or human. The main focusat this level is on the individual’s “motivation toward gratification,” which Parsons emphasizes inhis definition of the social system. More specifically, the focus is on the needs, motives, andattitudes involved in this “motivation.” This assumption, that people are self-interested or profitmaximizers, is also found in both conflict theory and exchange theory(Wallace and Wolf 1999).For the behavioral organism, the fourth system, the basic unit is the human being in itsbiological sense. By this Parson is referring to the physical aspect of the human person, includingthe physical and organic environment in which the human lives. Parsons is particularly interestedin the organism’s central nervous system and motor activity. His view of socialization is whatmakes the before mentioned systems interrelated. We, according to Parsons, are merely behavioral organisms at birth. It is when a personcomes into contact with society and its members does that p...
