Time Budgets of Human Behavior (review)

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1939_September-p 0001
Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, Time Budgets of Human Behavior. By P. A. Sorokin and C. Q. Burger. ("Harvard Sociological Studies," Vol. XL) Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. Pp. xi+104. Si.so. The authors set themselves the important and difficult task of getting continuous 24-bour records of human behavior—what people do (that takes at least five minutes), how long each overt activity takes them, why they do it, with whom they do it, and how well they can predict this behavior a day, a week, or a month in advance. The sample of some four-thousand anonymous records finally used (4 per cent of the schedules sent out) constitutes the two to four weeks behavior of approximately one hundred white-collar W.P.A. workers who were predominantly single, white, of long residence, female (79 per cent), and young (60 per cent between seventeen and twenty-three).Since the records were kept in the participant's own words, the analysis
1939_September-p 0002
Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, of each type of data (activities, motives, social setting) is based on classifications drawn up by the authors. This analysis consists of computing, for each of these categories, such quantitative indices as "average time spent per participant per day" or "percentage of cases participating," by age, sex, and "selected days of the week" subsamples. Empirical generalizations are, then, drawn from this mass of quantitative data. Some of these are: "Sleep is an inelastic activity" (p. 35); "In certain activities a particular motive appears to be dominant though neither unique nor exclusive" ("monarchical" motivation) (pp. 100, no); "Certainactivities show a tendency for the average amount of time spent to increase as the number of other people involved increases" (p. 151); "Each day has its own physiognomy in the behavior of the individual—" (p. 84).The reader will wish that the authors had stopped here instead of drawing the far-reaching implications for social theory found in chapters viii, x, and xiv. In each of these chapters they claim that the data cast serious doubts on a very wide range of modern social theories and lend support to the senior author's theory in Social and Cultural Dynamics. The sample does not seem adequate for this, nor is this reader convinced that these implications are wholly derived from the data or wholly derivable from them. For example, on pages 77-78 it is claimed that the data on activities "call into question" (a) all monistic theories of human behavior, (ft) the "theories which contend that all factors except the physiological and economic are negligible," (c) all "psychological theories which consider behavior as a result of purely 'emotional/ 'affective/ 'hedonistic,' *sexual/ or 'physiological' drives/' (J) "the speculative theories of various residues of human activities." At the same time these data are said to support Professor Sorokin's "theory of the overwhelming sensate character of contemporary man." The summary table on overt activities (p. 76), used for these conclusions, shows that "physiological needs" take n hours 13 minutes per person per day, "economic activities" 7 hours 3 minutes, "pleasurable" 1 hour 31 minutes, "intellectual" x hour a$ minutes, "societal" 1 hour si minutes, "artistic" ij minutes, "love and courting" 9 minutes, "religion" 8 minutes. The authors, when criticizing the other theories, interpret this table as showing that "each of the eight classes of activities occupies a notable place in the human behavior of the sample," whereas in supporting Professor Sorokin's the-ory, they lay stress on the bet that "the bulk of the human activities of our group is made up of physical need and ecooomic activities," which are, of course, sensate, hedonistic, utilitarian, but which are at the same time the categories of the foregoing (ft)-group of theories under attack.
1939_September-p 0003
Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, Furthermore, it seems undoubtedly true that if such a study of activities were done on any other culture, now or in the past (sensate, idealistic, or what not), that "physical need and economic activities" would be found to consume as large a part of the day, if not larger, and be represented by as high a percentage of the people, if not higher, as they do in modern "sensate" culture represented by this urban Boston sample. Similar poorly founded implications are drawn for social action on pages 56-57, and for social theory in chapter* z and xiv.Furthermore, the reader cannot help but be confused by the not infrequent inconsistencies, arithmetical and otherwise, which the reviewer found during only one fairly careful reading; e.g., the table on psge 46 contains inconsistencies with pages 37,45, and 191 in arithmetic and in the classification of activities; appendexes are referred to on pages 5 and 7 which are not to be found; the actual number of schedules used b nowhere to be found, although we have estimated it to be either 4,108 or 4,112 on the basis of Table A, Table 1, and chapter xiii; "civic" activities have five cases in Table 1, none in Table a, and four in Tables 3 and 4; percentages are given in three forms—in round numbers, to the nearest tenth, or with a plus sign to show "more than."A final criticism is that the classifications of activities and motives (pp. 28-32, 92-93) are not convincing even though the difficulty of the task is granted. The categories are not mutually exclusive enough nor is it easy to find a unitary classifying principle. The study would also benefit by a more detailed discussion of data reliability in one place than is found on page 4.That the analysis gives the impression of being hurried and at times too grandiose for the data is unfortunate, as the problems, research plan, and the raw data themselves are of considerable importance. Raymond V. Bowers University of Rochester