A Theory of Value

together with interpretations of the differences found among them. When respondents are selected as a representative sample of the larger population that constitutes a society or sub-society, this procedure would seem to be appropriate for determining the values and ideologies of the entire culture, provided that each individual's moral ideals are given equal weight in the total. However, if the group's culture is defined, not by reference to the shared psychological attributes of its members, but as an external system of ideas and cultural products, then the present assessment procedure is inadequate. Given the latter definition of culture, values and ideologies should be determined from direct assessment of relevant cultural products, such as language, art forms, mass communications, and other patterned behaviors. Unfortunately, studies of such external culture have provided little in the way of explicit guidance for the definition of the relevant population of events or for sampling in such a way as to represent faithfully that which they purport to measure. The provision of such explicit procedures would open the way for investigations concerning the degree of correspondence between culture, as psychologically defined, and culture as an extra-individual system.