Parson's Pattern Variables

Talcott Parson came up with a set of concepts known as pattern variables that compared relationships in different cultures throughout the social system. The five pattern variables are as described as I saw it below:

• Affectivity-affective neutrality: Actors who are affective show emotion such as love, laughter, happiness, and anger. Actors who are affectively neutral are serious and hide their emotions from other people. i.e. based on culture, Americans tend to be more affective, and Asians tend to be more affectively neutral. Americans speak with dramatization, and Asians speak more monotone.

• Diffuseness-specificity: diffusion is basically expecting that your significant other is going to do ‘this’ or ‘that’ for you or act towards you in a certain way without any question. These are actors who have been dating for a long time, are married, or are considered hopeless romantics. Specificity is where you expect little out of the relationship and are perfectly content with that for the time being. An example of this could be actors who have just started dating or even actors who are friends with benefits.

• Universalism-particularism: Universalism is based more on a particular set of rules that is set by society or entrepreneurs. Particularism is focused more on the relationships they have with their family or friends and not just on the basic rules of society. The workers and corporate of Taco Bell don’t care that they are feeding you garbage, it is just a job to them; this is considered universalism. Owners and workers of vegan restaurants care about what people eat and care that they stay healthy, they are particular.

• Achievement-ascription: Actors who experience achievement know what it’s like to have worked really hard in their lifetime to be recognized for it. Actors with an ascribed status may get free rides for some things in their life and may not have to try as hard. An example could be a white, middle class American getting into UW-Madison and achieving their goal because they got a 3.8 GPA in high school and a 28 on the ACT. A middle class African American got accepted into the same school with a 3.0 GPA and a 21 on his ACT because of his ascribed characteristics.

• Collectivity-self orientation: When the actor does what he thinks is in his best interest, that’s self orientation, he puts himself before anyone else. Being collectively orientated is when the actor thinks about the other people’s best interests and not just his own. Someone who is self orientated in a relationship will do what he thinks is best for him alone and not his significant other. Someone who is collectively orientated in a relationship will decide his future while keeping his significant other in mind.