Milton Rokeach papers

Record Group

Identifier: UA-17.304

Staff Only

Scope and Content

The collection contains manuscript drafts and notes pertaining to Rokeach’s psychological studies and published works, including clinical materials, psychological profiles, doctors’ and nurses’ notes, correspondence, patients’ writings, and transcripts of interviews with patients, all collected in the course of his research. Most of the collection concerns research for his book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. The collection is organized into 8 series: I. Drafts of The Three Christs of Ypsilanti II. Research Materials for the Three Christs project III. Patients’ Letters & Notes of Group Meetings IV. Clinical Patient Observations V. Transcripts of Patient Interviews VI. Notes on Patient Observations (made by research assistants, nurses, medical staff, and Milton Rokeach, including comments on transcripts of group interviews with patients) VII. Drafts of Open and Closed Mind VIII. Drafts of Beliefs, Attitudes and Values.

Dates

Creation: 1957 - 1964

Creator

Rokeach, Milton (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research except where noted.

Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish material from this collection must be obtained from University Archives & Historical Collections, Michigan State University.

Biographical Note

Best known for his work on dogmatism and human values, psychologist Milton Rokeach was born in Poland in 1918 and moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York at age seven. He received a B.A. in Psychology from Brooklyn College in 1941 and an M.A. in Social Psychology from the University of California Berkley in the fall of the same year. Rokeach served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, working as a psychological assistant at Buckley Field. With help from the GI Bill, he worked at the Psychological Testing Unit following the war’s end. He received a Ph.D. from Berkley in 1947 and thereafter moved to East Lansing, Michigan, where he served as professor of Psychology at Michigan State University until 1970. During his time at MSU, Rokeach published some of his best known and highly acclaimed works, including The Open and Close Mind (1960), Beliefs, Attitudes and Values: A Theory of Organization and Change (1968), and The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: A Psychological Study (1964) which was later made into an opera and screenplay. Following his work at MSU, Rokeach served as faculty at the University of Western Ontario from 1970 to 1972, later joining Washington State University from 1972 to 1986. It was during this eight year period at WSU that he published The Nature of Human Values (1973) and Understanding Human Values: Individual and Societal (1979), and was the recipient of an honorary degree from the University of Paris (1984) as well as the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award of the American Psychology Association in 1984. Rokeach joined the faculty at USC in 1986 and was the recipient of the Harold Lasswell Award from the International Society of Political Psychology in 1988. He died on October 25, 1988 in Los Angeles, California.