The same social adaptation signals health to one research tradition and conformity to another.

Evidence

But there was no overlooking the fact that the authors of the Chicago study did not share the Berkeley group’s critical views of society, and that they regarded the ability to take part in the American way of life as a sign of a well-developed personality, while for the authors of the Berkeley study this was a sign of conforming to a society which was full of failures and injustices and therefore a breeding-ground for prejudice. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 451

Categorization

• DEFINE: Crystallizes the split between the Chicago school’s adjustment model and the Berkeley group’s critique-of-society model of personality.
• DEEPTHINKING: The whole methodological dispute turns on whether successful assimilation is evidence of well-being or of a damaged society reproducing itself — a claim about the relation of individual psychology to social order.