ABSTRACT
To deal with the tension between ideal and reality conceptually, there are two possible polar attitudes toward values. The interviewer must always remember that cynicism may underlie a perfunctory idealism. In many situations, interviewees perceive him as a potentially dangerous person and, fearing lest he discover secrets better kept from the outside world, resort to the "official line" in order to keep his inquisitiveness at bay in a polite way. In interviewing medical students, the difficulty does not lie in eliciting cynical attitudes; such statements are likely to be made without much help from the interviewer. The technical moral to be drawn is perhaps that one might best assume that interviewees have both varieties of feelings about the values underlying the social relationships under study and be aware of and consciously manipulate those elements of role and situation which give promise of eliciting one sentiment or the other.
