ABSTRACT
Patterns of value-orientation have been singled out as the most crucial cultural elements in the organization of systems of action. It has been made clear at a number of points above that value-orientation is only part of what has been defined as culture. Concrete orientations and concrete interactions are events in time and space. Within the personality these orientations and interactions are grouped according to the need-dispositions denoting tendencies which the concrete orientations and interactions exhibit. As compared with cognitive symbols the primary reference of the orientations involved in cathectic symbols is more inward toward the affective state which accompanies the orientation than outward toward the properties of the object oriented to. It is in the evaluative synthesis of cognitive and cathectic modes of orientation that the major lines of the patterns of value-orientation of a system of action emerge. Value-orientations elaborated into cultural patterns possess the potentiality of becoming the common values of the members of a collectivity.
