Attitudes in Ventura Vary Little in 40 Years : Lifestyles: A psychologist who studied the area’s small-town society in 1951 says the pace is now faster, but that much has remained the same.

Four decades ago, a Columbia University social psychologist selected Ventura for a study designed to compare small-town attitudes in California to those in East Coast communities.

One finding of the 1951 study was that Ventura society showed no sharply defined social or economic classes compared to other communities studied.

The psychologist who conducted that study liked the area so much that he decided to move back to Ventura this year to spend his retirement.

And today, at the age of 85, S. Stansfeld Sargent says he believes that the attitudes that distinguished Ventura 40 years ago are relatively unchanged.

There has been some stratification of Ventura in neighborhoods reflecting economic status, Sargent said in a recent interview.

But Ventura residents still “take a more egalitarian view” of life than inhabitants of many areas in the United States.

Sargent and his wife, Virginia, returned to Ventura in January.

He has had several months to explore just how much society here has changed since he embarked upon his research.

A native of Philadelphia, Sargent was not a complete stranger when he arrived here in 1951.

About 25 years earlier, he and a college friend hitchhiked across the country and worked for two weeks picking apricots in Simi Valley.

After that adventure, Sargent graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania and went on to earn his doctorate in psychology at Columbia. He joined Columbia’s faculty in 1940.

To be sure, Sargent said, there have been dramatic changes in Ventura since the study was completed.

Most easily seen is the city’s dramatic growth from about 16,000 to 94,000 residents and the resulting proliferation of high-priced housing.

“The pace is faster than it was,” he said. But, interestingly, much has remained the same, he added.

Unlike some of its urban neighbors to the south, Sargent said, Ventura’s air “is still fresh, the climate agreeable, the traffic well-controlled.”

People’s attitudes have also remained relatively constant, he believes.

While conducting his 1951 study from an office in a tiny duplex on the sand at Pierpont Beach, Sargent found 40 years ago that Ventura residents showed few signs of social or economic class distinctions compared to other cities he had studied.

“Class is how people see themselves,” Sargent said.

“Ventura had very little class distinction. More so than in Eastern communities, people saw themselves as middle class.”

In fact, he noted in his study, not only did Ventura residents not think in terms of class distinction, they “seemed puzzled by the meaning of ‘class’ when this word was used in the interview.”

The 1951 study concluded:

“Not accustomed to thinking of Ventura in terms of social structure, (the average Ventura resident) admits, when pressed, that social classes certainly exist, but adds that class distinction is less than in other places.

“At least there isn’t much talk about it, and differences are less than they used to be.”

Ventura today, as in 1951, Sargent maintains, is still largely “a middle-class community and does not have the extremes of other cities” in terms of great wealth and abject poverty.

While Sargent concedes that the decline of both the oil industry and local agriculture during the past 40 years has paved the way for a more affluent work force, he still believes that in modern-day Ventura “economic extremes are nevertheless narrow.”

The city’s broad middle class shows a healthy mix of occupations from professionals to artists, he said.

Sargent, who was an associate professor of psychology at Columbia, spent a year on the 1951 study, which was funded by the university.

He interviewed about 200 Ventura residents, randomly selected from the city’s census data.

Those who consented to talk with Sargent were interviewed in their homes for at least an hour.

“I had long been interested in differences among communities” in terms of how strictly they were divided between blue- and white-collar classes, he said.

Historically, he said, there has been less class structure in Western communities than in Eastern cities.

The typical Ventura resident, Sargent said in his conclusions, “thinks of himself as hard working, a respectable member of the great middle or working class. . . . Believes firmly in the American way of life. . . . Seems relatively free from hatred and aggression.”

Among the impressions that stood out from his experience in Ventura, Sargent wrote that “Venturans really like their city. Most of them would rather live in it than anywhere else in the world.”

“I suspect that might be true today,” he said.

But, then, as a professional academic who has not retested the waters, he added, “I’m not sure.”