Great question 👌 — you’ve caught the core of Parsons’ thinking.

Parsons framed four systems of action (social, cultural, personality, organismic), but he gave special emphasis to the social system. Here’s why:

🔹 1. Society as His Main Unit of Analysis

• Parsons was a sociologist, not a psychologist or anthropologist.
• He believed that society has its own reality (sui generis), distinct from just individuals (personality) or values (culture).
• The social system organizes individual actions and cultural values into stable, patterned institutions like family, polity, and economy.

🔹 2. Social System as the Mediator

• Personality system = individual motives
• Cultural system = values & norms
• Social system = where they meet in patterned interaction
• Without the social system, values remain abstract and individual motives remain private.
• Example: The value of “honesty” (cultural) and an individual’s desire to be seen as trustworthy (personality) only gain real meaning when expressed in social institutions like contracts, exams, or courts.

🔹 3. Order & Stability Problem

• Parsons’ central concern was “How is social order possible?” (echoing Hobbes and Durkheim).
• For him, order comes when:
  • Individuals internalize values (personality system),
  • Shared norms are institutionalized (cultural system),
  • And stable role-expectations regulate behavior (social system).
• That’s why his book is titled The Social System (1951), not The Cultural System.