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An investigation of research which relates attitudes and actions in social behavior

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AN INVESTIGATION OF RESEARCH WHICH RELATES ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS IN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department or Sociology The University of Southern California

In P a rtial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts

by Henry Lee Manheim June 1950

UMI Number: EP65685

All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

DisssrMtort Rubliihtfug

UMI EP65685 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code

ProQuest' ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 - 1346

This thesis, written by

HENRY LEE MANHEIM under the guidance of Faculty C om mittee, and a p p r o v e d by all its members, has been presented to an d acc ep ted by the Council on Graduate S tu d y and Research in partia l fulfill­ ment of the requirements f o r the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Date.

lJ.rJ.±£ °

Faculty Committee

Chairman

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER

4

I.

PAGE

THE PROBLEM....................................................................................

1

* Statement of the p r o b le m ..........................................

2

Reasons for the Investigation . . . . . . .

4

*Definitions of t e r m s .....................................................

10

& Actions . . . .....................................................................

10

1A ttitu d e s ............................................................ y

.. . •

10

.....................................................

11

.............................,......................................

11

Expressed attitudes

eValidation

Organization of the remainder II.

/

of thethesis

11

RESEARCH CONCERNED PRIMARILY WITH MEASURING ATTITUDES . . . . ......................................... .................

13

Attitude scales which have beenvalidated by the use of known g r o u p s ................................

16

^ W a ts o n ................................................................................ •

16

Neumann....................................................................................

24

Ros a n d e r ...............................................................................

30

Raskin and Cook...............................................................

33

Pace

36

........................... . . . . . . . . . . . .

F e r g u s o n ............................................................................... Nettle r and Golding..........................................

41 44

Measurement of attitudes of certain known g r o u p s ....................................

48

R einh ardt...............................................................................

49

ill CHAPTER

PAGE Sims and Patrick

.

. . ........................................

Sims

55

Summary . . . . ♦ .......................... III.

52

58

RESEARCH CONCERNED WITH THE RELATION BETW EEN ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS

.............................................

64

Research which compares attitudes with the individual's report of his own behavior •

65

Timmerman..........................................

65

Telford . • . .....................................................................

69

jjfc Research which compares attitudes with observed behavior •

• • ....................................... ............................ .

Hartshorne and May LaPiere Corey Stouf fer

IV.

............................................................... ..........................

73 81 85

....................................

90

Summary..............................................................

94

AN EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN FOR DETERMINING THE RELATION BETW EEN ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS

V.

73

SUM M ARY AND CONCLUSIONS

.

. .

96

.........................................

103

Summary.........................................................

103

Conclusions..........................

104

BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................................................................

113

CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM The great discrepancy that exists between the attitudes held by people and th e ir actual behavior with regard to the same facet of society is a fam iliar and frequently disturb­ ing aspect of our daily l i f e .

The attitudes of people may be

revealed and determined in many ways.

Similarly, th e ir ac­

tions may be observed, recalled, or made known in some other manner.

A person te ll s us that he is opposed to alcoholic

beverages.

Yet, at a party he is seen partaking of a cocktail

Another informs us that in such-and-such a situation he wouldor thinks he would—act in thus-and-so manner.

But, when he i

actually confronted with the situation, we observe that his actions are not at a ll what he anticipated that they would be. To be more concrete, consider the person, known to a ll , who, while claiming and actually believing himself to be a devoutly religious man, neither supports a church, nor con­ ducts his business dealings in an ethical manner.

Too, we

are certainly aware of the gap between the p o litic a l a t t i ­ tudes of the electorate, as measured by national polls, and the subsequent voting actions of the population.

An area in

which we a ll too frequently encounter th is d iffe re n tia l is that of minority-group relatio n s.

There i s the person, for

example, who has strong prejudices, yet dares not exhibit

them because of legal or social pressures that are brought to bear upon him.

And there are others who, while admitting

to no prejudicial a ttitu d e s, yet do, in fa c t, discriminate in one way or another against the Negro, the Jew, or the Oriental.

1X113 phase of the problem is so well known th at a

considerable amount of study has been given to i t . for example, has named these la s t two groups.

Merton,

He calls them,

respectively, the prejudiced non-discriminator, and the non­ prejudiced discriminator, using the terms ®prejudlce® to refer to attitu d es,

and ®discrimination® to re fe r to actions.^/

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM I t Is,

then, upon th is discrepancy between attitudes

and actions th at this investigation w ill attempt to shed some lig h t.

There has been a great amount of effo rt devoted

to exploration of the nature of a ttitu d e s, th e ir measurement, and other aspects of th is problem.

Similarly, much research

has been devoted to the study of human behavior and actions, delving into causes, predictions, changes, and so on.

There

has been a somewhat lesser amount of work done upon the relatio n between these two Important aspects of social li v ­ ing. _

This study has taken the form of an investigation into -

1 Robert K. Merton, ttDiscrimination and the American Creed,® Discrimination and National Welfare, pp. 103 f f .

these bodies of research for the purpose of discovering, in the f i r s t place, what is now known and believed regarding the relationship between attitud es and actions, between ex­ pressed attitudes and overt behavior. the question w ill be asked: relationship?

More sp ecifically,

Is there a d ire c t, one-to-one

That i s , in the lig h t of the available in fo r­

mation on the subject, can i t be said th at an individual’s actions correspond d irectly to his expressed attitudes? Another question, the answer to which w ill be sought, is whether a knowledge of expressed attitu d es has any pre­ dictive value, insofar as overt behavior i s concerned.

In

other words, can i t be said, with reasonable certainty, that the boy who has indicated a disapproving attitude toward cheating w ill not cheat on an examination? A th ird point to be investigated i s the possible variation in the relatio n between attitu d es and actions in various areas of the social scene.

That i s , are a ttitu d e s

and actions more closely related in some field s than they are in other fields?

Will there be found, for example, a higher

degree of correspondence between attitu des toward religion and religious activ ity , than there w ill be between an tiNegro prejudice and discrimination against Negroes? I t should be noted at th is point that, the problem as i t w ill here be considered is not the problem of attitu d e scales.

There is

of validation

a great deal of sim ilarity

between the two, and they are closely related, but they are separate and d is tin c t areas of investigation,

This matter

w ill be discussed la te r in th is th e sis. Thus# there are three hypotheses that w ill here be examined.

(1) There is a d ire c t, one-to-one relationship

between attitudes and overt actions.

(2)

Knowledge of a t­

titudes can be used to predict overt behavior.

(3) There is

a closer relationship between attitudes and actions in some aspects of social living than there is in others. REASONS FOR THE INVESTIGATION Considering the second hypothesis above, that i s , w Knowledge of a ttitu d e s can be used to predict overt be­ havior,1 1 the tremendous p o te n tia litie s in th is fie ld of investigation can be seen.

I f one were able to determine

d efin itely the relationship between attitu d es that can be measured by means of scales and the lik e , and subsequent actions directed toward the same social object, an in v e sti­ gator would thus be a step nearer the age-old dream of fore­ te llin g the future.

Or, i f i t were possible to distinguish

with a reasonable degree of accuracy between, for example, the man who w ill be able to survive adequately the psycho­ logical stra in of combat in warfare, and the man who w ill succumb to these strain s and frustratio n s by turning to neurotic or psychotic behavior, of what inestimable value

5 would th is b© to those upon whose shoulders f a lls the task of planning m ilitary operations. As noted previously, Merton has described two types of individual reactions to minority-group matters, the prejudiced non-discriminator and the non-prejudiced discrim­ in ato r.

He also described two other categories, the preju­

diced discriminator, whose attitu d es and actions are both directed against the minority group, and the non-prejudiced non-discriminator, who neither feels nor acts in a manner p th at is offensive to the minority group* All people, he f e l t , w ill f a l l into one of these four categories at any given time, with the last-named being, of course, the most desirable from the standpoint of society.

Different types

of ^therapy1 1 must be applied to each of the f i r s t three groups in order to convert i t to the fourth group.

Obviously, how­

ever, before therapeutic measures can be undertaken, the members of the various groups must be id en tified .

I t is

re lativ ely easy to discover those individuals whose actions and attitudes are consistent, but i t is a more d if f ic u lt problem to recognize the prejudiced non-discriminator, and the non-pre judiced discriminator.

So here, too, can be seen

the necessity for a more detailed knowledge of the manner in

^ Loc• c i t .

6 which attitudes and actions are related to each other. In addition, i t is not beyond reason that here may be found an important consideration in both personal and social adjustment.

The person who continually inhibits his normal

attitudes and behaves in a manner dictated solely by, l e t us say, convention, w ill most certainly be affecting his personal adjustment in so doing.

Hartshome and May touched upon this

when they said: What a person says he feels and knows may have more fa rreaching effects on others than what he really feels and knows. Furthermore, i t is commonly agreed that the con­ sistency shown between knowledge and conduct Is an aspect of l i f e adjustment of great significance for individual strength and social harmony and peace. The structure of c iv iliz a tio n is based on assumptions of in te g rity and honor. When discrepancies between promise and performance are revealed, no one claims that in such an instance we have advanced toward a desirable social condition.3 To those whose in te re s t in th is fie ld consists mainly in measuring a ttitu d e s, perhaps the most Important p o ssib ility to be found In th is investigation lie s In the Implications for scale validation.

As was mentioned e a r lie r , the matter

of scale validation is closely related to the problem th at is here being investigated.

There are, as Hsfl described,

some nine generally used methods of validating such measure­ ments : a.)

The outcome of.an Activity; e .g ., failu re or success

^ Hugh Hartshorne, Mark A. May, and Frank K. Shuttleworth, Studies in the Organization of Character, p. 562.

7 in schools or in a vocation, or in any other fie ld that a measurement is supposed to predict. b.) A sim ilar measurement with known v a lid ity . c.) Associates* ratings. d.) Self-rating. e.) Factors in factor analysis. f .) The diagnosis or authoritative statement from qual­ ifie d persons other than associates* rating s. g.) Type of samples grouped according to a c riterio n ; types of inmates in an in s titu tio n , type of voca­ tion, etc. h.) The in tern al consistency . . . i.) Curve-fitting of the scores to a known law. j.) A derived/function . . I t is to two methods, (A.) the predictive or behavior method, and (g) the so-called nknown group1 1 method, th at many workers turn when the other methods are in question.

And i t is in

these areas, particu larly the former, that a great need for further research has been f e l t .

For example, Krech and

Crutchfield had this to say: The ultimate practical te s t of the v alid ity of opinion and attitude measurement lie s in the useful­ ness of these measurements for the understanding and prediction of the individual's behavior. I f his opin­ ions and attitu d es have been correctly assayed, i t should be possible to make ‘accurate predictions about how he w ill behave toward the object of the a ttitu d e or opinion in various situatio ns, both verbally and overtly, both d irectly and in d irectly. There are, on the whole, very few good examples of th is sort of validation. I t is unfortunate that there has not been more work in the direction of validation of attitude measures in

^ E. H. Hs&, W A Hote on and Some Suggested Methods for the Determination of the Validity Coefficient, n Journal of Educational Psychology, 39:304, May, 1948.

8 terms of predictions of behavior,® Much the same viewpoint on th is matter was expressed by Corey, writing some eleven years earliers *

In view of th is general agreement as to what a social attitude i s , [a tendency to act in a certain manner] i t is possible to state one c rite rio n of the valid ity of social attitude questionnaires—namely, the relationship between questionnaire scores and overt behavior. In other words, I f a social attitude is a determiner of overt behavior, social attitu de questionnaires may be considered valid I f they make possible predictions of overt behavior. . . . In the la s t analysis, the way a person acts over a period of time is a reliable and valid indication of his a ttitu d e s. I f this concept of a ttitu d e questionnaire v alid ity Is granted, I t is rather surprising that so few Investiga­ tions have been undertaken to determine the relationship between verbal opinions and overt behavior. . . . The Investigators who have developed the social attitude questionnaires have apparently been much more concerned with r e lia b ility than with v a lid ity .6 No study has been made, so far as the writer Is aware, in which I t was possible to get a rather accurate quan­ tita tiv e estimate of degree of a ttitu d e as expressed in statement form and in addition an equally reliab le meas­ ure of behavior, bearing upon the same In stitu tio n or practice, with which comparisons might be made.” As might be expected, there Is not complete agreement upon this Interpretation of the concept of scale validation. And, of course, i t depends, ultim ately, upon the definition

5 David Krech and R. S. Crutchfield, Theory and Prob­ lems of Social Psychology, p. 265. 6 Stephen M. Corey, ^Professed Attitudes and Actual Be­ havior,*1 Journal of Educational Psychology, 28:271, April, 1937. 7 Ib id ., p. 275

9 of attitude that is accepted by the individual worker.

Too,

there are qualifications that some writers would place on the validation of scales by behavior.

Krech and Crutchfield went

on to say: The fa ilu re of accurate prediction in any given Instance may not necessarily be a sign of invalid measurement of the attitu d e concerned but may merely re fle c t our igno­ rance about how that a ttitu d e w ill govern behavior in the given situ atio n . W e must not naively assume that an attitude which is genuinely experienced by the individual w ill be translated d irectly into overt action in a fashion that looks appropriate to the external observer. . . . Only to the extent that there is psychological iden tity of the objects in the two cases must we expect that there w ill be congruence of the attitud e and the behavior.8 Regardless of what definition of attitude is accepted, and of what is the view regarding scale v alid ity , there seems to be general agreement on the need for further investigation of the relationship between attitu des and overt behavior. This was summed up by Likert, when he wrote: In any discussion of the validity of a ttitu d e scales of the kind presented here i t might be well to emphasize that a t present we are dealing only with verbal behavior and claim nothing more than the importance of the verbal reactions. Ultimately i t i s to be hoped that the r e la ­ tionship between the verbal behavior expressed on an a t t i ­ tude scale and other more overt forms of behavior may be examined and determined, but a t present we are concerned with verbal behavior only.®

8 Krech and Crutchfield, 0|>. c i t . , p. 266. 9 Rensis Likert, A Technique for the Measurement of A ttitudes, p. 32. I ta lic s not in the o rig in al.

10

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS 5Actions•

In th is th esis, the term, ^ o tic a s,* 1 is used

as being synonymous with the phrase, wovert behavior.tt

By

th is is meant the observable part of a person’s a c tiv itie s : what he actually does, or does not do.

I t may be as simple

a matter as sneezing, or as complex as being engaged in a p articu lar vocation. 9

A ttitudes.

The d efin itio n of a ttitu d e that is ac­

cepted by this w riter is the one propounded by Bogardus, ttAn attitude is an acquired, established tendency to act toward or against something.

\

I t should be noted that th is defini-

tion Is in substantial agreement with those given by Corey, Dewey, 12 Droba,

F a r i s ,^ Sherif and Cantril,^® and Thomas

and Znaniecki.1® As one might expect, various workers in the

10 Emory S. Bogardus, Fundamentals of Social Psychology. Third Edition, p. 65. ^

Corey, loo. c i t .

^■^John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, p. 42. 1® Daniel D. Droba, ttThe Nature of A ttitude,1 1 Journal of Social Psyclablogy, 4:451, November, 1935. ^ Ellsworth Faris, nAttitudes and Behavior,w American Journal of Sociology, 34:277, September, 1928. 15

Muzafer Sherif and Hadley Cantril, wThe Psychology of ’A ttitudes’ : Part 11,1 1Psychological Review, 53:19, Jan., 1946. ^ William I . Thomas and Florian Snaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, I , 22.

11 fie ld of attitud es have used differin g definitions of the term*

In the case of those whose work is discussed in th is

th esis, each author*s d efin ition w ill be stated, insofar as these are available*

The variation among these is not suf­

f ic ie n t, however, to affect the re s u lts of this investigation. Expressed a ttitu d e s * Expressed attitudes are those attitudes knowledge of which is gained by the use of verbal­ izatio n s, a ttitu d e scales, questionnaires, or other paper and pencil devices* Validation*

By validation is meant the process of

determining whether or not a measuring device actually meas­ ures what i t i s supposed to.measure.

As Thorpe observed in

regard to personality te s ts , wi f they are to be considered valid they must in the nature of the case be designed to measure precisely those aspects of personality which they propose to measure.1 1^ ORGANIZATION OF THE REMAINDER OF THE THESIS In the next chapter a discussion of certain research which has been undertaken for the main purpose of measuring attitu des is presented. firs t,

Here there are two types of studies,

attitu de scales which have been validated by comparison

^ Louis P. Thorpe, Psychologlcal Foundations of Per­ sonality, p. 529.

12 with so-called nls.nown groups,* and, second, measurement of the attitu d es of certain known groups. The third chapter deals with investigations which a t ­ tempted to add to our knowledge of the way in which attitudes and actions are related. groups.

Here, again, there are two sub­

In the f i r s t there is the research which compares

attitudes with behavior as reported upon by the individual, while in the second are certain studies which have compared attitudes with behavior as actually observed. The fourth chapter contains a description of a pro­ posed original method of experimentally determining the r e la ­ tion between an individual's attitudes and his actions. The la s t chapter, the f i f t h ,

summarizes the main body

of the thesis and presents certain conclusions. followed by a bibliography.

This is

CHAPTER II RESEARCH CONCERNED PRIMARILY WITH MEASURING ATTITUDES Many sociologists, social psychologists, and psychol­ ogists have devoted th eir in te re sts and energies to the study of a ttitu d e s.

And a large proportion of this study has con­

sisted of methods of measuring a ttitu d e s .

While the emphasis

of most of th is work has been merely upon the detection, description, and measurement of attitu d es, In many cases i t la possible to gain additional information regarding the relationship between these a ttitu d e s and behavior from the same studies. A representative group of these studies w ill be con­ sidered in th is chapter, In order to determine in what r e ­ spect th is type of work can contribute to the problems under investigation.

Several of these have been mentioned by

various writers as being noteworthy steps in the direction of re latin g expressed a ttitu d e s with behavior. of such conclusions w ill be examined.

The valid ity

To f a c ili ta te the

discussion, the w riter has divided these into two separate groups.

In the f i r s t are those studies which contribute to

the topic by virtue of the fa c t th a t they describe the con­ struction of an attitu d e scale, and that in that construction the means of validation has been by the use of so-called nknown groups.w In the second group are those cases in which

14 according to an experimental plan, attitu d e s of a known group were determined by the use of an a ttitu d e scale or test* The concept of known groups needs further elaboration at th is time.

In th is usage, a known group is understood to

mean a group whose actions with regard to a certain Idea are known.

Almost Invariably this knowledge is based upon the

mere fa c t of membership In the group.

I t Is an a p riori

type of reasoning, assuming, as i t does, that merely by v ir­ tue of the fa c t that an individual Is a member of a certain gproup, his behavior w ill conform to the group.

All too f re ­

quently, In the use of th is concept, no allowance is made for the additional fa c t that group action is by no means always known to be a simple sum or average of the actions of the Individual members of the group.

Too, generally the

actions of the group are not actually known, but are deter­ mined by a weommon sense11 element which creeps into the use of th is concept, and which may often be Incorrect.

For

example, In some studies the known groups th a t were used were Northerners and Southerners, idiere the attitude under investigation was the a ttitu d e toward the Negro.

Or the

attitude of a group of financiers toward p o litic a l radicalism was compared with th at of a group of S ocialists or Communists. True, common sense might indicate th at most Southerners w ill have a less favorable attitu d e toward the Negro, or that most Socialists w ill favor p o litic a l radicalism.

However, th is

te l l s l i t t l e

about eith er the whole groups, or the individual

members of these groups*

I t is certainly not reasonable to

conclude th at because a man is

a Southerner one knows he w ill

be prejudiced against Negroes, nor would one make a categori­ cal statement to the effect th a t no financiers are radicals. I t would be unwise to overlook the many other factors that may contribute to onefs membership in a voluntary group, such as conformity to social pressures, the desire for statu s, convenience, the flig h t , from loneliness, and so on*

A further

point that must be considered is that actions which are under­ taken by a formal group, in the anonymity of the group i t s e l f , may well not re fle c t the wishes of the individual members of ^the group.

This is tru e , i f fo r no other reason, simply be­

cause in democratically conducted organizations there can be, and often i s ,

a 49 per cent minority of the membership who

disapproves of the organization1s actions* In the case of each study to follow, a report of the procedure, as well as the theoretical foundation upon which i t was undertaken, w ill be presented*

This w ill be followed

by a summarization of the results and the explanation of these, and the conclusions that may be drawn for the present t

investigation*

- i

ATTITUDE SCALES WHICH HAVE BEEN VALIDATED BY THE USE OF KNOW N GROUPS Watson#

One of the e a rlie r attempts at the use of

known groups fo r the purpose of validating an a ttitu d e scale was in the work of Watson, some twenty-five years ago*^

He

f i r s t approached the problem from the standpoint of the edu­ cator, in his search for the objectives of education#

He

decided early th at at le a st one of these should be the devel­ opment of the a ttitu d e of fair-mindedness, or open-mindedness, freedom from prejudice, or sclent!fic-mindedness, as i t was variously called#

Of course, before a curriculum could be

constructed th a t would achieve this end, i t was necessary to have a means of identifying the presence of th is quality of mind, and the extent to which i t was present in an individual# A rig id defin itio n of fair-mindedness was not given by Watson, although the term, along with the synonyms mentioned above, was described somewhat lengthily#

The t e s t that Watson

constructed was limited, however, to Issues oriented around questions of economics and religio n , in which the subject had an opportunity to react in a nf air-minded1 * manner# In th is undertaking, Watson did not attempt a d efin i­ tion of a ttitu d e , nor, indeed, did he even make great use of

1 Goodwin B. Watson, The Measurement of Falr-Mindedness.

17 the term.

For the most p a rt, he limited himself to a passing

description of fair-mindedness as one of the attitu d es that are desirable outcomes of an educational system. The te s t i t s e l f consisted of six parts, or forms, as Watson chose to cail them.

In Form A, the Word Cross Out

Test, the subject was asked to cross out as many of fifty-one words as he f e l t were in some respect d is ta s te fu l.

Some

typical words which were found in th is l i s t are *Bolshevist,1 1 nSunday Blue Laws,1 * **Dancing,* * and **Holy Communion.1 1 Form B was known as the Degree of Truth Test.

I t was

composed of a l i s t of fifty -th re e statements about religious and economic matters.

Bach of these statements was so chosen

that i t would be possible to find a respected, sincere, and competent authority who disagreed with i t .

The subject was

asked to indicate whether he f e l t the statement was so true that no in te llig e n t person would disagree, probably true, uncertain, probably fa lse , or so obviously false that no in ­ te llig e n t person would endorse i t .

One such statement from

the te s t was, **Poor men cannot get justice in the courts today.1 * The next portion of the te s t,

the Inference Test,

gave the subject an opportunity to choose one of several conclusions which he believed derived d irectly from a pre­ ceding statement of fa c t.

For example, one statement wass

18 S ta tis tic s show that in the United States, of one hun­ dred men sta rtin g out at an age of 25, at the end of forty years, one w ill he wealthy, while fifty -fo u r w ill he dependent upon re la tiv e s or charity for support. This was followed hy several conclusions, only one of which was a logical consequence of the statement. Form D, the Moral Judgments Test, was unusually in ­ te restin g .

The subject was asked to react to each of fifte e n

statements hy expressing approval, disapproval, or in d iffe r­ ence.

Here, however, the statements themselves were not the

important thing, hut rather the concealed fa c t th a t each statement was paired with one, or sometimes two other s ta te ­ ments.

I f , for example, the subject approved of an unwar­

ranted search of ’•radical* headquarters, but disapproved of a similar search of the offices of a large business which was suspected of Ille g a l a c tiv ity , he was presumed to be ex­ h ib itin g a lack of fair-mindedness. In the Arguments Test, Form E, twelve topics were presented in the form of questions.

Following each were

several arguments which*might be advanced eith er in favor of or In opposition to the question.

The subject indicated

whether he considered each argument a strong or a weak argument • The la s t part of the te s t, the Generalization Test, consisted of a l i s t of some th irty generalizations pertaining to economics and religion.

The subject had the opportunity

19 to say that each of these statements was true of a l l , most, many, few, or no members of a particu lar ethnic group• A b rie f questionnaire on personal data completed the test* There were two methods of scoring this te a t.

One,

the ”gross score,1 1 was ”expressed in terms of the per cent. of the to ta l possible opportunities to show prejudice, to •*2

which the subject has reacted.”

A fair-minded person would

thus supposedly have a low percentage score on the t e s t . The other scoring method, the ”analytical score,” compared the subject*s prejudices with those of each of twelve specific points of view.

These were:

1. economic radicals 2. economic lib e ra ls 3. economic c a p ita lis ts 4. persons fighting for a ”social gospel” 5. persons interested in a personal gospel, prayer, mysticism, salvation, e tc . 6. orthodox fundamentalists 7. modernists, Christian liberalism 8. religious radicals 9. Protestants opposing Roman Catholics

2 Ib id ., p. 13.

10. Roman Catholics opposed to Protestants 11. persons with s t r i c t , puritanical standards in sex, amusements, and other moral matters 12. persons with hr©ad, Tree standards in moral matters Six other typical biases were included in the original te s t, but were omitted in la te r scoring procedures because they were round to duplicate some of the above twelve. Watson used six separate methods of validation of th is scale, three of which were the known group method, or v aria­ tions of i t .

In the f i r s t place, groups of faculty members

and graduate students were asked to choose by secret b a llo t the most fair-minded members of th e ir groups.

The te s t re ­

su lts of those who were thus selected were compared with the te s t re su lts oflhe groups as a whole.

The resu lts of the

balloting were scattered over a wide percentage of the groups* memberships, and consequently this method proved rather incon­ clusive.

In actu ality , the main thing i t served to point out

was the lack of r e lia b i lity of such choices. In another method of validation that Watson used on this scale, the te s t re su lts were compared with the subjects* own se lf-ap p raisal, in some cases, and with a c r itic a l ap­ p raisal by a relativ e or close friend, in others.

As he

said: The te s ts reveal approximately the same prejudices which close acquaintances have discovered by long association.

21 Most individuals, confronted with the re su lts, believe them to be a f a i r measure of th e ir own prejudices* In s t i l l a th ird validation procedure that was con­ ducted in connection with this te s t, use was made of several groups whose fair-mindedness could be rather readily verified, i t was felt*

The te s t was administered to members of these

groups, and the average analytical group*

score computed for each

The groups used were: 1.

Methodist ministers in a mid-west state

2.

students entering Union

Theological Seminary

3*

Roman Catholic students

in a normal school

4* Protestant students in the same school 5* New Jersey normal school students 6.

Wisconsin normal school students

7.

students at Yale Divinity school

The Methodist ministers were also divided into sub-groups according to age, and also according to extent of education. The group analytical scores were compared with the views of wcompetent observers.1 1 U tilizing paired comparisons, these judges were asked to indicate which of the groups they f e l t would be more prejudiced (less fair-minded) , according to the twelve points in the analytic scoring method. fa ir ly high v alid ity by th is method:

3 I b id ., p. 35.

Watson found

22 In general, then, i t appears that the findings of the te s t with regard to group differences are confirmed by competent judges in something more than 80 per cent, of the cases • . . 4 Thus, according to his f i r s t use of the known group type of validation, choosing fair-minded people by the b a llo t, the results were in su ffic ien t to yield any conclusions.

When

the t e s t re su lts were compared with self-ratin g s and ratings by close associates, the resu lts were somewhat more conclusive. I t I s , of course, to be expected that the associates1 ratings would have greater value than the s e lf-ra tin g s, due to the increased objectivity.

I t would seem that there was a rather

high positive correlation between attitudes and actions, then, based upon the ratings of associates. however, for several reasons*

I t is quite questionable,

In the f i r s t place, the associ­

ates did not respond to any specific choices or questions, but merely answered the-question, llWhat religious and economic prejudices would you expect to find in . . .? w Therefore, there Is no assurance that the points upon which the associ­ ates based th e ir ratings were similar to the a ttitu d e s th at the te s t had measured, other than that both were concerned with religious and economic prejudices.

In other words, i t

is quite possible that the comparison was between attitu d es and actions which were, not directed toward the same social

4 I b id ., p. 31.

23 object*

A second questionable point was the fact that the

associates may have been reporting on actions or on verbalized (expressed) a ttitu d e s, or both.

Thus i t is possible that the

only conclusion which can be drawn is th at the subject was consistent in the expression of his a ttitu d e s .

And a th ird

important consideration here, which has been en tirely neglected in Watson1s study, is the personality of the associate.

It

is obvious that an individual’s own prejudices and attitudes w ill affect his evaluation of another’s attitu d es. In the group validations, of course, i t is not possible to make any statement regarding individual members of the group, unless there is some reason to believe that a l l the members of the group w ill react in the same way in response to some stimulus.

In this case, common sense may Indicate

that Methodist ministers w ill be more lik ely than normal school students to favor s t r i c t , puritanical moral standards, but, even granting the common sense conclusion, s t i l l ,

nothing

is known about the individual minister or student who has taken Watson’s t e s t .

A question arises here that is similar

to one that was considered with regard to the associates’ ratin gs, concerning the competency of the ^competent observ­ ers. 1 1 Were th e ir observations based upon attitu d e s or actions of the groups which they were evaluating?

Here, again, i t

might be possible that the only in terp retatio n that can logically be drawn i s that members of these groups were

consistent in expression of* th e ir a ttitu d e s. Certain conclusions may he reached regarding Watson’s study, on the basis of* th is analysis.

F irst, i t gives no

definite information as to whether there is a d irect one-to» one relationship between expressed attitudes and actions, since there is no information given as to the extent of the use of actions as the basis for the evaluators’ decisions. Second, while Watson has shown that by the use of his te s t he can say that an individual’s prejudice p ro file corresponds greatly to that of a normal school student, or of a Methodist minister, there i s , nevertheless, no basis upon which to make any predictions regarding the individual’ s actual overt be­ havior. Neumann.

About a year a fter Watson’s study, another

attitude investigation was conducted by Neumann.® ground of th is was sim ilar to that of Watson’s.

The back­

Neumann,

too, was interested in education, and the secondary school curriculum.

With the great and increasing in te re s t on the

part of the public in international a ffa irs, he f e l t that a greater knowledge of the part the schools were playing was desirable:

® George B. Neumann, A Study of International Attitudes of High School Students. *

25 Our youth are being conditioned by many influences so that they come to hold certain a ttitu d e s toward other nations and races. The question i s , are these re su lts such as prepare the students to live in th is world, in ­ creasingly international in character, in a manner that w ill bring maximum sa tisfa ctio n to themselves and to others, or in a manner that w ill sooner or la te r demon­ s tra te that th e ir education as a whole, school and extra­ school, has led to maladjustment?6 Feeling thus, Neumann set out to study the attitu d es which high school students held toward international matters, and p a rticu larly , the direction and strength of these a ttitu d e s. The concept of a ttitu d e , as used by Neumann, was es­ sen tially the same as the one accepted in th is th esis.

Ac­

cording to Neumann, wAttitudes are tendencies to move toward or away from values . . .

Values, in turn, he defined ass

wobjects of our wishes.1,6 The te s t i t s e l f , for Attitude Indicator, as i t was called, consisted of four p arts, to ta lin g some 109 items. In Section A the subject indicated whether his reaction to each of a series of statements was favorable, uncertain, or opposed.

Provision was also made fo r him to indicate about

which items he f e l t strongly or very strongly. these items are:

6 Ib id . , p. 12. 7 Ib id . . p. 91. ® Ib id ., p. 7.

Samples of

26 M ilitary preparedness is one of the best ways to prevent war* The best Chinese are superior to average Americans* In Section B, there were lis te d nine international "s itu a tio n s ,* each of which was followed by several s ta te ­ ments.

The subject indicated the way he f e l t about each of

the statements on a five point scale including "very strong favorable fe e lin g ,* "favorable," "uncertain,* "opposed," and "very strong feelin g against."

A typical statement is :

I f the European powers and Japan wish to re ta in th e ir possessions among weaker peoples or to Increase such possessions-i t is none of our business. we should urge other nations to allow these weaker peoples to determine th e ir own future. we should not c ritic iz e them because we would like our own country to increase or at le a st maintain i t s present possessions among such weaker peoples. Section C contained four statements and conclusions which were to be marked in the same way as Section B. The la s t p a rt, Section D, consisted of forty-five separate statements, each of which the subject was supposed to respond to in the same manner as Section B. In order to score the Indicator, a scale range of zero to eight was used for the various responses, with four corresponding to the response "uncertain."

Each of the

questions f e l l into one of twelve specific classificatio n s of international a ttitu d e s,

although th is was not known to

27 the person f i l li n g out the indicator,

These twelve cate­

gories of a ttitu d e s were: 1*

racialism

2,

nationalism

3.

Imperialism

4.

militarism

5,

desire fo r economic prosperity

6,

tendency ^toward p ro le ta ria t cooperation for the

establishment of a world state 7,

attitudes regarding public opinion

8.

tendency toward recognition of rights of other

nations and peoples 9.

tendency toward the appreciation of the worth of

other nations and peoples 10.

attitudes toward international cooperation

11.

attitudes of international good w ill

12.

humanitarian a ttitu d e s

I t was, therefore, possible to construct a p ro file for the individual responding to the t e s t ,

showing the direction and

strength of his attitu d es In each of the above twelve areas. One of the methods th at was used by Neumann to validate his Attitude Indicator was the known group method.

He de­

scribed I t as follows: A number of army o ffic ers, a number of declared p a c ifis ts , a number from the Stock Exchange on Wall Street, students

28 at the Brookwood Labor College, members of the I . W. W., members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and two Communists, that i s , members of the Workers* Party, were asked to f i l l out indicators. Most consist­ ent replies were received from each group.9 The replies to certain specific items, which were considered p articu larly sig n ifican t, were compared for these seven groups.

For example :

The P a c ifists, Communists, Labor students and I* W. W.*s were unanimously in favor of the recognition of Soviet Russia because her present government is a very stable one • . . while the Wall Street and Army groups were unanimously opposed to i t ; and with the exception of the I . W. W.*s the rep lies were sim ilarly unanimous to item A19 involving again the recognition of Russia. Similarly . . . the Wall Street and Army groups were unanimously opposed to p ro le ta ria t domination of the world and the Communists and Labor students were unani­ mously in favor of i t . Again the Army officers and Wall Street group were unanimously opposed to giving indepen­ dence to the Filipinos within five years . . . but a ll of the other five groups were unanimously in favor of i t . In the matter of racialism . . . Wall Street and the Army o fficers groups unanimously hold th at the people of the white race are born superior to the black peoples of Africa, while the other five groups unanimously deny I t .^ ° What, then, does Neumann*s known group validation t e l l about the relationship between the attitudes and actions of the members of these groups?

F irst of a ll,

Watson*s study, i t te ll s l i t t l e

similar to

about specific individuals.

While the te s t quite probably is a good means of measuring

9 Ib id . , p. 86. Loe. e l t .

attitudes in th is p a rticu lar area, nothing d efin ite is known about the behavior of individual members of these groups. Simply because a person is a student at a because he is an army o fficer is

labor school, or

not su ffic ien t

basis for

making categorical statements about his behavior.

I t is

possible to speak in terms of p ro b ab ilities, however, saying, for example, that army officers w ill probably favor a strong m ilitary establishment.

But th is is certainly in su fficien t

basis to say that according to th is study there is a one-toone relationship between attitu d es and actions. In the case of the few Items mentioned above which e lic ite d unanimous re p lie s, one way or the other, from the various validating groups, there

seems to be an element of

predictiveness.

onet e s t

For example, i f

paper was picked

at random from a l l those submitted by the seven groups, and th is paper was found to have indicated a b e lie f th a t the mem­ bers of the white race are bora superior to members of Africa1 black races, the Investigator would be able to say definitely that the person who f ille d out th is particu lar Indicator was of eith er the Wall Street group or was an army o ffic er.

But

Neumann gave in su fficien t data on his validation procedure to enable an enlargement upon this conclusion to be made. For example, the size of these various groups is not known, and so i t Is impossible to say how applicable these findings are to a ll army o ffic ers, or a ll members of the I . W. W.,

30 and so on.

Also, there is no reason to believe that a il

those who believe the white race superior to the black races w ill be e ith e r army officers or members of the Stock Exchange. {Would that i t were sol) Rosander.

Some two years after the above study by

Neumann was conducted, Thurstone published his theories on attitude measurement.^-

These have had a great influence on

a ll subsequent work in the fie ld of a ttitu d e s .

In the middle

1930fs Rosander presented his attempt to enlarge upon the Thurstone technique.^-2 urement of a ttitu d e s, techniques.

He, too, was interested in the meas­ and was striving to perfect the various

Rather than lim iting the items on an attitud e

scale to short statements of opinion, Rosander suggested us­ ing descriptions of actual l i f e situ atio n s.

Thus he hoped

to get a response from the subjects based not upon verbaliza­ tions of a ttitu d e s, but rather upon behavior.

I t was s t i l l

to be a paper and pencil scale, but more ^ lif e - lik e ” than the previous scales. The specific attitude selected for his work was ”the

H L. I*. Thurstone, ”Attitudes Can Be Measured,” American Journal of Sociology. 33:529-54, January, 1928. 12 A. C. Rosander, ”An Attitude Scale Based Upon Behavior S itu atio n s,” Journal of Social Psychology, 8:3-15, Febru ary, 1937.

31 social ©quality of the Negro and the white#"13

one 0f •£& ©

reasons for th is choice was that there existed a scale for the measurement of a ttitu d e s toward the Negro which had been constructed according to the Thurstone technique.*4

This

would make possible a comparison of Rosander*s new use of the Thurstone equal-appearing-intervals technique with i t s original use.

While Rosander did not sta te his defin itio n

of attitu d es in his w riting, i t seems reasonable to assume th at he accepted Thurstone*s d efin ition , in view of the na­ ture of Rosander*s investigation.

Thurstone*s definition is

as follows: The concept '’a ttitu d e 1 1 w ill be used here to denote the sum to ta l of a man's inclinations and feelings, prejudice or bias, preconceived notions, ideas, fears, th re ats, and convictions about any specified topic. Thus a man's attitude about pacifism means here a ll that he fe e ls and thinks about peace and war. I t is admittedly a subjective and personal a ffa ir. The concept n opinion1 1 w ill here mean a verbal expres~ sion of a ttitu d e . . . .*1© As fin a lly constructed, Rosander *s scale was called ttNegro Behavior Attitude Scale.*

I t contained some twenty-

two statements, each of which was followed by a possible

13 ib id . , p. 4. 14 L. L. Thurstone and R. D. Hinckley, Scales for the Measurement of Socl al A ttitudes; No. 3; Attitude Toward the Negro. 13 Thurstone, op. c i t •, p. 531.

32 course of action.

Tlie person completing the scale indicated

whether he would or would not respond to that situation hy the course of action indicated.

Some sample items ares

1.

In the community where you live a Negro marries a white g ir l. You do nothing about i t .

8.

You are reading in a public lib ra ry . A Negro enters and s i t s down beside you. You leave the lib rary at once • Each item had a scale value, as determined according

to the Thurstone method.

The a ttitu d e score o f the respond­

ent was taken as the median scale value of a ll the items which he had endorsed.

The midpoint o f the scale values was

6.0, with a higher score indicating a favorable attitu d e toward Negroes. Rosander used two methods of validating his scale, one of which was by use of known groups.

Considering the

nature of the attitu d e he was measuring, i t was a logical choice to use Northern and Southern students as the known groups.

The resu lts for these two groups indicated a sig­

n ificant differences The mean score of 82 northern students on Scale IIA was 7.0 and on Scale IIB [two d ifferent forms of the scale] was 7.3. The corresponding scores for 88 southern students were 4.3 and 4.2. This shows clearly th at the northern students and the southern students are on oppo­ s ite sides of the midpoint which i s 6.0.

^

Rosander, op. ci t . , p. 14.

33 Her© again, as in the Watson and Neumann studies, th is type of known group was not su fficien tly homogeneous to permit of any conclusions regarding individual members.

Fur­

thermore, the groxips used by Rosander are p articularly suscep­ tib le to doubt, as to whether or not they were actually known groups.

This is because the only distinguishing factor be­

tween the two groups is geographical, and th is , perhaps, only a temporary difference, with re la tiv e ly l i t t l e the in d iv id u a ls cultural make-up.

effect upon

Therefore, since the

actions of the whole group were not conclusively known, i t cannot be said, on the basis of this study, that there is a d irect relationship between attitu d es toward the Negro, and behavior toward the Negro.^ In addition, since actually the actions of the two groups were not known, but rather ju st the attitudes of what is commonly assumed to be the majority of the groups, this research does not provide any p o ssib ility of predicting ac­ tions from knowledge of a ttitu d e s. Raskin and Cook.

At about the same time that Rosander

constructed his scale, Stagner devised one for measuring a t­ titudes toward fascism.’*-® While he did not report on the

17 Cf♦ post pp. 49-52, Reinhardt’s investigation. Ross Stagner, ’’Fascist Attitudes: an Exploratory Study,1 * Journal of Social Psychology, 7:309-19, August, 1936.

validation of his scale, a validation study was undertaken by Raskin and Cook, which made use of the known group approach. Stagner*s original scale consisted of a number of statements illu s tr a tin g various views on fascistl© principles, which were presented as a true-false te s t.

Prior to the validation

study, th is technique was modified somewhat.

As used by

Raskin and Cook, the scale consisted of eighteen statem ents/ each of which was followed by five responses, ranging from complete acceptance of the statement to complete rejection of i t .

This is illu s tra te d in the following sample item:

The Wall Street bankers brought on the depression to clean up on the l i t t l e fellows. The five possible responses were ”very certain th is is true,*1 ”f a ir ly certain th is is t r u e ,” ’’uncertain,” ’’f a ir ly certain th is is f a l s e ,” and ”very certain th is is f a l s e . ”

This scale

was t i t l e d ”Opinions about the Depression” in order to avoid any response to the emotionally loaded term ”fasclsm.” The questionnaire was scored on a scale of +2, 4*1, 0, -1, or -2, with the positive end being assigned to b e lie f in the tru th of the statement.

The subject’s fin a l score con­

siste d of the algebraic sum of a ll eighteen responses.

Thus

the possible score ranged from +36, indicating agreement with

^ Evelyn Raskin and Stuart W . Cook, ”A Further Inves­ tigatio n of the Measurement of an Attitude Toward Fascism,” Journal of Social Psychology, 9:201-6, May, 1938.

35 fa s c is tic principles, to -36, which indicated disagreement. The scale was administered to six groups of students, a to ta l of 324 individuals.

These groups were Republicans,

Democrats, Farmer-Laborites, S o cialists, S ocialist Club mem­ bers, and Communists.

The f i r s t three were drawn from vari­

ous classes and student organizations at the University of Minnesota.

I t is not clear ju s t how they were selected, nor

on what basis.

The la s t three groups were composed of mem­

bers of either a Socialist Club or the Young Communist League, or individuals who had in some other manner indicated a pref­ erence for one of these two groups. The mean scores for the above six groups, respectively, were 41.5, -3.7, -16.5, -21.3, -30.0, and -30.0.

That is ,

the Socialists and Communists were considerably more antifa s c is tic than the Republicans and Democrats.

According to

Raskin and Cook, these re su lts, wpoint clearly to the in te r­ pretation th at the scale is measuring amount of approval of Fascist I d e o l o g y . I n other words, they concluded, on the basis of these re su lts, that the scale was valid. The assumption was, of course, th a t Socialists and Communists are, ipso facto , a n ti-fa s c is tic ,

and th at Democrats,

and especially Republicans, tend toward fa sc istic attitudes and behavior.

While th is may be true for the ideologies

2° I b id ., p. 203.

56 represented by the lab els, i t would be rather unreasonable to conclude that every member or these groups has completely embraced the group ideology.

As mentioned previously, there

are many possible reasons for individuals associating them­ selves with a p articu lar group, aside from the philosophy or purpose of the group.

There is nothing in th is investigation

which indicates the actions of the individuals, other than th e ir membership, per se, in the various groups.

I f id e n ti­

fying oneself with the Republican party can be said to be exhibiting fa s c is tic behavior, and i f belonging to the Young Communist League i s a n ti-fa s c is tic behavior, then this study indicates that there is a d ire ct relationship between ex­ pressed attitu d es and behavior with regard to fascism. two suppositions are highly questionable, however.

These

Further­

more, since the range of the scores for the various groups is not known, i t i s not possible to conclude that there is any predictive value to the scale, even were one to grant the truth of the above mentioned suppositions. Pace.

Also in the 1930*s, th is problem was attacked

by Pace, as his doctoral d issertatio n .

21

Pi

After examining

C. Robert Pace, 9A Situations Test to Measure Social-Political-Economic A ttitudes,w Journal of Social Psychology, 10s331-44, August, 1939.

37 the Thurstone,22 Remmers,23 and Likert2^ methods of scale construction, as well as several of the lesser-known ones, Pace f e l t th at the greatest d iffic u lty lay not in the method of constructing the scale, hut in i t s validation* entiated between opinions and a ttitu d e s,

He d iffe r­

taking the view that

the former were verbalizations of the more hidden and sub­ jective attitudes*

He, therefore, questioned the use of

opinions as Indexes of true attitu d e s: On the assumption th at opinions may not be the best in­ dicators of attitude the w riter has tr ie d to use a d if ­ ferent indicator--not what a person says he believes, but what he says he would do in a variety of specific situ atio n s. 25 His investigation took the form of a te s t based upon s itu a ­ tions rather than opinions.

I t w ill be seen th at th is tech­

nique i s much the same as Rosander* s, described above* Accordingly, Pace constructed what he called the "Sltuation-Response S u r v e y . T h i s scale was designed to de­ te c t liberalism or conservatism in the general social, po­ litic a l,

and economic areas.

As fin a lly used, the scale

consisted of descriptions of th irty -e ig h t situ atio n s, each

22 Thurstone, o£. c l t . 23 H. H. Remmers, Studies in A ttitudes. 24 Rensis Likert, A Technique for the Measurement of A ttitudes♦ 2^ Pace,

0 £.

c i t •, p. 332.

38 of* which was followed by from four to seven possible ways of reacting to the situ atio n .

One item was:

A cooperative gasoline service sta tio n has been b u ilt -in*your community, '"'Gasolineand service are approximately the same price and quality as they are at the Standard, Texaco and Shell stations which are located nearby. I f you join the Cooperative you get a refund in proportion to your purchases at the end of each year. What would you do? a.

Continue to patronize the same sta tio n you always had •

b.

Join the Cooperative and buy a ll your gasoline and service from them.

c.

Try to influence your friends and neighbors to patronize the Cooperative also.

d.

Advise your friends not to buy gasoline from the Cooperative.

e.

Occasionally buy gasoline from the Cooperative.

To score the responses, the most conservative response was given a value of one point, the next most conservative re­ ceived two points, and so on, thus making seven points the highest possible score on certain items.

The to ta l te s t

score was the average of the various items. possible (i . e . , most radical) lowest, 1.000.

The highest

to ta l score was 5.342, and the

After the survey was validated, i t was ad­

ministered to various college groups. I t is the validation procedure th a t Is of particular in te re s t here.

I f the te s t was really valid, Pace believed,

a radical*s responses to the items would be significantly d ifferen t from a conservative’s responses.

The te s t was,

39 therefore, given to two groups of twenty-five known radicals, and twenty-five known conservatives, most of whom were stu ­ dents at the University of Minnesota.

Most of the radical

group members were known personally by Pace to be members of such organizations as the Young Communist League and the Farmer-Laborites, and to have voted Communist, S o c ia list, or Farmer-Labor in the 1936 national elections.

As for the con­

servative group, at le a st twenty-three had voted Republican, h alf were members of a college fra te rn ity , most of th e ir fathers were well-to-do busin© ss men, and none had been seen by the author at various p o litic a l meetings at which almost a ll of the radical group had been seen.

On these bases, Pace

f e l t ju s tifie d in distinguishing between the two groups. The te s t results showed significant differences be­ tween the radicals and conservatives.

The range of the

radical scores was from 3.816 to 5.097, with a mean of 4.502. For the conservatives, the range was 2.211 to 3.139, with a mean score of 2.794.

I t is noteworthy th at there was no

overlapping between the two groups. s ta t i s t i c a l l y sig n ifican t.

The differences were

With the exception of three items

(which were la te r discarded) Pace also found that each of the individual items on the te s t discriminated significantly between the two groups.

On the basis of these data, the con­

clusion was reached that the survey was su fficien tly valid. The comments made concerning Raskin and Cook’s fa s c is t

40 and a n ti-fa s c is t groups are germane here.

However, in the

knowledge of the voting of most of the subjects, Pace had an important additional facto r.

Voting for or against an issue

or candidate represents the h i$ ie st degree of participation in p o litic a l Issues for most people.

I t almost certainly is

an example of overt behavior in re latio n to one’s liberalism or conservatism. There are two important, alb e it reasonable, assumptions implied here.

In the f i r s t place, i t can only be assumed

that these subject have given honest reports of how they voted* In the second place, i t must be assumed th at th e ir manner of voting was determined solely by the ideological issues in ­ volved, and was not influenced by such things as personalities, bribery, coercion, or lack of information about the issues and candidates.

I f these assumptions are granted, Pace had

here an example of d irect agreement between expressed a t t i ­ tudes and actions with regard to the same in s titu tio n .

Fur­

thermore, knowing the te s t re su lts, one may state definitely to which group any one of the f i f t y individuals belongs. That i s , i f a paper be selected at random, a score of 3*816 or above means that th a t individual is a radical, of 3.139 or below indicates a conservative.

and a score

While Pace did

not present any information as to the applicability of his c r i te r ia of radical and conservative, nor o f-h is-re su lts, to larger or other groups, i f there were any reason to believe

41 that these results could be applied to other groups, there would be definite p o s s ib ilitie s of predicting to which group any individual would belong. Ferguson.

A l i t t l e more than ten years ago, Ferguson

began some research in which he endeavored to iso late and measure what he called the "primary social attitudes."^®* By so doing, he f e l t , i t would be possible to eliminate the necessity of measuring each attitude individually, in order to gain a complete picture of an individual.

His three p r i­

mary attitudes were termed religionism, human! tarianism, and nationalism.

After developing scales for measuring each of

these, he undertook, in 1944, to validate one of them by the known group method.^ The religionism scale was constructed by choosing cer­ ta in items from various.pertinent scales based on the Thurstone technique.

Ferguson’s scale consisted of th irty -e ig h t items,

with each of which the subject was to indicate whether or not

26 Leonard W. Ferguson, "Primary Social Attitudes," Journal of Psychology, 8:217-23, October, 1939. 27 Leonard W. Ferguson, "The Measurement of Primary Social A ttitudes," Journal of Psychology, 10:199-205, July, 1940. 28 Leonard W. Ferguson, "A Revision of the Primary Social Attitude Scale," Journal of Psychology, 17:229-41, April, 1944. 29 Leonard W. Ferguson, "The Sociological Validity of Primary Social Attitude Scale Ho. 1: Religionism," Journal of Social Psychology, 23:197-204, May, 1946.

42 he was in agreement*

As in the other Thurstone scales, each

item was given a scale value*

An in d iv id u a l^ fin a l score

was the algebraic sum of the values of the statements he en­ dorsed*

A typical item was:

There is a far b e tte r way of explaining the working of the world than to assume any God. The scale was la te r revised slig h tly . In order to validate th is scale, Ferguson administered it,

as well as his humanitarianism and nationalism scales,

to a group of psychology students at the University of Connecticut.

Fach student *expressed a definite preference

for, or claimed membership in , one or the other of these re­ ligious f a ith s ,* 3^ and on th is basis he divided them into three groups, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish.

The sizes

of the samples were fo rty -six , ninety-one, and th irty -th re e , respectively.

An item analysis was performed on the re s u lts

from a ll three scales, on the assumption that i f the r e l i ­ gionism scale was valid, i t s items would discriminate between the members of the three religious groups to a greater extent than would the items of the other two scales.

A secondary

assumption was that the greatest difference would appear be­ tween the Catholic and Jewish students. While Ferguson has not presented his complete

30 I b i d - .

P.

197*

43 s t a t i s t i c a l resu lts in his a r tic le , he did conclude th a t: both expectations accord with re a lity , for the larg est average item difference is between the Catholic and Jewish students in terms of the items comprising Scale No. I . Ideologically, as well as s ta tis tic a lly , therefore, the scale appears to possess some degree of v a lid ity .31 In view of the fact that not a ll of the mathematical re su lts are available, i t is impossible to analyze these conclusions completely.

Nevertheless, certain points w ill bear further

discussion.

In the f i r s t place, there is an im plicit assump­

tion that upon the basis of a “definite preference for,* or “membership i n , “ one of the tlre e fa ith s , i t is possible to specify the in d iv id u al^ religious a ttitu d e s.

Ferguson said,

as a matter of fa ct, th a t, “i f the students in question are typical representatives of th e ir respective fa ith s , i t may be said that th e ir religious attitu des are known.“3^

I t is

highly questionable, for example, whether the a ttitu d e s toward religion of th irty -th re e Jewish students can be said to be typical of the religious attitudes of a l l Jews.

Even

the very existence of a typical Jewish (or Protestant or Catholic)

attitude toward religion is doubtful.

Furthermore,

without additional data the extent of the v alid ity of the scale cannot be examined. Other than the Id en tificatio n with one of the three

31 Ijbld*. P* 199. 32 Ib id , , p. 197.

44 religious groups, no evidence is presented in th is study of any religious a c tiv ity on the part of the subjects*

I t is ,

therefore, groundless to attempt to re late the expressions of religious attitud e to religious behavior, or to attempt to make any predictions of behavior from the re su lts of Ferguson1s research* Nettier and Golding*

The most recent available inves­

tigatio n in th is fie ld was conducted by Nettler and Golding, In 1945. ^

Having examined many studies, including several

previously discussed here, they were unsatisfied with the approach to validation of many of these attitude-measuring devices.

They were fin a lly led to conclude that the known

group type of validation held the most promise, i f properly conducted.

I t was f e l t , however, that most of the existing

known group validations had not been handled In a manner that was satisfactory .

N ettler and Golding, therefore,

constructed

an a ttitu d e scale and validated i t by a refined use of the known group technique. In order to b u ild .th e ir scale, they made use of the Thurstone technique.

Their concept of attitude was also of

the 1 1tendency to act1 * type.

By use of this method, they

Gwynne Nettler and Elizabeth H. Golding, 1 1The Meas­ urement of Attitudes Toward the Japanese In America,1 1 American Journal of Sociology, 52:31-39, July, 1946.

45 completed a scale of twenty-four statements, designed to measure attitudes toward the Japanese in America. other Thurstone type scales,

As in

the subject was to indicate with

which of the statements he agreed.

Two sample items follow?

6.

Japanese in America should be granted f u ll p o litic a l equality with other c itiz e n s .

7.

The only good Jap is a dead Jap.

Construction and administration of the scale took place just p rio r to the end of h o s t il iti e s with Japan, and i t ,

therefore,

touched upon a subject about which feeling ran rather high. The scale was given to students at the University of Washington, in order to compute i t s r e lia b ility ,

and was then

validated by the use of several West Coast groups.

I t was

upon the choice of these groups that Nettler and Golding based th e ir claim to an improved validation, as compared to previous such studies.

Seven organizations participated in

the validation, each of which had demonstrated, in some man­ ner, either a favorable or an unfavorable disposition to the Japanese in America.

Five of these were so-called wpro-

Japanese1 1 organizations.

They were the Citizens1 Committee

of Portland, Oregon, the American Friends* Service Committee, of Pasadena, California, the Los Angeles, California, chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, associates of the In­ ternational In stitu tio n , of Los Angeles, and a group of Japanese-Americans, containing twenty-five Nisei and one Is s e i.

46 The sample sizes ranged from ten to twenty-six. Japanese1 * organizations were represented.

Two

anti-

One was the Hood

River, Oregon, Post of the American Legion, while the other was the California State Preservation Association, of Sacramento.

Only one return was received from the la tt e r

group, and so i t was considered in with the fifte e n from the American Legion Post. There was definite reason for choosing each of these organizations.

Both the Portland C itizens1 Committee and

the Friends were engaged in aiding the return and adjustment of the evacuated Japanese to th e ir former homes.

The Civil

Liberties Union was providing legal assistance to these re ­ turnees.

The International In s titu tio n was actively a s s is t­

ing foreign-speaking families of Los Angeles.

The Nisei and

Is s e i, of course, might be expected to be a pro-Japanese group.

The Hood River Legion Post, on the other hand, was

the group that received national notoriety by removing the names of sixteen Nisei soldiers from i t s honor r o ll in 1944. Attempts were made to have scales completed by other a n tiJapanese groups, but they were uncooperative. The re s u lts of measuring the attitudes of these several groups are Interesting.

The mean score of the American

Legion Post was 1.87, on a scale of zero to eleven, in d icat­ ing a d is tin c tly unfavorable attitude toward the Japanese. The mean scores of the five pro-Japanese groups ranged from

47 8*68 to 8.88, with a mean for a ll five groups of 8.68.

Tbis

score, of course, indicated a highly favorable a ttitu d e . There was no overlapping of scores between the pro-Japanese groups and the anti-Japanese groups.

The difference between

the two mean scores, 1.87 and 8.68, is highly sig nifican t, s t a t i s t ic a lly , being b etter than th irty -fo u r times the stand­ ard error.

The authors concluded that these data wgive assur­

ance that th is scale is

a valid measure of attitu d e toward

the Japanese in America.11®^ Thus, there i s here a valid attitude-measuring in stru ­ ment.

But what significance is there for the problem of

attitudes versus actions?

The groups used in th is study

d iffe r from the known groups discussed in most of the pre­ vious studies.

These groups have given incontrovertible

evidence of th e ir actions concerning Japanese-Arnericans. They have given legal assistance or re h ab ilitatio n aid to Jap anese-Americans, or have publicly insulted them.

Here,

then, not only are the expressed attitudes available, but the behavior, as well.

True, as in some of the previously

mentioned groups, i t is possible that the Legion members tested were not in agreement with th e ir organization*s policy on th is p articu lar matter.

The other groups being organized

around Issues very similar to the one upon which they were

34 Ibid., p. 38

48 tested, i t i s less lik e ly , although, s t i l l possible, that the group members disagreed with th e ir groups’ policies toward the Japanese.

I t is

always important to avoid the. assumption

that a group member necessarily agrees with the policy of the group. nevertheless, i t seems probable, on the basis of Nettler and Golding’s findings, th a t, in this case, there is a d irect relationship between these a ttitu d e s and actions. I t is ,

furthermore, possible to predict from a random choice

of one of the completedfscales, to which of the two groups the respondent belonged, i . S . , whether he belonged to the pro- or anti-Jap anese group.

There i s , of course, no evidence

upon which any expansion of these conclusions can be made. That is to say, these findings cannot be applied, for example, to other Posts of the American Legion, nor even to other mem­ bers of these same groups. MEASUREMENT OP ATTITUDES OF CERTAIN KNOW N GROUPS All the investigations that have been considered thus fa r have been undertaken for the primary purpose of adding to the fund of knowledge about attitudes and th e ir measure­ ment.

That is also true of the three studies that w ill now

be considered.

The difference between the two groups, however,

is that the previous ones used known groups as validation measures, and so introduced an additional source of doubt as

to whether a valid comparison was possible between the a t t i ­ tudes expressed on the scales, and the presumably known be­ havior.

In the group to follow, on the other hand, the =scal@

were a ll validated previously by other methods (or at le a st the authors imply th a t the scales do actually measure what they are supposed to measure), and these scales are used in these studies for the purpose of measuring the a ttitu d e s of a known group. Reinhardt,.

At about the same time as Ihur stone f i r s t

published his method of measuring a ttitu d e s, was conducted by Reinhardt.**®

a small survey

He set out, as he said, wIn

order to get some measurement of the attitu d e s of young peo­ ple in two widely separated sections of the country toward various ra cia l and cultural g r o u p s His primary concern was with these students’ attitudes toward the Negro.

In his

report of the survey, Reinhardt has not seen f i t to go into the theoretical foundation of his work, nor the definition of attitu d e which he used. In order to measure th e ir a ttitu d e s, Reinhardt used an adaptation of Bogardus1 method of measuring 1 1social

James M. Reinhardt, wStudents and Race Feeling,M Survey, 61?259-40, November 15, 1928.

36

, p. 239

50 distance •w'^

In th is adaptations

Fourteen d ifferen t cu ltu ral and ra cia l groups were used: Russian, Jew, Ita lia n , Scotch, English, Iris h , Chinese, French, Japanese, German, Negro, Turk, Hindu, and. Scandinavian. The students were asked to arrange the names of these groups in the order of th e ir preference in each of the following four relationships: fellowc itiz en , neighbor, associate in business or profession, a member of your family (not necessarily by marriage but on terms of equality) • The students were also requested to indicate by parenthesis wherever a group would not under any circumstances be admitted to a relationship i f in his power to prevent i t . 8 The subjects whose attitudes Reinhardt measured for his com­ parison were students from the University of North Dakota and from Morris Harvey College, in West Virginia.

There were

twenty-eight of the former, and twenty-four of the l a t t e r : fifty-tw o in a l l .

Scoring of th is scale u tiliz e d both the

ranking of each group, and the number of times each was en­ tir e ly excluded. The resu lts that -Reinhardt obtained in his study are surprising.

After an analysis of the average rankings in

the two groups, he concluded that his research Indicated that nthe prejudices against the Negro are stronger among the risin g generation in North Dakota than in West V irginia.tt^9 Now, here i s an example of the use of supposedly known

Emory S. Bogardus, ttMeasuring Social Distances,w Journal of Applied Sociology. 9:299-308, March, 1925. 3® Reinhardt, loc. c i t .

59 Ibid., p. 240.

51 groups in which the common sense knowledge of the groups is found to be completely erroneous.

Hosender^ used Northern

and Southern students in order to validate his scale.

His

assumption was that the Southern students would be more p re j­ udiced against the Negro than would the Northern students. Yet, surprisingly enough, according to Reinhardt’s study, ju st the opposite is true.

What significance does th is have

upon the validity of Rosander’s attitu d e scale? What conclusions can be reached concerning the relatio n between attitu d e s and actions on the basis of th is study of Reinhardt’s?

One possible conclusion is th at his use of the

Bogardus technique was invalid.

No information concerning

validation of the technique was available at that time. Therefore, i t might be said that Reinhardt was not actually measuring a ttitu d e s.

On the other hand, i f the assumption

is made th at he actually was measuring attitu d es, and i f the additional assumption i s made that the actions of these groups would conform to the common sense opinion of th eir actions, it

can then be concluded that there i s a negative correlation

between expressed attitudes and behavior.

Perhaps the most

reasonable conclusion of a ll is .that the technique was valid and used correctly, and that the re su lts correctly Indicated the expressed attitudes of these groups of students,

Of. ante pp. 30-33.

and th a t.

52 therefor©, any common sense conclusions regarding prejudice among Northern and Southern students are open to further ex­ amination.

There i s , however, nothing in th is study which

indicates any predictive value for behavior in th is technique. Sims and P atrick.

A very similar study was undertaken

by Sims and Patrick, but with differen t r e s u l t s . ^

Being

concerned with the problem of Negro-white relationships, and, p articu larly , differences in a ttitu d e s toward the Negro of Southerners and Northerners, they deplored the fa c t that there are flbut few attempts to get quantitative evidence on the su b ject.1 *4^

With the recent publication of Hinckley*s

Attitude Toward the Negrow sc a le ,4^ they f e lt that they had an improved method by which i t might be practicable to con­ duct further investigations into the topic. Therefore, Sims and Patrick undertook the task of meas­ uring the a ttitu d e toward the Negro of three groups of college students,44 by use of the Hinckley scale.

As the authors

41 verner M. Sims and James R. Patrick, Attitudes Toward the Negro of Northern and Southern College Students,1 1 Journal of Social Psychology. 7:192-204, May, 1936. 42 I b id ., p. 192. 4^ Thurston© and Hinckley, op. c l t . 44 McNemar, s remark concerning psychological research is called to mind: nThe existing science of human behavior is largely the science of the behavior of sophomore s . w (Quinn McNemar, lfOpinion-Attitude Methodology,w Psychological Bulletin, 43:333, July, 1946.)

53 described them: The three groups involved were: 156 students coming from Southern homes . • * and enrolled in . . • the University of Alabama (known here as the Southern students) , 115 students . . . from Northern homes • ♦ • and enrolled in * • . the same in s titu tio n (known here as North-inSouth students) , and 97 students from Northern homes • • . enrolled in . . . Ohio University (known here as Northern students).45 In addition to the Hinckley scale, the students completed one form of the Otis te sts of mental a b ility , and also sup­ plied personal data. While the most pertinent part of th eir work was the comparison of the three groups, the authors also investigated the re la tio n between a ttitu d e toward the Negro, and i n t e l l i ­ gence, attitude and sex, a ttitu d e and year in college, a t t i ­ tude and size of home community, and attitude and parental occupation.

On the basis of th e ir studies, Sims and Patrick

found th a t:

^There are sign ifican t and true differences in

the a ttitu d e toward the Negro of the three g r o u p s , w i t h the Northern students being the most favorable, the North-inSouth students next, and the Southern students being le a st favorable.

They go on to point out, however, th at:

there are great individual differences within the groups and consequently overlapping between them. As to the causes of these differences our conclusions are only

45 Sims and Patrick, 0£. c i t ♦, p. 193. 46 Ib id ., p. 200.

54 negative. They do not seem to be s a tis fa c to rily accounted for by intelligence, sex, degree of maturity, size of home community, or occupational level Here, despite the fa c t th a t the authors have not men­ tioned the idea of known groups * th is aspect of th e ir study may be examined.

I t i s reasonable to assume, as did Sims

and Patrick, th at the Hinckley scale was actually measuring the a ttitu d e s which i t purported to measure.

On th is basis,

the measured a ttitu d e s of these three groups of students would seem to conform to the popular or common sense expecta­ tio n, which Is based upon geographical difference.

But no

conclusions about behavior are indicated from th is study, unless one or more assumptions about the behavior of the three groups are f i r s t made.

A possible assumption is that

the behavior of the members of these groups follows th e ir expressed a ttitu d e s. tion, being, as i t i s , th e sis.

This is obviously an unwarranted assump­ the topic under Investigation in this

Another possible assumption Is that the actions of

these people conform to the common sense conception, th at is , Southerners discriminate against Negroes more than Northerners do.

I t is not f e l t that a statement such as th is has s u f f i­

cient substantiation to be acceptable in a sc ie n tific lig h t. But even were th is statement acceptable, i t Is only of the most general nature, and would s t i l l not make I t possible

47 I b i d ., p. 203.

55 eith er to state a defin ite relationship between attitu d es and actions, especially fo r an individual, or to predict be­ havior, on the basis of Sims and Patrickfs research. Sims.

Xn 1938, one of the above authors reported upon

another study made in the fie ld of a ttitu d e s .

Again using

the Thurstone technique, Sims constructed wa scale for meas­ uring attitu d e toward the TVA (the Tennessee Valley Author­ ity )

His inquiry was undertaken for two reasons.

In

the f i r s t place, Sims was interested in the influence upon attitu de toward the TVA of favorable propaganda, unfavorable propaganda, and a combination of both.

Secondly, he attempted

to determine the re latio n s between a ttitu d e toward the TVA and various social factors such as occupation. The scale which was constructed was t i t l e d ,

^Opinions

on the TVA,n and, as has been mentioned, was constructed according to the Thurstone equal-appearing-lntervals technique. There were twenty-three items on the scale.

The subject was

instructed to respond to each by agreeing with the statement, disagreeing, or indicating uncertainty ^

Two typical items

follow: The TVA means state socialism,

and I am opposed to i t .

Verner M. Sims, ^Factors Influencing Attitude Toward the T.V.A.,1 1 Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 33:34-56, January, 1938.

56 I f you investigate, you w ill find that most of the people fighting the TVA own power stock or have some private grudge against i t . The scale was administered to over one thousand stu­ dents at the University of Alabama and at Florida State Col­ lege for Women, as well as to some eight hundred parents and adult acquaintances of these students.

Scoring was done on

a percentage basis, rather than the zero to eleven score range of Thurstone (the only deviation from the original technique), with a low score Indicating a favorable a ttitu d e . Although the r e lia b i lity of the scale was reported, mention was not made of the valid ity . One of the secondary portions of Sims1 work is of in­ te re s t here.

Sims described i t thus:

The scale was administered through students in a class In social psychology to certain contrasting groups of adults who for one reason or another had personal con­ cerns th at might lead to differences In a ttitu d es. The groups were a ll small and the findings have l i t t l e s ta ­ t i s t i c a l r e lia b i lity , but because of i t s consistency the accumulated evidence is rather c o n v i n c i n g . ^ These groups were: 1.

holders of

2.

applicants for TVA jobs

5.

government employees residing in Washington,

4.

non-government employees residing In Washington,

D. C.

49 Ib id ., p. 42.

Alabama Power Company

stock

D. C.

57 5.

merchants in the TVA region

6.

merchants outside TVA region

7.

New York Edison Company employees

8*

Interhoro Rapid Transit Company employees

9.

executives of an Alabama lumber company

10.

employees of th is lumber company

The groups were compared in p airs, by using the mean attitude score for each group. were:

In the f i r s t p air, the mean scores

stockholders, 68; TVA Job applicants, 28.

In the

second p air, the scores were: government employees,-23; non­ government employees, 35.

In the third pair: merchants In

TVA region, 34; merchants outside of region, 41.. The fourth pair were: Edison Company employees, 75; Interboro Rapid Transit employees, 46.

The la s t pair of scores were: lumber

company executives, 74; lumber company employees, 36. These groups may a ll be considered known in that on the mere basis of group membership one might make certain assumptions as to how the individuals would respond to the TVA scale.

For example, i t Is reasonable to believe that a

man who holds stock in a private power company in the TVAregion would oppose the TVA.

In th is sense they are known,

however, only in regard to attitu d es, and not actions.

As a

matter of f a c t, in th is p articu lar case I t is rather d i f f i ­ cult to postulate any specific set of a c tiv itie s that would correspond to the expressed attitu d es.

Whereas with most of

58 the previously discussed attitudes there are f a ir ly obvious corresponding a c tiv itie s ,

the attitude toward the TVA is one

which might be limited to verbalization.

There are some prob­

lems of everyday l i f e , i t has been pointed out,^G our reac­ tions to which are largely limited to verbalizations.

But

there are, of course, some actions th at might re su lt from an attitu d e toward or against the TVA.

Whether or not these

a c tiv itie s would be engaged in by the members of the various known groups being considered here is unknown as fa r as the available data are concerned.

So here again, despite the

appellation w known groups,w i t is seen that i t is not possible to reach any specific conclusions about the relationship be­ tween attitu d es and actions.

I t can simply be said that the

expressed a ttitu d es agree with the attitudes that would be expected on the basis of membership in a p a rticu lar group. SUM M ARY In th is chapter, ten examples of attitude research have been examined.

The f i r s t seven reports concerned a t t i ­

tude scales which were validated by the use of known groups. Watson devised a te s t to measure fair-mindedness, and used m inisters, theological students, as his known groups.

^

and normal school students

While he concluded that his te s t was

Likert, oja. c i t . > p. 32.

su ffic ien tly valid, there was only a slig h t indication of a positive correlation between behavior and expressed a ttitu d e s. In Neumann’s Attitude Indicator, designed to measure a t t i ­ tudes toward international matters, the validating groups were army o fficers, p a c ifis ts , Stock Exchange members, labor students and group members, and Communists. similar to Watson’s.

The resu lts were

The third study was conducted by

Rosander, who measured attitud es toward the Negro, using Northern and Southern students as the known groups.

Here,

there was no indication of a d irect relationship between actions and a ttitu d e s.

Raskin and Cook attempted to validate

Stagner’s scale for attitud es toward fascism, by using stu­ dents who had expressed a preference for, or actually joined, a student p o litic a l group, such as the Young Communist League, or Democrats.

Here, too, i t was f e l t that the scale was ade­

quately validated, but there is no reason to conclude from this study that actions are related to i t .

In the f if t h

investigation, Pace constructed a scale to Indicate liberalism or conservatism in p o litic a l,

social, and economic areas.

His known groups consisted of students who had given conclu­ sive evidence of eith er radical or conservative p o litic a l activ ity .

Pace’s research furnished the f i r s t reasonable

indication of a high positive correlation between the two concepts under investigation.

A la te r study was completed

by Ferguson, in the area of a ttitu d e toward relig ion and God.

60 In order to check the v a lid ity of his scale he used groups of Catholic, Protestant,

and Jewish students*

Here, again,

there was only slig h t evidence of a positive correlatipn. In the la s t of th is group of Inquiries, Nettler and Golding developed a scale for measuring the attitu d e toward Japanese in America, and used, as known groups, the Hood River, Oregon, American Legion Post, a'group of Jap anese-Americans, and four service groups whose a c tiv itie s had to do with returning Japanese evacuees.

In th is investigation, as in Pace's,

there was strong evidence to support a b e lie f in a d irect relationship between expressed attitudes and overt behavior. The la s t three studies which were considered in th is chapter were actual attempts a t determining the attitu d es of certain known groups, using instruments which were already validated.

Reinhardt measured attitu d e s toward the Negro,

of Northern and Southern college students.

His findings In­

dicated, i f anything, th a t attitudes and actions are related inversely.

Sims and Patrick conducted a similar study, but

th e ir re su lts showed no correlation.

Sims la te r conducted

another study, into attitu d es toward the TVA.

He examined

several groups which would be expected to be concerned in one way or the other with the outcome of the TVA project. These included holders of private power company stock, gov­ ernment employees, executives of an Alabama lumber company, and the lik e .

Sims1 re su lts here also failed to indicate a

sig n ificant relationship. The findings of these ten studies w ill he re-examined in Chapter Five, where the conclusions for th is thesis w ill he presented,

nevertheless, certain remarks concerning these

known groups are not inappropriate at th is point. fe lt,

I t is

by this w riter, that a l l too frequently i t can he

demonstrated th at the so-called wknown groups1 1 are a ctu ally » not known, either as regards attitudes or behavior.

Consider,

for example, Watson’s, Neumann’s, and Sims1 occupational groups, and th e ir attitud es toward fair-mindedness, Interna­ tional matters,

and the TVA, respectively.

No evidence was

offered, and there is no reason to believe, merely upon the basis of group membership, that eith er the a ttitu d e s or be­ havior in these three areas Is known. Rosander’s, Reinhardt’s,

Or, considering

and Sims and P atrick’s regional

groups, i t can be seen that In each case the hypothesis was that the a ttitu d e toward the Negro was known, merely on the basis of regional residence.

But that neither this attitu d e

nor the concomitant behavior was actually known was adequately demonstrated by the re s u lts of Reinhardt’s survey, which showed the Southern students as more favorably disposed toward the Negro than the Northern students.

In the case of Raskin

and Cook’s p o litic a l groups, and Ferguson’s religious groups, i t may be possible to consider th a t the Ideology of these groups is known, but to conclude on th is basis th a t the

62 attitudes of the individual group members are also known is unsupported by the evidence. groups, while known, (I . e .,

0!he behavior of the religious the support of and attendance at

a church) has not been linked to ©ither the Individuals * attitudes or the group’s philosophic orientation. pointed out e a r lie r ,

As was

there are too many other possible causes

of church attendance to conclude from the simple fact of attendance that one’s attitudes are known.

In the case of

Pace’s and Nettler and Golding’s investigations, while there is s t i l l an element of doubt, much more evidence has been presented to support the claim that the actions of the groups are known.

Pace’s groups actually voted for or against cer­

ta in candidates.

N ettler and Golding’s groups were engaged

in specific a c tiv itie s which v ita lly concerned the Japanese in America.

I t is in te restin g to note that these la s t two

studies, which differed from the other known group studies in that in these cases the groups were actually known, were the two which presented the most conclusive relationships between attitu d es and behavior. I t may be f a ir ly observed th at the closeness of the relatio n between the a ttitu d e s and behavior under considera­ tion, on the one hand, and the basis of organization, the philosophy, the raison d ’etre of the group, on the other hand, is an important consideration in the use of known groups for this type of study.

Furthermore, i t is not possible to make

63 predictions regarding individual group members unless the group members are known to conform to and support the groupfs actions, 100 per cent.

Otherwise, cases such as have been

presented in th is chapter are reduced to merely a comparison of individuals1 expressed attitudes with the attitu d e s that would be expected of them by virtue of th e ir membership in a certain group whose actions, in turn, are known or presumably known.

CHAPTER III RESEARCH CONCERNED WITH THE RELATION BETW EEN ATTITUDES AND •



ACTIONS

In the previous chapter several a ttitu d in a l investiga­ tions have been considered, which, although undertaken in order to measure attitu d es, have shown promise of contribut­ ing to the topic of th is thesis.

All of these have made use

of the concept of ttknown groups. w There i s , however, a body of research which has specifically attempted to re la te a t t i ­ tudes and actions.

While not a l l of these have been conducted

solely fo r this purpose, a ll have, in part at le a s t,

consid­

ered this p articu lar aspect of a ttitu d in a l theory and prac­ tic e .

Upon casual observation, these would seem to hold more

promise than those in the preceding chapter. Six such studies w ill be discussed In th is chapter. As implied above, i t is f e l t that these w ill yield more profitable re su lts in the endeavor to shed some lig h t on the possible manner in which group or individual behavior is re ­ lated to expressed a ttitu d e s .

These studies rather readily

f a l l Into two separate methodological groups, and w ill, there­ fore, be discussed separately.

In the f i r s t group are those

inquiries in which the expressed attitudes of an individual are compared with the individual*s known actions,

as d eter­

mined by means of his own report about certain portions of

65 his daily l i f e .

In the second group w ill he seen those

studies which compare the individual’s expressed attitudes with his actual behavior in a controlled, or observed situ a ­ tion.

Within each group the studies w ill be taken up in

chronological order. Several points w ill be covered with regard to each of the six studies.

In the f i r s t place, the theoretical back­

ground of the study w ill be presented, as well as a descrip­ tion of the actual procedure.

These w ill be followed by the

findings which have resulted from the research, and the in ­ vestig ato rs’ explanations of these findings.

Finally, im­

plications and conclusions fo r the topic at hand w ill be discussed. RESEARCH WHICH COMPARES ATTITUDES WITH THE INDIVIDUAL’S REPORT OF HIS OW N BEHAVIOR Zimmerman.

In the la te 1920’s, the ru ral sociologist,

Zimmerman, reported upon some research which he had carried on into the nature of farmers’ a ttitu d e s .** While his sole purpose was not the relatin g of attitudes to behavior, one portion of his work bears d ire ctly upon th is aspect of the topic.

Actually, Zimmerman was interested in the economic

^ Carle C. Zimmerman, 1 1Types of Farmers* A ttitudes,n Social Forces, 5:591-96, June, 1927.

66

attitudes of farmers, p articu larly as concerned with coopera­ tives and marketing, in the reasons for the existence of these a ttitu d e s, and also in the determination of some basic prin­ ciples of rural sociology. The concept of *attitude* was treated somewhat unusu­ ally by th is w riter. attitu d es.

He found that there are two types of

I t w ill be remembered that Katz and Allport

reached th is same conclusion,^ although th e ir description of the types i s not the same as Zimmerman*s.

Zimmerman said:

These two types are: f i r s t , attitudes regarding subjects with which farmers may have actual experience; and sec­ ond, those with respect to subjects which have not been or may never be objects of actual experience by the farm­ ers themselves. Illu s tra tio n s of these are those in re ­ gard to cooperative marketing and t a r i f f le g isla tio n . Farmers, especially Minnesota farmers, have trie d coop­ erative marketing, and th e ir attitu d es are mainly deter­ mined by th is overt experience. . . . On the other hand, t a r i f f s are far removed from farm l i f e . 5 He la te r referred to the former type attitude as an overt a ttitu d e ,

and to the l a t t e r as an ideational control.

In order to co llect his data, Zimmerman questioned 345 Minnesota farmers chosen at random, with approximately equal numbers being chosen from each of nine agricultural areas of the s ta te .

Although he did not publish his

® Katz and Allport distinguished between public and private a ttitu d e s. (Daniel Katz and Floyd H. Allport, Students * A ttitudes, p. 371.) 3 Zimmerman, op. c i t . , p. 592.

67 questionnaire, nor give any sample items from i t , he de­ scribed i t in the following manners Each farmer was asked to give his attitudes about cooperative buying and sellin g ; about the principles which should govern the conduct of marketing organiza­ tions; and about the determination of market prices. He also gave his a ttitu d e s regarding certain private market­ ing in stitu tio n s such as the flour m ills, meat packing plants, and the South St. Paul livestock market. In addition to th is he was asked how many years he had be­ longed to various farm associations; and also what he thought about a number of significant economic problems.4 Judging from the description of his procedure and findings, i t seems th at he used simply a questionnaire of the yes-no type rather than an attitu d e scale, and, therefore, he did not mention the topics of r e lia b ility and v a lid ity . His findings with respect to the cooperatives—the overt attitudes mentioned above--are p articu larly in terestin g here.

He found that there is

a direct relationship between

attitudes toward cooperatives and number of years membership in cooperatives.

Of those with no experience with coopera­

tiv e s, only 16 per cent showed a favorable attitude toward the cooperatives.

At the other end of the scale, a ll of

those with more than twenty-five years experience favored the cooperatives.

Those with some experience, but with less

than twenty-five years, were divided into groups based on a five-year in te rv a l,

and they showed a steadily increasing

4 Ib id ., p. 591.

68 favorable a ttitu d e toward the cooperatives as the length of experience in the cooperatives increased. I t is regrettable that Timmerman has not presented his data more completely, nor included the questionnaire In his report.

Lack of these Increases the d iffic u lty of draw­

ing any conclusions that are pertinent to th is study.

For

example, only the direction of the farmers1 attitudes towards cooperatives is known, but nothing about the magnitude or strength of these a ttitu d e s.

Furthermore, knowing l i t t l e

about the manner in which the questionnaire was actually con­ structed and administered, i t was valid,

can only be assumed that i t

and really did measure these attitu d e s without

introducing extraneous or d istra c tin g factors.

One more

point upon which i t would be desirable to have additional information is the reasons for the farmers1 membership in the cooperative organizations. Nevertheless, th is author* s work has significance here. On the reasonable assumption that the farmers* expression( of th e ir attitu d es toward cooperatives was a correct one, I t Is possible to* compare th is expression with th e ir actual be­ havior with regard to the cooperatives.

The l a t t e r i s , of

course, indicated by the number of years membership In these groups.

I t is true th at there may be other factors acting

here, but here i s ,

regardless,

an indication of a c tiv ity and

expressed attitu d es directed toward the same part of the

69 environment.

According to Zimmerman, his re su lts showed Ha

decided relationship between experience and a ttitu d e s.

The

Pearsonian coefficient of gross correlation between the two variables is +0.66 +3 S.E. 0.09.**^

He went on to point out

that these correlations are ^of group percentages and are considerably higher than correlations of individuals. 1,6 There is an element of p red icta b ility in these re su lts, too.

According to h is findings, there is a probability that

a fanner who has indicated a favorable attitu d e toward such organizations is a member of one, and i f he does not favor them, the probability is that he is not a member.

But with­

out knowing more of the strength of the attitudes and the other factors mentioned above, i t i s not possible to predict accurately an individual’s actions from his expressed a t t i ­ tudes . Telford.

Another investigation, the methodological

approach to which was similar to Zimmerman’s, was reported upon by Telford, in 1934.^

Working at the University of North

Dakota, he was interested in the outcomes of education, and

5 Ib id ., p. 592. 6 Ib id ., p . '593. ^ C. W. Telford, nAn Experimental Study of Some Factors Influencing the Social Attitudes of College Students,** Journal of Social Psychology, 5:421-28, August, 1934.

70 endeavored to determine the extent to which the educational methods in use were succeeding.

A further in te re s t which

was examined was concerned with the religious l i f e of a group of students. here.

I t i s the l a t t e r study which w ill be considered

Both are reported in the same a rtic le . Telford used the Thurstone and Chave scale for the

measurement of attitude toward the church.®

This scale,

which has since been revised, consisted of forty-five s ta te ­ ments concerning the church.

The instructions to the subject

were to check every statement that expressed his sentiment toward the church. 6. 34.

Some sample statements are:

I believe in what the church teaches but with mental reservations. I think the organized church Is an enemy of science and tru th .

In addition to checking these statements, the subject was also asked to give some personal Information.

Included were

the questions, ”Do you attend church frequently?” and ”Are you an active member of a church?”

This scale was scored as

the other Thurstone scales, i . e . , by finding the mean scale value of the Items endorsed by the subject,, on a to ta l scale of zero to eleven.

High scale values represented an unfavor­

able attitude toward the church.

The theoretical description

8 L. L. Thurstone and E. J. Chave, A Scale for Measur­ ing Attitude Toward the Church.

71 of th is scale is similar to that of the other Thurstone scales discussed e a rlie r. The subjects to whom Telford administered th is scale were taken from psychology classes at the University of North Dakota.

There were 219 students in the group, a ll sophomores,

and they represented 11a f a ir cross-section of the en tire stu­ dent body.

Of the 219 students, 30 were Catholics, 172 were

Protestants, 8 were Jews, and 9 had no religious affiliations.*® In comparing the group re su lts, Telford found that his data agreed substantially with that previously found by Thurstone and Chave, in th at the Homan Catholics, as a group, were most favorably disposed toward the church, with the Protestants next, and the Jews having the le a st favorable a ttitu d e .

All these differences were s ta t is tic a l ly acceptable.

Apparently, then, here is a reliab le and valid measure of attitude toward the church.

In order to compare these ex­

pressed attitudes with related behavior, the responses to the questions concerning church activity and attendance w ill be examined.

In Telford's words:

W e find the median scale value of those who report active church relations to be 2*06 (90 cases) , while those who are nominal members average 3.38 (83 cases), and those with no church re latio n average 3.85 (43 cases) • W e find the same expected differences when the median scale values of those attending church regularly,

® Telford, op,, c i t ., p. 425.

72 frequently, occasionally, seldom, and not at a ll are computed. The medians are 1.91 (68 cases), 2.48 (57 cases), 3.50 (58 cases), 4.95 (31 cases), and 6.75 (5 cases) for the five groups, respectively. The d if f e r ­ ences between these groups are s t a ti s ti c a ll y reliable.10 There is a direct relationship here between attitude toward the church and church attendance, and also between attitude toward the church and church membership.

Membership in,

and

attendance at, a church are a c tiv itie s which are overt ex­ pressions of one’s attitude toward the church.

Time, there

may be other influences operating in one’s attendance at church, but, nevertheless, these re su lts show that those who attend church regularly are those who have the most favorable attitu de toward the church, and sim ilarly, those who never attend are those with d istin c tly unfavorable attitu d es in th is respect.

Telford has presented only the median scores

for these groups, so the extent of overlapping between groups, the range within groups, and so on, are unknown.

Therefore,

these resu lts cannot be rig id ly transferred to the case of individuals.

That i s , i t is not legitimate to say that an

individual who does not attend church has an unfavorable a t t i ­ tude toward the church, nor can one pick up a te s t showing a favorable a ttitu d e score and conclude that that person neces­ sa rily is a church member.

I f more data were available, i t

might be possible to compute p robabilities of these events,

10 Ibid., p. 426.

73 but otherwise no specific predictions can be made. RESEARCH WHICH COMPARES ATTITUDES WITH OBSERVED BEHAVIOR The studies which w ill now be considered d iffe r from the previous two in an important methodological point. Whereas the Eimmerman and Telford studies used the individ­ u a l ^ own report of his a c tiv itie s as an indication of his behavior in a certain situ atio n , the Hartshorne and May, the LaPiere, the Corey, and the Stouffer Investigations, here to be examined, a ll made use of controlled, experimental or ob­ servable situations in order to determine the individual’s actions• Hartshorne and May,

The f i r s t to be discussed are

known as the Hartshorne and May studies.

In view of the

scope and significance of these studies, a b rie f h isto ric a l note w ill not be amiss.

In 1922, the Religious Education

Association f i r s t gave voice to the problem of the nature of existing religious education and the question of I ts effec­ tiveness.

In the same year, two other organizations expressed

similar in te re s ts .

All three of these problems were presented

to the In s titu te of Social and Religious Research.

This so­

ciety took action upon these requests and suggestions, and early in 1924, implemented the Character Education Inquiry. The entire funds for the Inquiry were supplied by the I n s ti ­ tute of Social and Religious Research, and Teachers College

74 of Columbia University agreed to undertake the project.

The

two co-directors of the studies, Hugh Hartshorne, of the Uni­ versity of Southern California, and Mark A. May, of Syracuse University, were then appointed to the s ta f f of Teachers College.

While originally planned for three years, the In­

quiry was extended for two more years, thus being In progress from 1924 u n til 1929.

The re s u lts , findings, and conclusions

were published in three volumes at the conclusion of the in ­ vestigation.

The Inquiry has since become recognized as

one of the most intensive and exhaustive of such studies, delving, as i t did, Into the fields of education, psychology, social psychology, te stin g , and sociology. The authors described th e ir aims more sp ecifically : W e are interested in the social functioning of children. And by this we mean that we intend to study social behav­ io r in relatio n , on the one hand, to the ideas, purposes, motives, and attitudes entertained by the individual, and, on the other hand, in re latio n to the group l i f e within which the observed and tested behavior takes place, in ­ cluding both the systems of behavior or customs of the groups and i t s codes, id eals, and purposes. The study was so organized as to yield, primarily, the d e ­ velopment of a large body of highly standardized te s t material for the measurement of a wide variety of achievement in the

^ Hugh Hartshorne and Mark A. May, Studies in the Nature of Character, 3. vols. Hugh Hartshorne and Mark A. May, Studies in Deceit,

p. 7.

75 fie ld of morals and r e l i g i o n . A

secondary portion of the

study, which is more germane here, was to investigate win te r ­ relations of conducts, knowledges, a ttitu d e s,

and opinions

among themselves—the problem of t r a i t s . * 14 Deceit was the character t r a i t chosen for intensive examination, as being a typical t r a i t of the to ta l social behavior.

Some ten thousand school children from twenty-

three school systems were examined by the various te sts de­ vised for the Inquiry.

About one-third of these were also

studied with regard to service and self-co n tro l.

Service

referred to the contrast between work for s e lf and work for others, while self-con tro l contrasted the enthusiasm with which a disapproved act was performed, as compared to an approved act. Almost a ll of the te stin g devices used in the Charac­ te r Education Inquiry were constructed fo r th is specific task.

While for reasons of p ra c tic a lity , i t was impossible

to give a ll the te s ts to a ll the children, most of the c h il­ dren did take the same battery of te s ts .

Included In this

battery were thirty-seven performance te s ts , in which behavior was actually observed and measured, and twenty paper and pen­ c i l te s ts .

Twenty-three of the performance tests measured

13 Ib id . , p. 8. I iO C .

o lt.

76 various manifestations of honesty or deception, while the remainder indicated cooperation, inhibition, and persistence. All but one of the paper and pencil te s ts were measuring some aspect of what was termed ”moral knowledge.”

These in ­

cluded five te sts on ”social information,” five on ”ethical opinion,1 1 and nine on ”social a ttitu d e s .”

The nineteen

”moral knowledge” te s ts were not constructed according to specific areas of attitu d es or information, but rather accord­ ing to mental processes or ethical concepts.

Thus, the names

of some of the te s ts were ”Cause-Effect,” ”Social-ethical Vocabulary,” ”B uties,” ”Success-Failure,” and ”Social Ap­ proval.”

Due to th is technique, many items appearing in the

”social information” and the ”ethical opinion” te s ts were d irectly concerned with a ttitu d e s.

Therefore, items regard­

ing any p articu lar a ttitu d e are scattered throughout the paper and pencil t e s ts .

As mentioned above, the bulk of the

performance te s ts were constructed to measure honesty, in one form or another.

In order, then, to compare attitudes

toward honesty or deception with actions, or performance in the same area, i t w ill be necessary to u tiliz e only certain questions from the paper and pencil te s ts .

The concept of

attitude that was used by these authors i s ,

again, a twofold

one.

Action attitu d es were tendencies toward a certain type

of behavior, while mental attitudes were tendencies toward

77 certain types of mental processes concerning behavior.15 In th e ir report of the Character Education Inquiry, Hartshorne and May have included the results of an item analysis of certain of the paper and pencil te s ts and the performance te s ts .

This p articu lar set of te s ts was adminis­

tered to some 850 children in grades five to eight, in Hew York and Connecticut.

In one comparison, for example, e le ­

ments from the Comprehensions Test, the Provocations Test, and the Duties Test were compared with resu lts for the same children on certain ones of the performance te s ts in which cheating consisted of copying from an answer sheet or the dictionary. Six items from the Comprehensions Test were used, a ll of which were of the multiple-choice type.

A typical one of

these questions follows: I f another pupil wants to copy your work and hand i t in, (a) l e t him do i t and say nothing about i t . (b) l e t him do i t but t e l l the teacher. (c) donft l e t him do i t and say nothing. (d) don*t l e t him do i t and t e l l the teacher he wanted to. (e) donft l e t him and t e l l him that you don't approve of che ating. The re su lts from six such items were compared with resu lts on te sts in which the students had the opportunity to copy answers from answer sheets, and use them as th e ir own, on 4

Hugh Hartshorne, Mark A. May, and Prank K. Shuttleworth, Studies in the Organization of Character, p. 55.

78 te s ts of academic achievement* conspicuous results*

The Item quoted above yielded

Of those children who endorsed cheating

by checking answer (a), 91 per cent actually cheated on the performance te s ts , as compared to a group average of 63 per cent*

One other item of these six showed sim ilarly extreme

re su lts.

The item was:

I f you make a mistake and put a nickel for a penny in the s lo t, (a) put in four slugs to even i t up. (b) c a ll up the company and t e l l them about i t . (c) smash the thing and get your nickel. (d) report i t to the police. (e) do nothing. Of those youngsters who checked the most violent response, (c) , a ll cheated at le a st once in the performance te s ts , against

the 63 per cent average of the whole group.

be noted, however, that

as

I t should

in both of the cases mentioned, the

numbers of children checking these resu lts were small.

In

the f i r s t case, eleven of a to ta l of 341 children checked (a), while in the second case, five out of 340 children checked (c).

In none of the other items did the cheaters

d iffe r significantly from the non-cheaters in th e ir responses. Five Items were chosen from the Provocations Test, in which the subject was to Indicate whether the behavior de­ scribed was rig h t, excusable, or wrong.

Here only one of

the five items gave re su lts in which cheaters were differen­ tia te d from non-cheaters: There was a contest among the classes for high grades. John cheated on the te s t in order to help his class win.

79 Of those who thought that th is behavior was rig h t, 93 per cent actually did cheat, as compared to 67 per cent who thought i t excusable, and 72 per cent who thought i t wrong. The numbers actually checking the three responses were: rig h t, 14$ excusable, 45; wrong, 299.

On the other four items there

were only insignificant differences in the responses of those who cheated as compared to those who did not. The Duties Test asked the subject to indicate whether he considered the stated activ ity his duty, not his duty, or sometimes his duty .and sometimes not. were analyzed.

Pour of these items

None showed significant differences, but the

one which showed the greatest difference was the one which dealt most d irectly with deceptive behavior, i . e .,

^To pre­

tend you understand a thing when you do n ot.1 1 Of the th ir ty four who considered th is th e ir duty, 76 per cent cheated. Of four hundred nine who considered i t not th e ir duty, 59 per cent cheated, and of th ir ty who were undecided, 77 per cent cheated. The three sets of comparisons described above are the only ones reported upon by Hartshorne and May which d irectly related attitudes and performance in the same specific area. Furthermore, these bear additional scrutiny.

In another

portion of th e ir investigation, Hartshorne and May showed that the factor of intelligence was common to both the per­ formance and the knowledge scores.

When th is was accounted

80 for, i t reduced the correlations. factors,

Similarly, certain other

such as age, race, and religion, affected the re s u lts .

Nevertheless, there remained positive, d e fin ite , coefficients of correlation in those cases.

alb eit small,

All things Con­

sidered, however, these findings did not establish any d e fi­ n ite relationship: Answers to many of the questions indicating knowledge of the proper thing to do shows no re latio n with the doing of i t . . . and similarly the correct action is about as often associated with incorrect knowledge as with correct.-*-6 They also pointed out that there was a greater correlation between the conduct and moral knowledge of groups than there was between the conduct and moral knowledge of individuals. But the reason for th is was quite probably the: classroom code or morale, which expresses i t s e l f in a tendency toward uniformity of response on both conduct te s ts and knowledge te s ts , irrespective of individual pupils* appreciation of the existence of causal connec­ tions between the two.!*? I t must be concluded, therefore, that despite the apparently high degree of correspondence in certain of the cases de­ scribed above, there is no predictive value attached to the knowledge of the a ttitu d e s or moral knowledge score of the child.

In explaining th is , the co-directors of the Character

Education Inquiry believed th a t cultural and environmental

16 I b id ., p. 163. 17 Ib id ., p. 212.

81 differences 1 1are more significant in determining correlations between knowledge and conduct than are any logical relations in the minds of Individuals."1® LaPiere.

The next investigation in th is fie ld d iffe rs

from the Hartshorne and May study in that the sole purpose of th is one was to estab lish the relationship between overt behavior and a ttitu d e s.

This two-year study was conducted

by LaPiere, commencing in 1 9 3 0 . LaPiere had previously ex­ pressed doubt concerning a ttitu d e scales.

He questioned the

meanings of scales which "demand a verbal adjustment to an en tirely symbolic s itu a tio n ," 2® pointing out, as was done in the f i r s t chapter of th is study, that there seemed to be no d efin ite relationship between the verbalization and the action: All measurement of attitu d es by the questionnaire technique proceeds on the assumption that there is a mechanical relationship between symbolic and non-symbolic behavior. I t is simple enough to prove th at there is no necessary correlation between speech and action, between response to words and to the r e a litie s they symbolize. . . • But to prove that there is no necessary relationship does not prove that such a relationship may not e x is t.21

Hugh Hartshorne, et a l, Testing the Knowledge of Eight and Wrong, p. . 62. 19 Richard T. LaPiere, "Attitudes vs. Actions," Social Forces, 13:230-37, December, 1934. 20 Ib id . , p. 230. 21 i b i d . . p. 231.

82 The d efin ition upon which LaPiere bases his study is that a social attitude is a Conditioned response to social stimuli,*®® but he goes on to say that they are rarely anything more than a verbalization to a symbolic situ atio n . An in terestin g incident was the immediate impetus to the investigation which th is author conducted.

While tra v el­

ing through the United States with a young Chinese couple, they had occasion to seek lodging at a hotel in a small town, notoriously bigoted in i t s

attitude toward Orientals.

th is , they were immediately accommodated.

Despite

Yet, two months

la te r , the author was in the same lo c a lity ,

and telephoned

the hotel to request reservations for *an important Chinese gentleman.*

In reply, he received a categorical *no.*

During the following two years, LaPiere and th is same couple traveled extensively through th is country, by automo­ b ile .

They sought service at 251 h o tels,

houses, restaurants, and cafes.

auto camps, to u rist

Detailed and careful records

were kept of the treatment received in each instance.

Every

e ffo rt was made to control the situations to eliminate ex­ traneous influences.

For example, the Chinese couple was

not even aware of the fact that the author was making th is investigation, in order not to influence th e ir behavior. Too, he endeavored to evaluate the actions of bell-boys,

22 Ibid., p. 230.

85 porters, waiters, and so on, in response to the presence of the Chinese couple.

All types of establishments were visited,

with the trio in varying a ttir e s , ney.

following th e ir day’s jour­

And, insofar as possible, LaPiere attempted to busy

himself with the auto or luggage, while his Chinese friends negotiated for the service. In order to compare the actions of these establishments with a similar verbalization, a questionnaire was la te r sent to each one.

About a h a lf year was allowed to elapse, and

then one of two types of questionnaires was sent.

In one

type, the establishment was asked the single question, **Will you accept members of the Chinese race as guests in your es­ tablishment?1 *

In the other type, th is same question was ac­

companied by several other similar ones concerning other minority groups.

The same two questionnaires were also sent

to a group of hotels and restaurants in the same regions, which had not been visited by the party, in order to offset any possible Impressions which had been l e f t by the in v e sti­ gator’s party. While s t a t i s t i c a l analysis of the re su lts was not possible, LaPiere has tabulated them carefully.

Six c la s s i­

fications were set up to describe the treatment to which the party was actually subjected. 1.

These were:

Reception considerably b e tte r than would normally

be expected.

84 2*

Received d ifferen tly , with mostly increased

curiosity. S.

^Normal” reception.

4.

Hesitant reception, which could be explained only

on 9 r a c ia l1 1 grounds. 5.

Embarrassing reception.

6.

Refused service.

At only one hotel and at one restaurant, of a to ta l of 251, did th e ir reception f a l l into the f i f t h category, and, at only one place were they actually refused service.

This la s t

was at na rather in fe rio r auto-camp1**^ in California. In view of the quality of service accorded the group, the re su lts of the questionnaires are surprising.

Responses

were received from 81 of the eating places and 47 of the ho­ te ls and auto camps which had been v is ite d :

a to ta l of 128.

Replies were also received from 32 hotels and 96 restaurants in the same regions, which had not been v isite d .

Neither the

type of questionnaire, nor the fact that h alf of the places had recently served a Chinese couple made any significant d if ­ ference in the response to the questionnaires.

The replies

f e l l into three categories: those who would not accommodate the mythical wimportant Chinese gentleman,w those who were undecided and said that i t would depend upon M circumstances,*

23 Ibid., p. 232.

85 and those who would accommodate him*

Of a to ta l of 256 re­

p lie s, only 2 were in the third category.

One of these was

an auto camp which they had v isited , and the other was a res tanrant which had not heen v isite d .

Over 92 per cent of a ll

replies received f e l l in the f i r s t group. To summarize, then: in response to a questionnaire, 92 per cent of these establishments defin itely said they would not accommodate a Chinese gentleman.

Yet, only 4 per

cent actually accorded a Chinese couple ttless than normal** treatment, and less than 1 per cent did refuse them accommo­ dations.

These results led LaPiere to the conclusion that

while an attitu d e questionnaire may adequately measure, for example, the in te lle c tu a l factors of one’s p o litic a l or ra­ c ia l a ttitu d e s,

they do not take into account the in terp er­

sonal, the emotional aspects, and, therefore, while the questionnaire may indicate what the person would actually do when confronted with the situ atio n , there is no assurance th a t this w ill actually be the case. dictive value here.

There i s ,

Surely there is no pre

i f anything, an inverse re la ­

tionship between expressed attitu d es and actual behavior, according to th is study. Corey.

The next investigation to be discussed was

conducted by Corey some five years a fte r the LaPiere study. As was the case with the e a rlie r study, Corey undertook to

86

measure both attitudes and behavior in order that comparisons might be m ade.^

He f e l t ,

as did others, that the procedures

then in practice for the validation of attitude scales were inadequate.

The .emphasis seemed to be on r e lia b i lity ,

than v alid ity .

rather

Furthermore, he believed that knowledge of

actions was fa r more useful than knowledge of attitu d es.

On

th is matter he said: I t is of in te re s t to determine what a subject says his attitu de is in regard to communism, the church, or foreign missions, but of greater moment sociologically Is the way he acts in relatio n to these in stitu tio n s.^ ^ I f one accepts Corey’s d efin itio n of a ttitu d e , which was v ir­ tually the same as the one used by th is w riter, i . e .,

a ten­

dency to act in a certain manner, then i t Is quite logical to consider an a ttitu d e scale valid i f i t predicts behavior. He, therefore, set up th is research In order to compare ’’scores made on an attitude questionnaire pertaining to honesty in the classroom with actual cheating in the classroom.”^ The subjects of Corey’s investigation were sixty-seven students In a college psychology class.

Once a week, for

five successive weeks they were given a tru e-false type

24 Stephen M. Corey, ttProfessed Attitudes and Actual Behavior,w Journal of Educational Psychology, 28:271-80, April, 1937. 2 5 Ib id ., p. 271. 26 Ib id ., p. 275.

87 examination on the week's work.

The papers were then graded

accurately hy the investigator, hut no marks were put on them. At the next class meeting the examination papers were returned to the students for grading.

No attempt was made to supervise

the students while they were grading th e ir papers, thus making i t easy for them to cheat.

The number of points difference

between the true score and the score turned in by the student was taken as his M cheating index.1* A second cheating index was computed by taking into account the proximity of the studentfs true score to the maximum possible score on that examination.

In this way the temptation to cheat was included,

on the hypothesis that i t would vary inversely with the stu ­ dent's true score.

Since the amount of cheating did not

decrease sig n ifican tly during the five weeks, i t was f e l t that the students had not become suspicious of th is unusual academic practice. An attitude scale was then constructed, according to a modification of the Thurstone technique.^*?

i t consisted

of f if ty items, each of which stated an attitu d e toward cheating in examinations.

The students were asked to mark

each item in one of the following ways: strongly agree, agree, uncertain, disagree, or strongly disagree.

This scale was

2*7 Stephen M. Corey, "Signed versus Unsigned Attitude Questionnaires,w Journal of Educational Psychology, 28:144-48, February, 1937.

88

administered twice to the same group of students.

In the

f i r s t case they were told not to sign the blanks, while the second time they did sign them.

By a system of secret iden­

tif ic a tio n marks, the unsigned blanks could be id en tified . While there were no s ta t is tic a l ly significant differences between the signed and unsigned sets, the unsigned ones were used in the comparisons since they indicated a consistently more favorable attitude toward cheating.

In view of the so­

c ia l pressures operating upon students th is is not surprising. The tests were scored on a scale of 50 to 250 as the possible range, with the higher score indicating the greater sympathy toward cheating. The relatio n between the resu lts obtained from the questionnaire and from the actual cheating investigation were then determined.

The cheating index was f i r s t computed for

each student, as described above.

The questionnaires were

then divided Into three groups according to the scores: the lowest quarter, the middle h a lf,

and the highest quarter.

The mean cheating index for each of these three groups, re­ spectively, was 6.67, 9.91, and 8.63.

The differences between

these three scores are a ll considerably less than the standard deviations.

In other words, the sixteen students who, accord­

ing to the attitu d e questionnaire, were sympathetic toward cheating, had an in sig n ifican tly higher actual cheating Index (8.63) than that of the seventeen students who, according to

89 the questionnaire, had an antipathy toward cheating (6.67). And the th irty -fo u r students who f e l l in the middle group, as fa r as expressed attitud e was concerned, cheated more than e ith e r of the other two groups. When he studied the relationship between the actual cheating index and the temptation to cheat, as indicated above, Corey was led to conclude th a t the d iffic u lty of the examination and the amount of preparation for i t were far more significant in determining whether an individual would cheat, than was any attitu d e which he had expressed regarding cheating. Corey sums up h is conclusions as follows: The data presented in th is study show that overt behavior, as measured by the amounts students w ill change th e ir te s t papers when allowed to do th eir own grading, is not related to a ttitu d in a l scores derived from a highly r e l i ­ able questionnaire measuring verbal opinions toward cheating on examinations.28 Here, as in the LaPiere study, there seems to be no direct relationship between the expressed attitudes and the overt behavior of the members of th is group.

I t is impossible, of

course, to draw any general conclusions regarding a ll attitu de scales from th is , but in th is case, at any ra te , there would certainly be l i t t l e value to the knowledge of the attitu d e , i f actual behavior was what was sought.

28 Corey, "Professed Attitudes and Actual Behavior," op. c i t •, p. 279.

90

Stouffer.

While the dates on which the above studies

were conducted seem to indicate that there has been l i t t l e current in te re s t in th is problem, there is one research report which belies th is apparent lack of interest*

The four-volume

report of the Studies in Social Psychology in World War II i s , even now, only p a rtia lly published*

These studies are

more fam iliarly known as Stoufferfs wThe American Soldier."29 This lengthy and illuminating study was undertaken by the Social Science Research Council, on the basis of a tremendous amount of research conducted and compiled by the Research Branch of the War Department’s Information and Education Division, during World War II*

All in a ll ,

some two hundred

separate surveys were conducted Into various attitudes of army personnel.

Sample sizes ranged from one hundred to

twenty-five thousand, and the attitu des Investigated were directed at such diverse things as, for example, c iv ilia n s, own performance In combat, WACS, venereal disease, post-war plans, fear, and winter clothing.

The War Department orig­

in ally authorized these extensive studies because of th e ir obvious value In planning, training, morale, and the lik e . However, they have far greater Importance now, representing, as they do, not only a wealth of data, but also an overwhelm­ ing amount of labor which has gone into organizing,

^

Studies in Socl al Psychology in World War I I , 4 vols.

91 In te rre la tin g ,

and drawing conclusions from these data,

Stouffer and his associates have made several important con­ tributions to social psychology. One portion of the Studies in Social Psychology in World War I I is of p articu lar importance to th is paper.

The

question arose, in the a ttitu d in a l research being conducted by the War Department, as to what relatio n the verbal reports of the men had to th e ir subsequent performance in combat. Combats was, after a l l , existence,

the raison d*£tre of the Armyfs very

and any further information on th is score was

highly valuable.

A study was, therefore, implemented to re ­

late the attitudes of individuals toward th e ir own future performance in combat, with th e ir actual, subsequent combat performance. ^ In the l a t t e r part of 1943, a which was in training in Oregon,

newly activated division,

was surveyed.

While the

questionnaires were f ille d out anonymously, i t was possible to id entify the men by means of such data as age and place of b irth .

(This information was available only to the Research

Branch, and not to the commanding officers of the men studied.) There were four questions which dealt specifically with com­ bat, of which the following is typical:

30 Samuel A. Stouffer, at a l, The American Soldier: Combat and I ts Aftermath, pp. 30 f f .

92 I f you were sent into actual fighting a fte r finishing one year of training, how do you think you would do? I think I would do a ll right* I think I would have trouble at f i r s t , but a fte r a while I would be OK. I haven’t any idea how I would do. I don’t think I would do very well. These answers are arranged in order of decreasing d e sira b il­ i ty , from the Army’s point of view. was so constructed.

Each of the four questions

The questionnaire also included items

about various other phases of army l i f e . Approximately fifte e n months la t e r this division saw combat duty in the European Theater.

Most of the men had

about three months of combat duty before the division was withdrawn.

Shortly a fte r th is ,

combat performance data were

obtained about as many as possible of the men who had p a rtic ­ ipated in the Oregon surveys.

The means of gathering the

combat performance information were, of course, highly c r i t i ­ cal.

Trained interviewers conducted interviews with the

o fficers and nnoncomsB under whom the men in question had worked.

These ra te rs compared the men to other men who held

similar positions,

and rated each as above average, average

or indeterminate, or below average, with respect to several c r ite r ia .

The ra te r did not know the names of the p articu lar

men in whom the Interviewer was interested, but merely rated a ll men under him who held the same types of jobs.

Each man

93 was rated by at le a st two ra te rs ,

and sometimes more, and

only those men whose various ratings were in substantial agreement were u tiliz e d .

After controlling these resu lts

for certain background factors such as age, marital sta tu s, and education, 279 cases were l e f t .

Each* of these was c las­

sifie d as to performance in combat as above average, average, or below average. These combat ratings were then compared with the orig­ in al a ttitu d e s, by noting the various responses to the four questions of the men in each of the three combat performance groups.

On the question quoted above, for example, 86 per

cent of the above-average performance group gave one of the f i r s t two responses (considered favorable by the Army), while only 65 per cent of the below-average performance group gave these responses.

All the items gave similar re su lts.

In

other words, those men whose actual combat performance was above average tended to express (over a year earlie r)

a tti­

tudes towards combat which were superior from the Army view­ point.

That i s :

They were more lik ely to manifest confidence that they would perform s a tis fa c to rily in combat, they were more lik ely not to express anxiety about future injury in combat, and they were somewhat more lik ely to accept k illin g as th e ir business.31 In a ll but one question these differences are s t a tis tic a lly

31 Ibid., p. 35.

94 sig n ifican t,

and In a l l cases the re su lts showed the same

tendency. The d irect relationship between these expressed a t t i ­ tudes and the subsequent combat behavior has a certain amount of predictive value.

For example, again considering the ques­

tion quoted above, one can predict that of those men who re ­ spond with either of the two unfavorable re p lie s , approximately 39 per cent w ill be below average in th e ir combat performance, while 45 per cent w ill be average, and 15 per cent above average.

Similar conclusions can be drawn from the other

items as well. SUM M ARY Six studies have been considered in th is chapter.

In

the f i r s t two, which were conducted by Timmerman and by Telford, an attempt was made to gain knowledge of overt be­ havior by means of questioning the individual regarding his membership in cooperative marketing associations, in the fo r­ mer case,

and regarding church attendance and membership, in

the l a t t e r case.

These Indications of actual behavior were

compared with the re s u lts of attitu d e questionnaires about the same topics.

Both investigators found a decided re la ­

tionship between the expressed attitudes and the behavior of the groups studied. The next three investigations that have been discussed

95 made use of controlled and experimental situations in order to determine behavior*

In the Hartshorne and May Character

Education Inquiry, elaborate performance te sts and paper and pencil te s ts were administered to large numbers of school children*

The specific topic, examined was honesty*

LaPiere

studied attitudes toward Chinese people by comparing expressed attitudes of hotel and restaurant managers with the manner in which these same people treated a v is itin g Chinese couple. In the next Inquiry, Corey measured actual cheating in the classroom, and compared this with the students1 expressed attitudes toward cheating.

All three of these bodies of re ­

search indicated in sig n ifican t or negative correlations be­ tween the expressed attitudes and the actions* In the Stouffer report on wThe American Soldier,1 1 the attitu d es of army trainees toward combat were compared with ratings of th e ir la te r performance in actual combat.

The

resu lts showed a tendency for those with favorable attitu d e s (from the Army viewpoint) bat performance.

to be above average in th e ir com­

CHAPTER IV AH EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN FOR DETERMINING THE RELATION BETW EEN ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS Many ingenious attempts have been made to discover the relationship between expressed attitudes and actions. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these are those which were carried out by Hartshorne and May, LaPiere, and Corey, a ll of which were discussed e a rlie r in th is study.

The la s t word

in th is fie ld has not yet been w ritten, of course, as evidenced by the s t i l l existing lack of agreement upon even the meaning of the term a ttitu d e , for example.

But most researchers, re ­

gardless of differences in philosophy or methodology or ap­ proach, agree that; there is much to be gained by an increased knowledge of the manner in which behavior and attitu d es are in te rre la te d , I f , indeed, they are related.

Experimental

means of gaining th is knowledge are, of course, extremely d if f ic u lt.

There are many p ractical obstacles to th is type

of research, not the le a st of which is the problem presented by the fa c t that the behavior of human beings cannot be con­ tro lle d and observed in the same manner as laboratory animals. This was pointed out by Corey, who, nevertheless, concluded that such research "would seem to be very much worthwhile.

11

Stephen M. Corey, "Professed Attitudes and Actual Be­ havior, w Journal of Educational Psychology, 28:279, April, 1937.

97 The whole problem has been summed up in a statement by Bain, which has as much merit today as when i t was originally w ritten: Practically a ll investigators, when pressed, w ill admit the probable discrepancy between verbal and actual be­ havior, • • • That there is often high correlation must be admitted but i t must be s c ie n tific a lly (quantitatively) determined just what this correlation is i f the resultant generalizations are to have any sc ie n tific (predictive) value. 2 Most of the studies [done so far] are chiefly f a llib le , I think, because they do not duplicate l i f e situ atio n s. . . . The remedy would seem to be th is : Attitude studies should be based upon actual adjustment behavior . . . and correlations of verbal and overt behavior.3 In view of this widely f e l t need, an original experi­ mental design w ill be presented in th is chapter, which, i t is f e l t , has p o s s ib ilitie s of contributing to this problem. This experimental design is of the type described by Greenwood as a nprojected e x p e rim e n tD e p e n d in g upon the manner in which i t is conducted, i t may be eith er a ^simultaneous1 * or a ,lsuccessionaltl experiment.^

The hypothesis to

be investigated is that an individual who has an anti-Negro attitu d e w ill exhibit discriminatory behavior toward a Negro.

® Read Bain, wTheory and Measurement of Attitudes and Opinions, 11 Psychological B ulletin, 27:360, May, 1930. 3

Ib id ., p. 367.

^ Ernest Greenwood, Experimental Sociology, pp. 48 f f . 3

ItOC. cl t .

98 There are, of course, countless topics into which an attitu d esversus-actions study could be launched, but th is p articu lar topic was chosen for two reasons.

In the f i r s t place, many

reliab le and valid scales for measuring the attitude toward the Negro are available.

In the second place, the fie ld of

minority group relations and prejudices is one of paramount importance in the contemporary social scene. This research should be conducted through the f a c i l i ­ tie s of some already existing advisement serviee, where people come, on th e ir own in it ia t iv e ,

to receive personal9 vocational,

educational, or some other type of counseling.

Furthermore,

the routine counseling procedure must include the completion, by the subject, of various paper and pencil te s ts , questionnaires.

scales, or

A random sampling of the white, male clients

of such an advisement agency would be used as the subjects of th is experiment.

These men would not know th at they were

p articipatin g in an experiment, nor would they, at any time during the procedure, even be aware of the fa c t th at the ser- ; vices which they were receiving would not be the same as those received by a ll c lien ts of the agency. must be taken into consideration.

One additional point

Some of the clie n ts may be

i n i t i a l l y unreceptive to the idea of responding to any paper and pencil scales.

Such clien ts should not be Included in

the sample, inasmuch as the subjects w ill be asked to f i l l out an additional attitu d e scale.

The subjects would,

99 individually, p articip ate in the following procedure. Along with the other paper and pencil te s ts which he takes as part of the counseling routine, the subject would be asked to complete a scale on attitude toward the Negro. While many such scales have been constructed,® the original Thurs tone-Hinckley scale*^ is to be recommended.

In order to

allay the subject 1 s suspicion, this scale might be ttsandwiched inw with several other ndummyw attitu d e scales, or i t might be put to him on the basis of asking his assistance in stand­ ardizing a ^new* attitu d e scale.

However i t is accomplished,

i t i s important th at the subject not realize that there is a special amount of importance attached to this p articu lar s cal e .

v -. Either prior to, during, or subsequent to the time

when he completes the scale, the subject w ill be observed in one or more special controlled situatio ns,

in each of these

situations he w ill be faced with making a choice between a Negro and a white person, although the exact nature of the choice w ill vary from situation to situ atio n .

On the basis

® e .g . , Emory S. Bogardus, Social Distance Scale, H. H* Bemmers and H. H. Grice, Scale for Measuring Attitude Toward any National or Racial Group, and A. C. Rosander, Negro Behavior Attitude Scale. ^ I». L. Thurs tone and E. D. Hinckley, Scales for the Measurement of Social A ttitudes; No. 3; Attitude Toward the Negro.

100

of these observations, the amount of discrimination in the s u b je c ts actions w ill be determined.

These situations are

d if f ic u lt to construct, in order both to eliminate a r t i f i ­ c ia lity , which Greenwood has referred to as the ^principal stumbling block1 *® of experimental sociology, and to re tain the a b ility of the situations to distinguish between d is­ criminatory and non-discriminatory behavior. One such situation might be described as follows;

As

part of the counseling procedure, the subject is to work at a table or desk: perhaps to f i l l out preliminary data sheets, or the paper and pencil te s ts , or the lik e .

Only two tables

are available in the room, each with two chairs.

When the

subject enters the room, a Negro is working at one table and a white a t the other.

Apparently, these men are other clien ts

of the agency; actually they are cooperating in the experiment. One or both might be the observers.

The subject is thus faced

with the choice of s ittin g at the same table as the Negro or the white.

The room and furniture are so arranged that the

vacant chair at the Negro’s table is more desirable, perhaps because i t has b e tte r lig h tin g , a more comfortable chair, or is more conveniently placed.

The hypothesis is thus that i f

the subject goes out of his way and chooses the less desirable chair, at the white’s table, he is exhibiting discriminatory

® Greenwood,

ojd.

c i t ., p. 100.

101

behavior against the Negro. Other similar situations might be constructed, with care and patience.

For example, the investigator might pro­

vide the subject with the necessity of borrowing some tool or instrument or equipment, such as an eraser or an Electro­ graphic pencil, from eith er the Negro or the white.

Or he

might have to ask one or the other for instructions or a s s is t­ ance.

A situ atio n involving physical contact, such as shaking

hands, could prove very illuminating. gested by the Rosander s c a l e E a c h

Others might be sug­ situ atio n would be so

constructed as to present the subject with a choice of d ire c t­ ing his behavior toward either the Negro or the white, and would also be constructed around an hypothesis similar to that in the above paragraph. There are, obviously, many factors to be considered in devising these situ atio n s.

Aside from those already men­

tioned, - i t is important that i f more than one situ atio n is used, they must be so constructed that the choice made in the f i r s t situ atio n w ill not influence subsequent choices. Also, since the subject must always have only two choices, each action must be d irectly in itia te d by the subject.

It

is almost superfluous to mention that the subject must have

9

££• ante pp. 30 f f

102

no Idea that his behavior toward the Negro is being observed. The re su lts to be drawn from these observations w ill depend upon both the size of the sample and the number of situations used.

F irst of a l l , on the basis of the re su lts

on the attitu d e scale, each subject should be c la ssifie d as prejudiced, neutral, or unprejudiced.

Then, based upon the

observations of behavior, each would be classed as discrim­ inatory, neutral, or non-discriminatory, in h is b eh av io r.^ I f less than about six situations are used, the null hypothesis w ill probably eliminate the p o ssib ility of comparing an indi­ vidual’s behavior with his expressed a ttitu d e s.

However, i t

would s t i l l be possible to compare the prejudiced group with the unprejudiced group, to see, for example, whether each group shows an equally high percentage of discrimination.

If

both the sample and the number of situations are large enough, a ll the subjects who give mixed responses to the situations (i . e . , react in a discriminatory manner in some of the situ a ­ tions,

and in a non-discriminatory manner in the rest)

could

be eliminated from the fin a l comparison, thus increasing the r e l ia b i li ty of the r e s u lts .

The situations can be validated

by using a control group of subjects with two white persons rather than a white and a Negro as the cooperating personnel.

10 terms npre judice” and 11discrimination” are used here with the same meanings as given by Merton. Cf. ante p. 2.

CHAPTER V SUM M ARY AND CONCLUSIONS This chapter contains a suimiiary of the f i r s t four chap­ te rs of th is thesis.

In addition, i t includes those conclusions

for the problems under consideration which may be drawn from th is investigation. SUM M ARY This thesis has been concerned with an attempt to d is ­ cover what is now known and believed regarding the relationship between expressed attitudes and overt behavior. aspects of this problem have been considered.

Three specific The f i r s t of

these was whether or not there is any evidence which points to a d ire c t, one-to-one relationship.

In the second place,

the question was asked as to whether there is any predictive value for actions in the knowledge of expressed a ttitu d e s. Lastly, evidence was sought which might indicate that the r e ­ lationship between the two in some field s is closer than in other f ie ld s .

The method used was to examine the research

already completed in th is and allied fie ld s . In the second chapter, ten investigations were consid­ ered.

These were conducted by Watson, Neumann, Rosander,

Raskin and Oook, Pace, Ferguson, N ettler and Golding, Reinhardt, Sims and Patrick,

and Sims.

Each of these was concerned

104 primarily with the meastir ement of attitu d es,

and made use of

so-called nknown g r o u p s f o r comparison purposes* two cases,

In only

(Face, and N ettler and Golding) could the groups

re ally he considered known. The th ird chapter dealt with six studies which actu­ ally attempted to re late behavior and a ttitu d e s.

The inves­

tig ato rs were Zimmerman, Telford, Hartshorne and May, LaPiere, Corey, and Stouffer.

The re su lts of these were mixed.

An original experimental design was presented in the fourth chapter.

This was devised to investigate the hypoth­

esis th a t an individual who has an anti-Negro attitude w ill exhibit discriminatory behavior toward a Negro.

The method

consisted of comparing the expressed attitude of sun individual, as determined by an instrument such as the Thurs tone-Hinckley scale, with the behavior of the individual as secretly ob­ served in an experimental situ atio n in which he is face-toface with a Negro. CONCLUSIONS I t may be well, here, to recapitulate b rie fly the con­ clusions of the various studies. In the Watson inquiry, the actions of the various groups were shown to be unknown unless some ungrounded as­ sumptions were made about Methodist ministers, normal school students, and theology students.

The same was true of

105 Neumann1s army o ffic e rs, p a c ifis ts , Stock Exchange members, and so on, and of Sims* merchants in the TVA region, private power company stockholders, Interboro Rapid Transit employees, etc.

In some of these groups, i t is possible to make reason­

able assumptions about the a ttitu d e s th at a typical group member might hold in reference to a p articu lar f ie ld .

But

to determine the acceptability of the assumptions, they must be checked by the use of attitu d e scales.

This potentially

circuitous argument need have no bearing upon the conclusions for th is study.

The point remains th at, with one possible

exception, there is no evidence in any of these cases which points to the existence of a typical behavior on the part of the group members. the group i t s e l f .

The possible exception is membership in As was pointed out e a r lie r , however, unless

the fa c t of becoming a member of a p articu lar group Is based upon the specific attitude and action under question, there is no indication th at the actions of an Individual w ill con­ form to those of the other group members.

There are too many

other factors which enter into one’s membership in groups such as these.

There simply is no evidence which indicates,

for example, that army o ffic e rs, ipso facto 3 discriminate against Negroes.

I t is concluded, therefore, that despite

th e ir many merits, these three studies have no Implications concerning the re la tio n between expressed attitudes and actions. Similar to the above occupational group studies were

106 those which made use of regional groups.

These were the

Rosander, the Reinhardt, and the Sims and Patrick studies of Northern and Southern students.

In each of these, the assump­

tion was made or implied that merely upon the basis of r e s i­ dence in the North or the South, the attitu d es toward the Negro would be known.

Reinhardtfs findings, which showed

that a group of Northern students was more prejudiced against Negroes than a group of Southern students, demonstrates the fallacy of the assumption.

In none of these cases were any

data presented which might indicate a knowledge of the overt behavior of the groups toward the Negro.

Here again, then,

I t i s concluded that these three investigations contribute nothing to the knowledge of any possible relationship between attitudes and behavior. The Raskin and Cook validation of Stagner’s fascism scale made use of groups of students of various p o litic a l leanings.

In order to reach any conclusions about the manner

in which behavior is related to expressed a ttitu d e s, upon the basis of Raskin and Cookfs work, I t is necessary to assume that purely on the basis of membership in , for example, the Young Communist League, the In d iv id u a ls behavior with regard to fascism is known.

Or, i t would be necessary to assume

that the very act of associating himself with such a group is behavior with regard to fascism. tions is tenable.

Neither of these assump­

I t is too much to believe that a ll the

107 members of even such a devoted group as the Young Communist League, much less a group of student Republicans, not only accept, but act in complete accordance with the group ideol­ ogy.

Furthermore, as mentioned previously, there are many

factors, other than philosophic ones, which influence a person to become associated with a certain group. Much the same analysis is pertinent to the Ferguson study of religious groups.

These groups, however, being for

the most part involuntary groups, there is even less reason to believe that religious behavior is known.

Accordingly,

the conclusion is reached th at neither the Raskin and Cook, nor the Ferguson investigation, has contributed to the prob­ lem under consideration. The groups of radicals and conservatives which Pace used to validate his liberalism-conservatism scale were sim ilar to those used by Raskin and Cook, but with one im­ portant difference.

In the knowledge of the way in which

the individual members voted in the national elections, Pace has an excellent example of lib e ra l or conservative behavior in the social, p o litic a l,

and economic fie ld s .

This i s , of

course, assuming that the voting was reported tru th fu lly and was not influenced by other than ideological factors.

Much

the same holds true for the pro- and anti-Japanese groups selected by N ettler and Golding.

The actions of these groups

toward Japanese in America could easily be observed by any

108 Interested person.

Due to the nature of the pro-Japanese

groups, i t Is reasonable to assume that the Individual mem­ b e r 1 s actions were consistent with the groupfs actions.

While

th is does not s t r i c t l y apply to the American Legion Post, In­ asmuch as insofar as i t has been possible to ascertain, there was no in tern al dissension in the group with regard to the honor r o ll Incident, i t

seems reasonable to conclude that

th is action was also supported by a ll of the group members. In both the Pace and the N ettler and Golding investigations, then, both actions and attitudes were known.

In contradis­

tin ctio n to the other known group studies, these groups were re a lly known.

And, in both of these studies, complete agree­

ment was found between the expressed attitudes and the be­ havior.

On the basis of these two, the conclusion can be

reached that there is not only d irect agreement between ac­ tions and a ttitu d e s, but that there is also predictive value to the knowledge of a ttitu d e s . There i s , however, one question about the above two studies, which also applies to most of the previous ones, that cannot be ignored.

Since In both cases the known groups

were used as part of the validation procedure, is there any assurance that these attitudes were actually being measured? I t Is possible, in theory at le a s t, that only behavior was being measured, even by the paper and pencil device, and that attitudes were not touched upon.

This problem resolves i t s e l f ,

109 ultim ately, to a matter of semantics, depending primarily upon the d efin itio n and implications of the concept of a t t i ­ tudes • Zimmerman’s study of farmers’ attitu d es toward cooper­ atives l e f t some doubt as to the valid ity of the determination of the attitu d e s, as well as to whether the actions were thoroughly enough known#

The l a t t e r comment also applies to

Telford’s religious groups and th e ir church membership and attendance.

Both of these, however, give indications of a

d irect relationship between the attitu d e s and behavior in question.

There is only slig h t evidence of a predictive value,

p articu larly as applied to the individual. While the Hartshorne and May studies of honesty and deceit in children did yield some positive correlations be­ tween a ttitu d e s toward cheating and actual dishonest perform­ ance, when other factors such as age, intelligence, group code, and so on were taken into account, the re su lts were attenuated.

I t is concluded, therefore,

that on the basis

of these extensive investigations there is not a d irect re la ­ tionship between the two factors, nor is there any predictive value. The LaPiere inquiry into attitu des and behavior of certain hotel and restaurant personnel toward Chinese nationals leads only to the conclusion that there is an Inverse r e la ­ tionship between actions and a ttitu d e s.

110

Similarly, the Corey study of cheating of college stu­ dents indicates that there is no significant relationship be­ tween the expressed attitudes of students toward cheating, and the actual amount of cheating in which they engage* In the War Department’s studies of attitudes toward, and performance in , army combat, a d irect relationship was found, although i t was not high enough to cast out a ll doubt. Similarly, there was a certain amount of p re d ic ta b ility to these re s u lts. By way of summary, then, of the sixteen studies which were examined, eight were shown to have no implications for th is problem; two, the Pace, and Nettler and Colding studies, indicated a d ire ct, predictive relationship between expressed attitudes and actions; three, the Zimmerman, Telford, and Stouffer studies, also indicated a direct relatio n , but not as conclusively as the f i r s t two; two, the Hartshorne and May, and Corey studies, indicated th at no relationship ex ists; and one, the LaPiere study, indicated an inverse relationship. The la s t three named, plus the Stouffer study, are f e l t to be the more conclusive, since the other four were shown to contain possible sources of error in the assumptions that were made.

There Is not, however, a su fficien t body of evi­

dence here to enable one to sta te categorically th at there is any specific relationship between expressed attitudes and overt behavior.

Ill As for the p o ssib ility of a closer relationship in some fie ld s than in others, upon examining the above eight studies i t

can be seen th at, for example, in the fie ld of

race re latio n s, N ettler and Golding*s study concerning Japanese showed the existence of a d irect re latio n , while LaPiere*s study with the Chinese showed an inverse re latio n . On the other hand, both the Hartshorns and May, and the Corey investigations of cheating showed a complete lack of correla­ tion.

Here again, there is no conclusive evidence which

might indicate that some fie ld s are more likely than others to yield a high correlation between actions and a ttitu d e s. The cause or causes of the disagreement in the resu lts of the above eight studies are obscure. the d iffe re n tia tio n ,

One p o ssib ility is

as f i r s t made by Katz and Allport, be­

tween public and private opinions.^

Another point to be con­

sidered is the sp ecificity of behavior.

While most of the

studies considered have made use of single, specialized s itu ­ ations, Hartshorne and May pointed out th a t, f,This sp ecificity of behavior makes necessary the use of a large number and variety of situations in any te s t which purports to give a f a ir picture of any single tendency.11^

Daniel Katz and Floyd H. Allport, Students1 A ttitudes, p. 371. ® Hugh Hartshorne, Mark A. May, and Frank K. Shuttleworth, Studies in the Organization of Character, p. 1.

112

Tii© question of whether there exists any re latio n be­ tween behavior and attitudes has long been of in te re s t.

Over

twenty years ago, Symonds advised th a t, wone should be on guard against assuming that verbal reactions carry over into conduct react i ons♦

In view of the small number of studies

made on th is problem, and the lack of agreement which th e ir resu lts show, the need and opportunity for future Investiga­ tion in th is area are self-evident.

In the interim, i t would

seem wise to follow Symonds1 advice.

3 Percival M. Symonds, w What Is an Attitude ? 11 Psycho­ logical B ulletin, 24:201, March, 1927.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY A•

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116 Studies in Social Psychology in World War XI. 4 vols.; Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 19491950. Thomas, William I . , and Florian Unaniecki, The Polish Peas ant in Europe and America. 5 v ols.; Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1918. Thorpe, Louis P., Psychological Foundations of Personality. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, In c ., 1938. 602 pp. Watson, Goodwin B., The Measurement of F air-Mindedness. Contributions to Education, No. 176. New York: Teachers College Bureau of Publications, Columbia University, 1925. 97 pp. B.

PERIODICAL ARTICLES

Bain, Read, **Theory and Measurement of Attitudes and Opinions,1 * Psychological B ulletin, 27:357-79, May, 1930. Bogardus, Emory S., **Measurlng Social Distances,** Journal of Applied Sociology, 9:299-308, March, 1925. Bolton, Euri B., **Effect of Knowledge Upon Attitudes Toward the Negro,** Journal of Social Psychology, 6:68-90, February, 1935. Corey, Stephen M., **Professed Attitudes and Actual Behavior, 11 Journal of Educational Psychology, 28:271-80, April, 1937. _________, 11 Signed versus Unsigned Attitude Questionnaires,** Journal of Educational Psychology, 28:144-48, February, 1937. Droba, Daniel D., **The Nature of Attitude,** Journal of Social Psychology, 4:444-63, November, 1933. Faris, Ellsworth, **Attitudes and Behavior,** American Journal of Sociology, 34:271-81, September, 1928. Ferguson, Leonard W., **The Measurement of Primary Social At­ titudes,** Journal of Psychology, 10:199-205, July, 1940. _________, **Primary Social Attitudes,** Journal of Psychology, 8:217-23, October, 1939.

117 _________, W A Revision of tlie Primary Social Attitude Scale,w Journal of Psychology, 17:229-41, April, 1944. _________, **The Sociological Validity of Primary Social Attitude Scale No. 1: Religionism,1 * Journal of Social Psychology, 23:197-204, May, 1946. Hs&, E. H., **A Note on and Some Suggested Methods for the Determination of the Validity Coefficient , 11 Journal of Eduoational Psychology, 39:304-7, May, 1948. LaPiere, Richard T., **Attitudes vs. Actions,* * Social Forces, 13:230-37, December, 1934. McNemar, Quinn, **0pini on-Attitude Methodology, * 1 Psychological B ulletin, 43:289-375, July, 1946. N ettler, Gwynne, and Elizabeth H. Golding, **The Measurement of Attitudes Toward the Japanese in America,* * American Journal of Sociology, 52:31-39, July, 1946. Pace, C. Robert, **A Situations Test to Measure SocialPolitical-Economic A ttitudes , 11 Journal of Social Psy­ chology, 10:331-44, August, 1939. _________, **Stated Behavior vs. Stated Opinions as Indicators of Social-Political-Economic Attitudes,** Journal of So­ c ia l Psychology, 11:369-81, May, 1940. Raskin, Evelyn, and Stuart W . Cook, **A Further Investigation of the Measurement of an Attitude Toward Fascism,** Journal of Social Psychology, 9:201-6, May, 1938. Reinhardt, James M., **Students and Race Feeling,** Survey, 61:239-40, November 15, 1928. Remmers, H. H., and E lla B. Silance, **Generalized Attitude Scales , 11 Journal of Social Psychology, 5:298-312, August, 1934. Rosander, A. C., **An Attitude Scale Based Upon Behavior Situ­ atio n s,1* Journal of Social Psychology, 8:3-15, February, 1937. Sherif, Muzafer, and Hadley C antril, **The Psychology of ’A ttitudes1: Part II,** Psychological Review, 53:1-24, January, 1946.

118 Sims, Verner M., **Factors Influencing Attitude Toward the T.V.A#,** Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology* 33:34-56, January, 1938. Sims, Verner M., and James R. Patrick, **Attitudes Toward the Negro of Northern and Southern College Students,** Journal of Social Psychology* 7:192-204, May, 1936. Stagner, Ross, ^Fascist Attitudes: an Exploratory Study,1 1 Journal of Social Psychology, 7:309-19, August, 1936. Stagner, Ross, and Neal Brought, **Measuring Children1s A tti­ tudes Toward Their Parents,1 * Journal of Educational Psychology, 26:169-76, March, 1935. Symonds, Percival M., **What Is an Attitude?** Psychological B ulletin, 24:200-201, March, 1927. Telford, C. W., **An Experimental Study of Some Factors In­ fluencing the Social Attitudes of College Students,** Journal of Social Psychology, 5:421-28, August, 1934. Thurstone, L. L ., **Attitudes Can Be Measured,** American Journal of Sociology, 33:529-54, January, 1928. Timmerman, Carl© C., **Types of Farmers1 Attitudes,** Social Forces, 5:591-96, June, 1927. C.

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