AUTOTELIC INQUIRY: A LEARNING APPROACH TO ATTITUDE CHANGE

Abstract

Much of the noncommunicative withdrawal of elderly patients in health care facilities can be traced to underlying staff attitudes toward being old or working with aged individuals. Negative attitudes toward the elderly and toward mental illness have been reported for health care professionals at all levels, and this investigation sought to measure existing attitudes and ways of evoking attitude change. The Attitudes toward Old People (Kogan, 1961) and Opinions about Mental Illness (Cohen & Streuning, 1962) scales were administered as pre‐, post‐, and delayed posttests to 27 graduate nursing students. Two treatment approaches were tested. Persuasive communication and autotelic inquiry methods were instituted in group therapy settings for a total of 16 group sessions. A repeated measures analysis of variance failed to reveal any difference for attitudes toward old people, but a statistically significant difference in opinions about mental illness was found for subjects exposed to the autotelic inquiry learn...