THE PERCEPTION OF ATTITUDE RELATIONSHIPS: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALING APPROACH TO THE STRUCTURING OF SOCIAL ATTITUDES

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe primary purpose of this study was to see whether a set of perceived attitude relationships could be adequately represented by a dimensional model. The particular attitude area selected for this purpose was composed of attitudes toward war, capital punishment, and the treatment of criminals. A multidimensional method of successive intervals based upon the Euclidean model of multidimensional psychophysics was developed. If this model satisfactorily accounted for perceived relationships among statements of the three attitudes, it would also be possible to discover the number and the nature of the relevant dimensions involved. A secondary purpose of the experiment was to investigate judgments made by two diverse groups in order to discover whether they perceive attitudes as being structured in different ways.However, since the multidimensional method of successive intervals had not yet been applied even in the area of psychophysics, it was felt that an empirical evaluation of the method in an area of known dimensionality would be appropriate before any conclusions could be legitimately drawn concerning areas of unknown dimensionality. Accordingly, both multidimensional successive intervals and the previously validated method of complete triads were applied to judgments of color similarity obtained from 42 subjects. The stimuli were a set of Munsell colors of the same red hue, but differing in brightness and saturation. Both the multidimensional successive intervals and the complete triads structures, which were essentially identical, correlated highly with the Munsell color structure as an approximation to psychological color space. There were also indications of high reliability for the multidimensional successive intervals technique.In view of its validation in an area of known dimensionality, multidimensional successive intervals was applied to judgments of attitude relationships. Seven statements were selected from each of the three Thurstone scales on attitude toward war, capital punishment, and the treatment of criminals, and these 21 statements were set up in booklet form for group presentation. The attitude booklets were administered to 40 third‐year, male students at the Princeton Theological Seminary and to 82 male Air Force officer candidates at Lackland Air Force Base.The multidimensional attitude structures perceived by the two diverse groups were essentially identical, the relationships among statements of the three attitudes being adequately represented in terms of two oblique dimensions, a war dimension and a punishment dimension. Apparently individuals do perceive attitudes, at least in this particular attitude area, in terms of a definite structure, and when called upon to make judgments concerning attitude relationships, they respond in terms of this dimensional frame of reference.