The structure of attitudes to doomsday issues

Abstract

Principal components analysis followed by a Varimax rotation was employed to investigate the structure of 24 belief statements representing responses to the threats posed by overpopulation, pollution and nuclear weapons. These items were administered to 170 second year Psychology students together with the Wilson and Patterson (1968) C scale which was included in the analysis as a marker variable. Little support was found for a general dimension of doomsday consciousness. Only the personal helplessness factor was defined by items representing all 3 issues. of the remaining factors, 4 dealt primarily with overpopulation and pollution and 2 were dominated by the issue of nuclear weapons. of particular interest for all issues was the way in which factors of concern and responsibility were orthogonal to factors of support for social action.