Inconsistent Attitudes Research Articles

Privacy, Publication, and the First Amendment: The Dangers of First Amendment Exceptionalism

The coordination of common law and constitutional norms are of pressing importance on matters offreedom of speech. In the Supreme Court and elsewhere, it is possible to discern two sharply inconsistent attitudes toward this question. One view holds that the First Amendment simply prevents any legislative backsliding from the common law rules that protect freedom of speech and of the press, much as they protect freedom of contract and freedom of action generally. On this view, the standard rule governing damages and injunctive relief apply to speech much as they do anywhere else. On the alternative view of what is termed First Amendment exceptionalism, the First Amendment protection is read more broadly to afford speech greater protection than the common law rules that insulate the publication of stolen information from judicial sanction by either damages or injunction. The article then argues that the common law approach affords a better balance between privacy and disclosure with respect to a wide range of confidential information, including the protection of trade secrets. In so doing, it criticizes the results reached in a number of important recent cases including Desnick v. American Broadcasting Co., Food Lion v. Capital Cities/ABC, and Ford Motor Co. v. Lane.

Part 2

In this second part of the trilogy, I review the concepts of panic, the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, and how internally inconsistent opinions and attitudes can be made consistent (or consonant). The theory explains, in some measure, how AIDS has been socialized into our thinking about identity, and goes beyond a medical condition. The pervasive identification of gay men with HIV and AIDS has resulted for many in an over-identification with fears of contagion and on a societal level in a fear of all gays as pools of contagion. The conversion of dissonance to consonance has taken many forms; within the gay community it has resulted in the rejection of the “100% safe-100% of the time” safe-sex message, and the adoption (for many) of a new form of deviant label-someone who is not in conformity with the social norm of gay community sexual behavior. However, we shall see that this so-called norm is a sham-that many gay men do not, as a rule, practice safe(r) sex on a consistent basis. This information indicates that the educational efforts of the last decade have at best lost their potency, and at worst were less than efficacious to begin with. The dissonant messages have also informed both the construction of the gay community and its interpretation of what it means to be gay. The result has been a tri-lateral perception of HIV and AIDS as either a medical, political or a social phenomenon. This fragmented understanding has exacerbated the already polarized ASOs and GSOs in that each has determined its ideology based on a particular interpretation of HIV and AIDS. This polarization has been operationalized by the GSOs and ASOs primarily in the manner by which they define their target markets, and more importantly, in the manner by which they exclude certain gays from participation. At the extreme, some gay men feel entirely left out of the community, and are consequently unable to convert their dissonance regarding being gay into consonance, if only by developing some associational ties with the community. The central question of the sustainability of the gay movement is thus partly answered by restating the nature of the fractures in the community. Kiesler's determinants regarding change relate directly to the sustainability question-can GSOs and ASOs, given their pluralistic ideologies and constituencies, break free of the constraints that are posed by these determinants? Would the adherents and conscious constituents defect from their organizations, and form new ones (thus reifying the fractures that already exist)? On the other hand, is there a sense of community and identity that will function as a bonding agent to encourage coalition building and social reorganization? The matter may turn on the issue of selective rewards: can a coalition of ASOs and GSOs provide staff, volunteers and clients sufficient motivation for making the inevitable compromises? Given the selective nature of the rewards, as they now stand, the probability of being able to so do is remote. The influence of the non-gay community, as well as the attitudes and beliefs of the majority of gays who do not belong to any gay organizations, hampers success.

Women before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789.

Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions--including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution. Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history. |Little explores the stormy American relationship with the Middle East from World War II through the war in Iraq, focusing particularly on the complex and often inconsistent attitudes and interests that helped put the United States on a collision course with radical Islam early in the new millennium. After documenting the persistence of orientalist stereotypes in American popular culture, Little examines oil, Israel, and other aspects of U.S. policy. For this updated third edition, Little covers events through 2007, including a new chapter on the Bush Doctrine, demonstrating that in many important ways, George W. Bush's Middle Eastern policies mark a sharp break with the past.

Shorter Working Hours, Lower Retirement Age or Longer Vacations? Ambivalences in Public Attitudes on Alternative Working-Time Reforms in Norway

This article investigates inconsistent attitudes on working time reforms in a Norwegian survey In the survey the respondents were asked both a general and a specific question about preferences among alternative working time reforms Those who stick to the direction of their original preference are called consistent respondents, while those who 'shift' direction from the general to the specific question are called ambivalent respondents The main arguments is that ambivalent reform preferences may be seen as the result of conflicting interests associated with positions in between or outside typical life course stages. This hypothesis is tested using discriminant analysis The first and most distinct discriminant function can best be labelled a life course dimension, with age as clearly the strongest predictor of attitudes. The ambivalent and consistent attitude groups together form a certain pattern along this function, in line with what was expected Although this is not a very strong test, the results seem to provide at least some evidence for the validity of our argument

Out of the Wilderness: A Proposal for Regulating Drugs

Many knowledgable professionals in medicine and related fields have written extensively about the contradictory and inconsistent laws and attitudes of both the public and the experts concerning the problem of drug abuse and addiction. Proposals for correcting this situation have ranged from de-controlling all drugs to strict federal and state control of all drugs, including alcohol, tobacco and caffein. This article proposes that, (a) all drugs be regulated by physicians, (b) the FDA be only a research and information agency, and (c) that the education of physicians emphasize the facts, not myths, of drug abuse. Thus, any drug use would be solely a matter between a physician and his patient.

Teachers' knowledge of school psychologists' responsibilities

The amount of time devoted to seven professional activities by 15 school psychologists during a six-week period was compared with the perceived involvement in these activities of teachers who varied in psychologist contact (high vs. low). Teachers were found to be unware of the service priorities of psychologists in their schools and were found to hold inconsistent attitudes regarding activity involvement. Teachers saw psychologists as doing more interviewing, teacher consultation, and counseling, and less testing and report writing than was evidenced by psychologists' records. Degree of psychologist contact did not uniformly influence teachers' perceptual accuracy. Implications of these findings for the interpretation of prior and the conduct of future studies of teachers' perceptions of school psychologists are discussed.

Impeachment and the Dynamics of Public Opinion: A Comment on “Guilty, Yes; Impeachment, No”

It can safely be said that Watergate will preoccupy political scientists for some time to come. While its permanent political effects, if any, remain to be seen, it is possible to monitor Watergate's short-term political impact and to speculate about its likely influence in the near future. In Guilty, Yes; Impeachment, No, Professor McGeever has presented a detailed description of Watergate's effect on public opinion. Accordingly, it seems worthwhile to examine his data for evidence of possible trends in public sentiment on impeachment and for clues to the probable electoral repercussions of Watergate. McGeever's sample consists of two polar groups on the question of Nixon's guilt and removal from office-those who think him guilty and want him removed, and those who think him innocent-and a third, rather ambivalent group-those who think him guilty but oppose his removal from office. Are the members of the Guilty-Yes/Remove-No group incorrigible cynics willing to sacrifice political justice for political stability? There is no doubt that McGeever's data fit that interpretation. But the dynamics of public opinlioin suggest another interpretation: that a sizable portion of these apparent cynics are in fact experiencing attitudinal cross-pressures, 1 that their apparently inconsistent attitudes toward

Studies in death attitudes. 2.

The present note reports the results of three studies on death attitudes. (1) Lester (1967) reported that Ss with more inconsistent attitudes toward death had a higher fear of death than Ss with less inconsistent attitudes toward death. Seventeen tests of this conclusion were made with the data from 10 samples of Ss. Of the 17 correlation coefficients, 2 were significant in the predicted direction; the remaining 15 were not significant; 11 of the coefficients were positive and 6 were negative (binomial p = 0.17). It may be concluded that the association reported by Lester (1967) is a valid result but that the association is quite weak. (2) It has been reported that males have less fear of death than females on general measures of the fear of death. The present study examined sex differences in death anxiety using measures of specific fears. Forty-six Ss in a psychology course were given the Collett-Lester fear of death scale (Collett & Lester, 1967) and rated the concept of death on the semantic differential scales. The age range of Ss was 17 to 50 yr., with a median of 2295 yr. Age was not correlated with fears of death. Females had a significantly greater feat of death of self, death of others, and dying of self than did males but did not differ in fear of dying of others, general fear of deach, inconsistency in death attitudes, and semantic differential ratings of the concept of death. These data suggest that the greater fear of death of females may not be general but rather found only in specific areas of concern. (3) An examination was made of the utility of semantic differential ratings of the concept of death as a measure of death attitudes. It was found that the evaluative ratings of the concept of death were significantly related to measures of the fear of death. Activity and potency ratings were not so related. The semantic distance between the ratings of the concepts of life and of death was not related to measures of death anxiety from standard scales. These data suggest that the evaluative measures from semantic differential ratings of the concept of death may tap the fear of death of Ss. Other measures (activity and potency ratiags and the semantic distance measure) are not associated with the measures of the fear of death. Thus, they may be tapping a very different dimension of death amtudes. What this dimension may be cannot be answered until validity studies are performed.

Attitudes toward death of NP patients who have attempted suicide.

It was hypothesized that individuals who have attempted suicide would have more inconsistent attitudes toward death than would persons who had not attempted suicide. An attitude toward death scale was devised and administered to 20 NP patients who had attempted suicide, to 20 NP patients who had not, and to 40 upper-class and graduate university students. Positive, inconsistent, and negative categories were defined in terms of score ranges on the scale. By X2 test proportionately more of the suicidal group than of the other two fell in the inconsistent category. Scores of both psychiatric groups were distributed differently from those of the normal group and also from each other.

Studies on death-attitude scales.

The present paper reports the results from four analyses of data from a study of 199 female Ss enrolled in introductory psychology. Each S completed a sibling-position questionnaire and the death-scales of Lester (2 ) and Boyar ( 1 ) , not anonymously. (a) Half of the Ss completed the death scales in the order AB and half in the order BA. No significant differences were found in scores on either death scale as a function of order on a median test (x' = 0.42, df = 1 for the effect of the Boyar scale on the Lester scale and x2 = 0.99 for the effect of the Lester scale on the Boyar scale). Thus, completing death questions appears to have no effect on subsequent responses to death questions. (b) Ss who failed to complete one of the death scales were compared with Ss who did complete the scale on their responses to the second scale. No significant differences were found (for Ss taking the Lester scale xk 0.003, df = 1; for the Boyar scale Fisher exact 9 = 0.12). Thus, there is no evidence of subject bias from incompleced questionnaires (5). (c) The scores on both scales were correlated with the sibling position of Ss, the number of siblings in the family, and the sex of the siblings. No significant associations were found. (d) Lester (3) reported that Ss with more inconsistent attitudes toward death on his death scale had a higher fear of death than Ss who were less inconsistent. Lester (4) did not find this effect to be significant, although the association was in the same direction as reported earlier (3). In the present study the association was again not significant but it was in the same direction as before (on a median test x2 = 1.11, df = 1). Thus, the association between inconsistency in death attitudes and the fear of death may exist but, if it does, it is a weak one.

PROJECTIVE STUDY OF COLLEGE STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARD MARRIAGE

If a person is attracted to another person, he will tend to attribute qualities which he likes to that attractive person; and to an unattractive person, he will attribute undesirable qualities (Flyer & Carp, 1962). This assumption lies behind the present attempt to assess the atcit~tde of college students toward marriage by finding out whether they thought attractive or unattractive people were married. Forty Ss (20 male, 20 female), ranging in age from 17 to 19 and all unmarried, made judgments of rwo sets of facial photographs clipped from an old high school annual. The first set was composed of pictures of 12 young men, the second of 12 young women. Six pictures from each set were rated (unanimously by the authors and one other rater) as good-looking and six were rated as plain. The photos were randomly placed on cards, six to a card. Ss were told that half the photos were of married persons and were asked to pick the ones they thought were married. Each S responded first to the male set and then to the female set. When males rated the male pictures, only 36% of the good-looking men were chosen as married. When males rated female pictures, 63% of the goodlooking females were chosen as married. Females, on the other hand, decided that 76% of the good-looking men were married and only 40% of the women. The proportions are significantly different from chance at the .05 level, or better. Each sex chose as being married those of their own sex who were plain and those of the opposite sex who were good-looking. The implication is that persons in the age range of Ss in this st~idy hold inconsistent attitudes toward marriage.

Group Conformity and Perceptions of Parents

A number of studies indicate that the tendency to yield to group opinion rather than to maintain independent judgment in experimental conformity situations is related to important personality variables (2, 3, 6). Thus, it has been found that college males who show a strong tendency to conform have a greater incidence of TAT dependency themes (n Succorance) than their less conforming peers, suggesting an essentially passive-dependent attitude toward adult sources of nurturance and support (6). Crutchfield's extensive studies of this problem reveal that, compared with those who are highly independent, extreme conformists are more authoritarian; more submissive, compliant, and accepting of authority; less tolerant, less socially active, and less able to accept responsibility; more anxious, over-controlled, and inhibited. Judging from their responses to items in personality inventories, conformists as a group are more intolerant of ambiguity and tend to emphasize conventional, socially approved values more than those who maintain independence in their judgments (2, 3). In interviews, they gave highly idealized descriptions of their parents, while independents offered a more balanced picture of praise and criticism. In general, extreme conformists have "rigid, "externally sanctioned, and inconsistent moralistic attitudes" and "disturbed, dejected, and distrustful attitudes toward other people" (2, p. 195). These data on the personality differences between conformists and independents suggest that early familial experiences may have an important influence on the adult's reaction to group pressure. More specifically, the conformist's submissiveness-reflected in his behavior in experimental conformity situations-may stem from his parents' early overly rigid and punitive treatment which prevented him from developing independence of thought and action. The independent's behavior, on the other hand, may be a consequent of less severe parental discipline. If this is true, and if the individual's perceptions of his parents, as revealed in fantasy productions, are correlated with early familial experiences, it may be hypothesized that extreme conformists would be more likely than independents to describe parents in TAT stories as harsh, restrictive, and punitive.

Social-Civic Orientation

T HE area of study designated as social-civic in the curriculum of the General College, University of Minnesota, consists of two core courses-Current History and Contemporary Society-and a number of contributing courses whose function is to explore further the avenues of social, political, and economic insight exposed by the core courses. Its evolution as one of the four basic areas to deal with life relationships has differed somewhat from that of the other curricular divisions, since the College has had, from the beginning, a relatively large number of subject-matter courses in the social sciences. Before the curricular revisions which brought into being the four orientation areas in I938, sixteen separate courses in the social sciences, grouped into four comprehensive areas for examination purposes, were offered students in the General College. One of the significant effects of this dispersion under the earlier setup, as discovered in a study made by Miss Ylvisaker, co-ordinator in the area, and Mr. Pace, evaluator, was that students were failing to appreciate or understand the interrelationships among economic, political, and social problems; that is, the fundamentally associational nature of modern society.' That this failure to make logical connections was not characteristic of General College students alone, or of college students in general, but was also marked among young adults who had attended the University of Minnesota before the existence of the General College, was shown in the detailed study made of 950 former students of the University.2 In these studies student and young adult alike showed markedly inconsistent attitudes toward fundamentally related social issues. They reacted to social or political or economic problems as specific rather than interrelated problems. Toward some issues their attitudes were predominantly liberal; toward others, strongly conservative. They disapproved, for example, of chiseling in business, yet objected to ministers who preached about it and to government's attempts to regulate it. They approved of consumers' attempts to better their lot and of government's