PROBLEMMosher ( 3 ) developed a lengthy scoring manual for a sentence conipletion measure of guilt using referents suggested by psychoanalytic theory to score for the intensity of guilt related to sexual behavior, hostile behavior, and a more heterogeneous class of behaviors related to moralism and self-punishnient. The Mosher Incomplete Sentences Test (MIST) can be scored for sex-guilt, hostility-guilt, and niorality-conscience guilt with interjudge reliabilities in the .go's ( I , z , 3 ) . Testretest and split-half reliabilities for the total scale are found in the middle 7 0 '~(~3 5 ) , The total guilt score from the MIST is not significantly related t o the MarloweCrowne Social Desirability Scale ( 3 ) or to the Edwards Social Desirability Scale (5). Mosher has used guilt scores from the MIST to demonstrate differential operant verbal conditioning of hostile and guilt-related content as a function of the guilt of female S S (~) .The MIST was used successfully in a study(*) of the interaction of fear and guilt in inhibiting unacceptable behavior in a perceptual defense task. Lamb (2) has related the MIST guilt score to enjoyment of cartoons after sexual arousal. Galbraith") found that sexual associations to double entendre words in a word association task were less characteristic of guilty Ss.This investigation studied differences in guilt scores on the MIST in groups of prisoners. If the MIST is a useful measure of guilt, it should discriminate between prisoners who are first offenders and recidivists, between prisoners who commit more hostile crimes and those who do not commit crimes against persons, and guilt should be positively correlated with age of first criminal offense. ~I E T H O DThe MIST was administered as the final test in the usual battery of psychological tests given to newly admitted prisoners to the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, a large, maximum security prison serving all segments of Ohio. Prisoners were tested in small groups, and 290 consecutive admissions to the prison comprised the original sample. However, due to time limitations and a fixed prison schedule, MISTS were completed by only 162 prisoners. The remaining prisoners were interrupted and returned to their cells before completing the MIST. Six protocols of prisoners whose IQ's fell below 75 were excluded from the data analysis as unusable. The final sample of the 156 Ss did not differ significantly, by chi square, from the larger sample of consecutive admissions on age, number of offenses, race, or intelligence. RESULTSA highly significant difference (t = 4.93; df = 154; p < .001) was found between the mean total guilt scores of the 55 first offenders (M = 106.78; SD = 15.50) and the 101 recidivists (M = 94.75; S D = 17.22). Significant differences between first offenders and multiple offenders were found for the sex-guilt subscale (t = 3.66), hostility-guilt subscale (1 = 4.07) and morality-conscience guilt subscale (t = 2.87).Although the sample of prisoners who completed protocols had not differed from the larger sample on r...
Authoritarian attitudes of 70 lower-class, adolescent, delinquent girls were assessed and related to the authoritarian attitudes and authoritarian rearing practices of their mothers. The mothers' rearing practices and attitudes were measured by their direct report and indirectly by their daughters' perceived mothers' report. Although the measures of authoritarian attitudes and authoritarian rearing practices were moderately correlated, only the authoritarian attitudes of the mothers were consistently and significantly related to the authoritarian attitudes of their daughters. The discussion of results contained some hypotheses relating the identification process to ethnocentric and authoritarian attitude development which are suggestive of future research.
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