The Perceived Structure Of Social Attitudes And Personality : A Multidimensional Scaling Approach

Abstract

This study examined the relationships between attitudes inferred from behavior and attitudes implied by item content. 60 subjects judged the similarity between all possible pairs of 18 attitude items and 6 person descriptions designed to reflect three hypothesized dimensions of authoritarian ideology. These interstimulus similarity judgments were subjected t o a multidimensional scaling analysis. Results supported the hypotheses that (a) subsets of attitude statements reflecting hypothesized facets of authoritarian ideology of Superstition, Authoritarian Rejection, and Power and Toughness would be per-ceived as representing independent dimensions; and (b) both people and attitude items can be represented cogently by points in a common multidimensional space.

The Perception of Politicians and Political Issues : A Multidimensional Scaling Approach

“…Thsi, was mitigated by the somewhat exploratory nature of the study. (Boyd & Jackson, 1967, also scaled people and statements in the same MDS space, but their "people" were hypothetical behavioral descniptions designed to correspond to the statements, which were taken from the F scale.) In future applimtions of this methodology, suoh conservatism need not be followed.…”

The perceived structure of social attitudes

“…Using attitudes toward war, capital punishment, and treatment of criminals, he found that (1) the perceived relationships could be adequately represented in dimensional terms, and (2) the configuration of seminary students and Air Force officer candidates were almost identical. Boyd and Jackson (1967) investigated attitudes designed to reflect three hypothesized dimensions of authoritarian ideology. Using interstimulus similarity judgments and multidimensional scaling, they found that subsets of attitude statements reflecting the hypothesized facets were perceived as representing independent dimensions.…”

Value orientation in relation to emphasis in the process of diagnosing the family in state of crisis

“…They are distinguishable by class. Recent research (Boyd and Jackson, 1967) shows that different classes of social objects can be included within a single domain.…”