Krus, D. J. & Tellegen, A.(1975). Consciousness III: fact or fiction? Psychological Reports, 36, 23-30.

Consciousness III: fact or fiction?

David J. Krus & Auke Tellegen
University of Minnesota

Summary.- Reich's tripartite theory of social consciousness, as formulated in his book, The Greening of America, was translated into Consciousness I, II, and III scales, based on content analysis of pertinent chapters in the book, and quantified. The factor analysis of these scales indicated that Consciousness scales load on two dimensions. Subsequent canonical analysis of these scales, followed by rotation of canonical weights into the simple structure, indicated that substantial amount of variance in the Consciousness scales can be accounted for by normative-humanistic constructs.

In the early seventies the bestseller list was topped by Reich's (1971) The Greening of America, a book eliciting a gamut of opinions. To Senator George McGovern, the book was 'one of the most gripping, penetrating and revealing analyses of American society I have yet seen,' whereas to Peter Marin of the New York Times Book Review, it was 'simplistic, misleading, presumptuous.' Reich's book attempted a description of the ideological niveau of the last three generations. The self-interest, aggressiveness, and prejudice of the two older generations (Consciousness I and II) were seen to be in the sharp contrast with the Consciousness III of the new generation.

The present study is an attempt to ascertain the degree of plausibility of Reich's typology and its place within the family of other personality constructs. This involved a translation of Reich's original qualitative and intuitively derived observations into quantitative scales and an empirical exploration of the relationship of these scales to Tomkins' (1964) Polarity Scale, Tellegen's (1972) scales of Authoritarianism and Absorption and subjects’ chronological age. Tellegen's (1972) third generation Authoritarian Scale was designed to relate this construct to the emerging 'big two' personality dimensions of introversion-extraversion and dominance-submission. Tellegen & Atkinson’s (1974) Absorption Scale is characterized by items such as 'textures--such as wool, sand, wood--sometimes remind me of colors or music,' and 'I like to watch cloud shapes change in the sky,' and is moderately related to hypnotic susceptibility. Tomkins' Polarity Scale was designed to indicate ‘how humanistic and how normative in orientation the individual is' (Tomkins, 1964, p. 3). Item best discriminating between these two polarities is ‘People are basically a) good b) bad.’ A belief in ‘good’ nature of people, leads to the humanistic belief that people should be nurtured to develop their potential. A belief in inherently ‘bad’ human nature leads to the normative belief that people must be corrected to develop acceptable standards of behavior. A related concept to the humanistic  - normative continuum is that of ‘tasters’ and ‘smellers’. People toward the humanistic pole of the scale maintain closer interpersonal distance, tend to have more liberal attitude toward sex, and are more receptive to new experiences. People toward the normative pole maintain greater distance in interpersonal relations, have more conservative attitudes toward sex and are less open to new experiences. In this respect, the Item best discriminating on the continuum of the interpersonal distance is ‘life sometimes smells bad vs. life sometimes leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.’ People closer to the humanistic pole tend to select the later alternative. People closer to the normative tend, tending to keep the greater distance in interpersonal relations, tend to select the ‘life sometimes smells bad’ option, as the receptor for smell detects properties of entities more distant than the receptor for taste.

Method

The descriptions of Consciousness I, II, and III were given in The Greening of America (Reich, 1971, pp. 20-41, 62-90, 233-285) were converted into the form typical of standard agree-disagree opinion inventories, as shown in Tables 1, 2, and 3.

Table 1.  Consciousness I Scale Items with their Means and Standard Deviations

Item Number and Content	M	SD
1. I prefer to vote for a candidate who seems to possess personal moral virtues, who promises a return to earlier conditions of life and order.	.48	.50
2. Present American crisis requires reducing government programs and expenditures and greater reliance on private business.	.43	.50
3. Urban crime is a moral and law enforcement problem.	.50	.50
4. The basic source of the national being is the individual character.	.88	.33
5. There'll be always a pecking order.	.69	.47
6. There'll  always be aggression and struggle for power.	.86	.35
7. It is necessary to sacrifice for individual good.	.67	.47
8. Present American crisis requires general moral reawakening.	.81	.40
9. Honesty and hard work is what ultimately matters.	.69	.47
10. Success is determined by character, morality, hard work, and self-denial.	.52	.50
11. Human nature is fundamentally bad and struggle against the fellow men is man's natural condition.	.16	.36
12. Every man has a right to pursue his opportunities wherever he finds them.	.66	.48
13. The game is winning and getting rich and powerful.	.07	.25
14. Competition is the law of nature and man.	.53	.50
15. Life is a harsh pursuit of individual self-interest.	.28	.45
16. The least governments governs best.	.45	.50
17. Present American crisis requires taking stern measures to put down subversion at home and threats from abroad.	.19	.40
18. One works for oneself, not for society.	.34	.48
19. Car accidents are a question of individual driver responsibility.	.72	.46

 

Table 2.  Consciousness II Scale Items with their Means and Standard Deviations

Item Number and Content	M	SD
1. Only the law makes us free.	.19	.39
2. Society will function best if it is planned, organized, rationalized, and administered.	.43	.50
3. Government is a problem in management.	.64	.48
4. Men's needs are best met by trying to master experience rather than being subject to experience.	.57	.50
5. The ability and accomplishment can and should be judged by society using standards which are external and rational.	.27	.45
6. Society should provide an equal opportunity for all at the starting point, but should reject the idea of equality thereafter, for such equality is at war with excellence.	.36	.48
7. Ask what you can do for your country and not what your country can do for you.	.71	.46
8. Merit is both an inborn capacity and moral equality.	.57	.50
9. I fear what man would be like if not placed under the ascendancy of reason.	.71	.46
10. It is necessary to sacrifice for a common good.	.71	.46
11. The individual should do his best to fit himself into a function that is needed by society.	.40	.49
12. Individual interests are subject to public interests.	.69	.47
13. America's problems can be solved by material progress.	.05	.22
14. Present American crisis can be solved by greater commitment of individuals to the public interests, more social responsibility by private business, and by more affirmative government action.	.84	.36
15. The individual has no existence apart from his work and his relationship to society. Without his career, without his function, he is a non-person.	.17	.38
16. Society's best people - as judged by rational standards - should receive most money, status, security, and respect.	.17	.38
17. It doesn't make sense to fight the system because the system is the source of one's existence.	.10	.31
18. It is necessary to dress properly.	.28	.44
19. The day of individual independence is over.	.09	.28

 

Table 3.  Consciousness III Scale Items with their Means and Standard Deviations.

Item Number and Content	M	SD
1. The world is ample for all.	.55	.50
2. To be dishonest in love, to 'use' another person, is a major crime.	.67	.47
3. People all belong to the same family whether they have met each other or not.	.57	.50
4. Instead of intense ambitious concentration, one can relax and see what happens.	.81	.39
5. No one should judge anyone else.	.69	.47
6. Experience is the most precious of all commodities.	.59	.50
7. Being true to oneself is the best and only way to relate to others.	.91	.28
8. Technology must not be allowed to rob people of experience.	.84	.36
9. Every human being has its absolute worth.	.67	.47
10. The goals of status, a position in the hierarchy, security, money, possessions, power, respect, and honor are not merely wrong; they are unreal.	.38	.49
11. Rational conversation has been overdone as a means of communication between people.	.24	.45
12. Using marijuana is more like what happens when a person with furry vision puts on glasses.	.12	.33
13. The young people see effortlessly what is phony or dishonest in politics, whereas for an older person it is much more difficult.	.24	.43
14. To compete with others in other areas than in sports and games is morally wrong.	.12	.33
15. The world is illogical and improbable.	.43	.50
16. Most work available in our society is meaningless, degrading, and inconsistent with self-realization.	.31	.47
17. Music is the deepest means of communication and expression.	.19	.39
18. An individual cannot hope to achieve an independent consciousness unless he cultivates by whatever means are available, including clothes, speech mannerisms, illegal activities, and so forth, the feeling of being an outsider.	.17	.38
19. Only by an antisocial posture can people really be 'alive' in a society that is essentially dead.	.28	.45

The selection criterion for every item of Consciousness scales was that it be a self-contained opinion type and clearly addressed to a particular consciousness type. Thus, e.g., question 2 of the Consciousness III scale (Table 3) was isolated from the following context: [A Consciousness III person] 'values, more than a judgeship or executive title, the warmth of the 'circle of affection' in which men join hands. In personal relations, the keynote is honesty and the absence of socially imposed duty. To be dishonest in love, to 'use' another person, is a major crime. A third commandment is: be wholly honest with others, use no other person as a means' (Reich, 1971, p.244).

Items on the Consciousness I, II, and III Scales were combined with items comprising the other scales included in the analysis. Instructions printed on the test booklet were: 'In this booklet you will find a series of statements a person might use to describe his attitudes, opinions, interests, and other characteristics. Please read each question carefully but do not spend too much time choosing the best answer out of the two available.'

The questionnaire was administered by students enrolled in an evening statistics' class at the University of Minnesota. Subjects were their friends or relatives (N = 58). Evening class students generally have more varied backgrounds than full- time day class students, assuring better sampling than the traditional student pools, particularly with respect to the age of the subjects (13 to 57 yr., M =  29 yr., SD = 123). The obtained responses were analyzed by the factor analysis and by the canonical analysis.

Factor Analysis

Scales included in the analysis were intercorrelated by using Pearson product-moment coefficients of correlation. Intercorrelations of these scales are shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Intercorrelations Between Scales Included in the
Analysis and Age of Subjects

	2	3	4	5	6	7
1. Consciousness I+II	.61	.59	-.15	-.21	-.43	-.02
2. Normative		.32	-.09	.04	-.47	.08
3. Authoritarian			-.01	.00	-.16	-.00
4. Consciousness  III				.41	.56	-.40
5. Humanistic					.37	-.08
6. Absorption						-.31
7. Age

This correlation matrix was factor analyzed by the principal factors method with squared multiple correlations used as the communality estimates. The first two factors with eigenvalues equal to 2.19 and 1.80 accounted for 66.6% of the total variance. The third factor with eigenvalue equal to .75 did not meet the Kaiser's retention criterion and was deleted. Figure 1 shows the resulting factorial structure plotted from the Varimax rotated matrix of factor loadings.

Figure 1.  Factorial structure of the Consciousness Scales

The Consciousness I and II Scales together with the Normative and Authoritarian Scales define the first factor while the Consciousness III Scale together with the Humanistic and Absorption Scales define the second factor.

Canonical Analysis

The scales were also analyzed by the canonical analysis. As the Consciousness I and II Scales reflect a similar construct, they were combined into a single scale and, together with the Consciousness III Scale, defined the criterion set of variables. The other scales involved in the analysis comprised the predictor set of variables. The extracted eigenvalues and their corresponding canonical correlations are shown in the Table 5.

Table 5. Eigenvalues and Canonical Correlations for the
 Canonical Analysis of the Consciousness Scales.

	Eigenvalues		Canonical Correlations
Canonical Components	1	2	1	2
1	.626	.000	.791	.000
2	.000	.399	.000	.632

The results of the unrotated canonical analysis indicated that within the first canonical component, the predictor set of variables accounted for 63% of variance of the first component of the Consciousness Scales. Within the second canonical component, the predictor set of variables accounted for 40% of variance of the second component of the Consciousness Scales. As these components are orthogonal, the explained variances are not additive and to speak of the total amount of variance explained by the predictor set of variables is nonsensical. Next, the canonical weights were graphically rotated, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Graphical Rotation of Canonical Weights.

The extracted eigenvalues and their corresponding canonical correlations for the rotated solution are shown in the Table 6.

Table 6. Eigenvalues and Canonical Correlations for the
 Rotated Canonical Analysis of the Consciousness Scales.

	Eigenvalues		Canonical Correlations
Canonical Components	1	2	1	2
1	.576	.004	.759	-.064
2	.004	.442	-.064	.665

The results of the rotated canonical analysis indicated that within the first canonical component, the predictor set of variables accounted for 58% of variance of the first component of the Consciousness Scales. Within the second canonical component, the predictor set of variables accounted for 44% of variance of the second component of the Consciousness Scales. The obtained and the rotated canonical weights are reported in Table 7.

Table 7. The Obtained and the Rotated Canonical Weights.

	Consciousness I+II		Consciousness III
Canonical Weights	Obtained	Rotated	Obtained	Rotated
Consciousness III	-.276	.193	.973	.993
Consciousness I + II	.921	.999	.418	-.043
Normative	.499	.625	.497	.241
Authoritarian	.500	.588	.314