Originally published by Krus, D.J., & Kennedy, P.H. (1978) as Measuring value systems as related to societal change.  Psychological Reports, 43, 3-9.

Zen scale within the East-West factorial space

David J. Krus and Patricia H. Kennedy
Arizona State University

Abstract.- Content analysis of Pirsig's book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance provided items for the Zen scale. Structure of this scale was examined within the context of the Consciousness scales, and discussed in terms of polarity of ideological thought and Russell's theory of dynamics of historical trends.  

Prevalent value orientations of societies were repeatedly viewed as powerful determinants of policy and decision making with respect to allocation of resources which, subsequently, influence polarization of values. One of ways societal values are reflected is the popularity of artistic products. A hypothesis was proposed in this respect by McGranahan and Wayne (1948, p. 430) that

‘popular drama can be regarded as a case of 'social fantasy'-that the psychological constellation in the dramatic work indicates sensitive areas in the personalities of those for whom the work has affect; their needs, assumptions, and values.’

Aside of reflecting human values, books, television and other types of communication media also influence these values. In turn, value systems shape the society and its future. Dovring (1954), using a count of values in religious texts and hymn collections demonstrated how, in the 1640’s, hymns influenced the values of parishioners in a way incompatible with the prevalent religious doctrine at that time. Recently, Sperry (1977, p. 237) argued that human values

'stand out as the most strategically powerful causal control now shaping world events. More than any other causal system with which science now concerns itself, it is variables in human value systems that will determine the future.'

The dependency of societal outcomes on the prevalent societal value orientations was repeatedly proposed as an explanatory construct pertaining to dynamics of historical trends. As commented by Meinecke (1933, p. 28) 'The search for causalities in history is impossible without reference to values. Behind the search for causalities there always lies, directly or indirectly, the search for values.' The specific form of this dependency relationship was subject to many theories. In general, some geometrical function can be observed as a basis of this type of theory, as, e.g., the Hegelian spiral, the convoluted step function model of Marx, the logistic model of the Club of Rome, or the cyclical models of Gibbon, Spengler, and Russell. Russell's model will be given attention here since it bears most resemblance to frequently quantified cyclic models of business activity and it also stresses the dependency of historical trends on social value systems. With respect to the cyclic nature of historical trends Russell (1945, p. xxii-xxiii) hypothesized that 'Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers. Ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition and dissolution or subjection to foreign contests through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that makes cooperation impossible. Civilizations start with a rigid system later relaxed and leading, at a certain stage, to a period of brilliant genius [followed by] anarchy [leading] to a tyranny producing a new synthesis secured by a new system of dogma.'

Despite their obvious significance, such theories were typically discounted by the more rigorous social scientists due to their inaccessibility to empirical scrutiny. However, a quantified view of the value continuum, necessary for objective scientific inquiry, begins to emerge. The two dimensional value structure of society pioneered by Eysenck’s (1954) model comprising the right-left, tender-minded vs. tough-minded dimensions, was elaborated by Wilson (1973) and by Spiegel (1972, 1977) among others. Of particular interest is Spiegel's work that traces both the moderate and the extreme forms of behavior associated with the conservative and liberal value clusters. Labeling these two contrasting categories as Apollonian vs. Dionysian, Spiegel (1977, pp. 138-140) identifies disorders related to the conservative personality types as including obsessive-compulsive disorders and paranoid character disorders and disorders accompanying the liberal value cluster as hysterical psychoses, manias, dissociations and conversions. Outside the psychopathology, the structural themes of Dionysian personality types include the focal-peripheral type of space awareness, orientation toward the present in time perception, externalized locus of control, high trust proneness, suspended critical appraisal, high affiliation, high inoperative involvement and tactile preferred contact modes. The Apollonian structural themes include the peripheral-focal type of space awareness, orientation toward past and/or future in time perception, internalized locus of control, low trust proneness, immediate critical appraisal, operative involvement and visual preferred contact modes (Spiegel, 1977, p. 140).  Some of these categories were measured by our previous (Krus & Tellegen, 1975) study.

Method

In the present study, the humanistic and normative attitudes were indexed by Tomkins' (1964) Polarity scale. Measures of operative-inoperative involvement, modes of time perception, trust proneness and critical appraisal were implied in Tellegen and Atkinson's (1973) Absorption scale. Other scales included in the study were the Consciousness scales and .A 261-item questionnaire was composed out of Tomkin's (1964) Polarity scales, Tellegen's scale1 for measuring normative attitudes, Tellegen and Atkinson's (1973) Absorption scale, and Krus and Tellegen's (1975) Consciousness scales. The Zen scale (Table 1) was developed in the course of the present study.

Table 1.  Zen Scale with Item Means and Standard Deviations.

Instructions, printed on the test booklet were: ‘In this booklet you will find a series of statements a person might use to describe his or her attitudes, opinions, interests, and other characteristics. Read each question carefully, mark whether you agree or disagree with it, but do not spend too much time deciding on the answer. Just give your first reaction.' The questionnaire was administered by students enrolled in a statistics’ class at Arizona State University. Subjects were their friends or relatives (N = 74). This circumvention of the standard college student pool improved the variability of the age distribution (M = 33, SD = 14.6) and the variability along the measured continua.

Results and Discussion

Comparisons of proportions of subjects answering questions on each scale in the scored direction together with their corresponding standard deviations are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2.  Means and Standard Deviations of Scales
Indexing the 1977-1993 Value Changes

*p<.05   **p<.01

Significant increases in mean scale values were observed in all three scales indexing the Apollonian personality and societal styles. These observations indicate that the Dionysian trends peaked out and that the movement started toward the Apollonian pole. Aside of scaling considerations along the measured continua, the mutual interrelationships of employed measures are also of interest. Measures on all scales were inter-correlated by Pearson product-moment coefficients of correlation (Table 3).

Table 3.  Correlations between Scales within the East-West Factorial Space
Including the Subjects' Age

This correlation matrix was factor analyzed by principal factors method, using squared multiple correlations as initial communality estimates and iterating until they converged. Preliminary principal components solution showed two eigenvalues greater than one; two factors were retained and rotated to orthogonal simple structure by the normalized Varimax (Figure 1). The horizontal factor indexed the Apollonian and the vertical factor the Dionysian modes of values and beliefs. 

 Figure 1.  The Zen Scale within the East-West Factorial Space

Following the factor analysis, scales under scrutiny were divided into predictor and criterion sets and analyzed by canonical analysis, as an attempt to relate societal and personal values using McGranahan and Wayne's (1948) hypothesis of projective identification. Since both the Consciousness and Zen scales were derived by content analysis of bestsellers, they were grouped in the canonical set designed to index societal values. The Consciousness I and II scales were designated as estimators of societal Apollonian climate and Consciousness III and Zen scales as estimators of the Dionysian value types endorsed by the society. The other canonical set was formed by grouping Tomkins' (1964) Polarity scales, Absorption scale and age of the subjects. Both the Polarity scales and the Absorption scale were selected as measures of personal, rather than societal orientation subjects along the left-right continuum. Also, age of the subjects was included to measure the well known left to right shift with the passage of time (Wilson & Patterson, 1970). One significant canonical variate was extracted with canonical weights of [.38 .03 -.76 -.19] for the criterion set of scales [Consciousness III, Zen, Consciousness II and Consciousness I]. For the predictor set [Absorption, Humanistic, Normative, Age] the canonical weights were [.35 .24 -.52 -.28]. The obtained canonical correlation equals .71 indicating that about 50% of subsets of personal values and subsets of societal outcomes overlap.

Despite addressing only few facets of the complex problem concerning the dynamics of the societal and historical trends it appears that methods of multivariate analysis can open to quantitative scrutiny the intellectually challenging theories of societal development and decline so popular around the turn of the century. It remains to be seen whether further quantitative evidence will support present findings suggesting the validity of the intuitively appealing construct of the Apollonian-Dionysian value conflict as a major force determining the future.

References

Dovring, K. (1954) Quantitative semantics in 18th century Sweden. Public Opinion Quarterly, 18, 389-394.

Eysenck, H. J. (1954) The psychology of politics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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

McGranahan, D.V., & Wayne, J. (1948) German and American traits reflected in popular drama. Human Relations, 1, 429-455.

Meinecke, F. (1933) Staat und Personlichkeit. Berlin: L.S. Mittler.

Pirsig, R.M. (1975) Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. New York: Bantam.

Reich, C.A. (1971) The greening of America. New York: Bantam.

Russell, B. (1945) A history of Western philosophy. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Sperry, R.W. (1977) Bridging science and values: A unifying view of mind and brain. American Psychologist, 32, 237-245.

Spiegel, H. (1972) An eye-roll test for hypnotizability. The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 15, 25-28.

Spiegel, H. (1977) The hypnotic profile (HIP): A review of its development. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 296, 129-142.

Tellegen, A., & Atkinson, G. (1973) Openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences ('absorption'), a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 33, 268-277.

Tomkins, S.S. (1964). Polarity scale. New York: Springer.

Wilson, G.D. (Ed.) (1973) The psychology of conservatism. NewYork: Academic Press.

Wilson, G.D., & Patterson, J.R. (1970) Manual for the Conservatism Scale. Windsor, Eng.: Nat. Found. Educ. Res.

Authors wish to thank Robert M. Pirsig for permission to use sentences from his book, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance,