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Krus, D. J. & Tellegen, A.(1975).
Consciousness III: fact or fiction?
Psychological Reports, 36, 23-30.
David J. Krus and Auke
Tellegen
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
showed 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 the normative-humanistic
constructs.
In the early seventies
the bestseller list was topped by
The
Greening of America
(Reich, 1971), 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. Tomkins'
Polarity Scale was
designed to indicate ‘how humanistic
and how normative in orientation the individual is'
(Tomkins, 1964, p. 3).
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. METHOD
The descriptions of
Consciousness I, II, and III 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.
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). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Scales included in the
analysis were intercorrelated as shown
in Table 1.
Table 1. Intercorrelations
between scales Included in the
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
As the
Consciousness I and II
Scales reflect a
similar construct, they were combined into a single scale. Next, the scales were analyzed by
the canonical analysis where the
Consciousness
Scales defined the criterion set
and the other scales involved in the analysis the predictor set of variables. The obtained canonical
correlations of .79 and .63 accounted for 62% and 40% of the variance in
Consciousness I+ II and
Consciousness III
scales. The obtained and
the rotated canonical weights for the predictor set of variables
are reported in Table 2. The structure of the rotated canonical weights,
isomorphic with the obtained factor analytic structure, further
reaffirmed the bi-dimensionality of the
Consciousness Scales.
Table 2. The Obtained and
the Rotated Canonical Weights
Note.-Canonical weights
were graphically rotated in a counterclockwise direction. The Reich's book is an incisive analysis of the social niveau of the early seventies, as reflected by the Consciousness III Scale. The book fared less well in the differentiation of the Consciousness I and II generations, which both load on a single dimension. The canonical analysis showed that even though the dominant issues of the sixties and seventies appeared unique, they reflected the enduring humanistic-normative facets of human affairs.
REFERENCES
Abrams, M. H. (1958)
The mirror and the lamp.
New York: Norton.
Reich, C. A. (1971)
The greening of America.
New York: Bantam.
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.
Accepted
October 30, 1974 This article was abbreviated to highlight the initial steps in the development of the rotated canonical analysis. The graphical rotation of canonical weights suggested that, as in factor analysis, rotation is a conditio sine qua non for meaningful interpretation of the results of canonical analysis. However, the rotation also changes the magnitude of canonical correlations, as shown in our subsequent article on this topic. |
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