AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF SELF-ATTITUDES

The self is considered a set of attitudes consistent with Mead's view. The paper intends to demonstrate the advantages to empirical research of treating the self as attitudes. 288 undergraduate students at the State U. were given a 'Twenty Statements' test which required Ss to give 20 written responses to the question 'Who am I?' The characteristics of the test satisfied the Guttman Scale. The responses were separated into consensual and subconsensual, the latter including the 'no responses.' A favorable response was considered one with a consensual reference. The dichotomization of the responses rests on the theory that the self is an interiorization of one's position in the social system. It was found that the respondents exhausted all consensual references first before making subconsensual ones. In an independent investigation Ss who identified with religious groups on the test were studied as to their role in these groups. It was found that the more 'social' importance a group had, the more self importance it had. This was verified in another independent operation. Thus, it was hypothetically concluded that there is a relation between the 'salience in the self-conception and socially defined importance of group membership at high levels of statistical sienificance.' M. Neufeld-Bergner.