NEW DIMENSION OF STATUS: I. DEVELOPMENT OF A PERSONALITY SCALE.

The development of a new kind of scale for socio-economic status has been described. This scale consists entirely of items drawn from a personality inventory, and contains no overt references to status whatsoever. Inspection of the items suggests that they fall into five general groups, namely literary-esthetic attitudes; social poise, security, confidence in self and others; denial of fears and anxieties; "broad-minded," "emancipated," and "frank" attitudes towards moral, religious, and sexual matters; and positive, dogmatic, and self-righteous opinions. The tested reliability of the scale as a whole appeared to be satisfactory, and its validity in the original and in a test sample was demonstrated. There are certain personality factors characteristically related to sociological categories; once these personality factors have been empirically isolated they may be presumed to be present in some degree among persons assignable to the class according to some other defining property.