THE NATURE OF ATTITUDE DISTRIBUTIONS AND THEIR RELATION TO SOCIAL ADJUSTMENTS.

This paper offers the generalizations that habituated attitudes are influential factors in determining the seriousness of the handicaps to successful adjustment, that the obstacles to such adjustment increase in difficulty as the nature of the attitude distributions move from the leptokurtic curve, through the normal, and platykurtic, to the balanced U-curve forms, and that the J-curve form imposes mild or extreme handicaps as one moves through a range of conflict situations from the average of the homogeneous group to opposing groups. The permeability of the barriers to successful adjustment is, also, related to the steepness of the slopes, which may vary within limits, for each of the four characteristic non-normal curves. The supporting argument is largely based upon the generalization that adjustment is relatively easy where the attitudes held conform to the average of the group in which conflicts arise, and that social skills adequate to meet conflict situations with success are most regularly found where these skills cover average situations. These generalizations on curve forms and slopes are applied to an analysis of the seriousness of adjustmental handicaps in the Lehigh sample and in the field of international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]