ACCULTURATION IN EAST AFRICA. I. POLITICAL AWARENESS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD AUTHORITY.

In this first of a series of four papers on the effects of acculturation on personality and attitudes, students in four Uganda secondary schools, chosen to represent four levels of acculturation, were tested on sentence completion, thematic apperception and figure-drawing tests, in regard to their political awareness and attitudes toward authority figures, especially chiefs and Euro-peans. These 211 Ss in the Buganda province of Uganda were then compared with 144 Ss in the North Nyanza province of Kenya who were assumed to be less acculturated. The findings support the hypothesis that the more acculturated more frequently than the less acculturated feel hostile toward authority figures. The findings suggested further that the more acculturated more frequently than the less acculturated tended to perceive authority figures as punitive, but were mixed in their opinions about authority. In comparison with the less acculturated Kenya sample, the Uganda sample were more aware politically, more actively discontent with the political status quo and more nationalistic in their identification. Non-monotonic relationships with degree of acculturation were found in regard to readiness to identify with the European and covert tendency to view the European as dominant The significance of these findings will be discussed in the fourth paper of this series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]