THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL ATTITUDES IN SOUTH AFRICA.

This article informs that actor analytic studies in several European cultures with the use of the Conservatism (C) Scale have confirmed the importance of a general factor underlying all social attitudes. In each case four major components of the general factor were found to be militarism-punitiveness, antihedonism--particularly opposition to sexual freedom, ethnocentrism and intolerance of minority groups, and religion-puritanism, these being positively intercorrelated to a fairly even degree. This study was designed to see whether the same structure of attitudes would apply to white South Africans--a group widely regarded as more conservative overall than most European cultures. Certainly, some explanation in terms of personality dynamics seems necessary to explain the reliability with which this patterning of attitudes has emerged from one country to another.