GENERAL SOCIAL ATTITUDES.

This article discusses various issues related to certain problems of social psychology. The article presents a study in this regard. These problems fall into two groups: those dealing with questions of methodology, and those dealing directly with the psychology of social attitudes. The inter-correlations of the attitudes towards various social issues of approximately 1,500 subjects, drawn from various classes, countries, and organizations were studied by means of factorial analysis. Certain conclusions were arrived at with regard to: the statistical methods used; the general factors underlying the attitudes of the subjects; and a number of miscellaneous points. The results of the analyses reported in this paper indicate strongly a connection between general social attitudes and individual temperamental factors. The organization or structure of attitudes was seen to play a greater part in the differentiation of groups and organizations than that played by the average preference of the various groups for the propositions, the attitudes towards which were being investigated. This result suggests that more attention might usefully be paid by research workers to the question of organization, structure, or "gestalt"-qualities among attitudes.