The first purpose of this study was to analyze the evaluative contamination in semantic differential (SD) scale. Osgood referred the dominance of evaluative factor of semantic space dimensions. It seemed that this was mainly due to the evaluative property of SD scale. Every qualifier often used in the description of certain personality traits has not only attributive property but evaluative property, so SD scale obtained by making a pair out of these qualifiers has also evaluative property. Thus two basic dimensions- & lsquo;evaluation & rsquo; and each & lsquo;attribute & rsquo;(all that are independent of & lsquo;evaluation & rsquo;)-were assumed in the semantic structure of the qualifiers. Then three different types of Scales A, B and C as in Fig. 1 were derived. Now Scale B is most frequently used as SD scale, but Scale C is conceivable on each Scale B. 24 sets of scales analogous to these three scales were collected. These scales were used for measuring cognitive component of attitude. Rated persons were liked and disliked persons. This made it possible to, examine the consistency between two attitudinal components-cognitive and affective-.(The second purpose of this study)
53 high school boys were instructed to mention the names of three boys each whom they liked and disliked, then to rate each of them on the 72 seven-point scales.(3 & times;24)
Hypothesis (Hy) 1: Scale As are pure evaluation type of scales, Scale Cs are pure attribute type of scales, Scale Bs are compound scales of both evaluation and attribute.
Hy 2: When rated persons are classified into two groups, liked group (L-gr) and disliked group (DL-gr):
(1) On Scale As L-gr will have positive evaluation, while DL-gr will have negative evaluation.(affective-congnitive consistency)
(2) L-gr will have higher means on Scale Bs than on Scale Cs, while in case of DL-gr the reverse will be true.(affective-congnitive consistency, that is distortions in attribute congnition by affective component)
(3) The rating profiles of L-gr and DL-gr on Scale As, Bs and Cs will be as shown in Fig. 2. The ratings of 139 liked persons (L-gr) and 103 disliked persons (DL-gr) were finally adopted and factor-analyzed by the group principal varimax method to verify Hy 1. Then only on the sets of scales which supported Hy 1, discrepancy measures between means of L-gr and DL-gr and on each group among Scale As, Bs and Cs were calculated and t-tested to verify Hy 2.
The results were as follows:
1) 14 out of 24 sets supported Hy 1. This suggests the evaluative contamination in SD scale.
2)(1) and (2) of Hy 2 were supported,(3) was supported in case of DL-gr. As for L-gr means were higher on Scale Bs rather than on Scale As. This may suggest that cue of attribute makes the rating more positively evaluative than in case there was only cue of evaluation.
As byproduct of this study, Osgood's dynamism factor, coalescence of potency and activity factor, was extracted in person perception.
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