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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Although generalization is universally relied on in all scientific thought and is prerequisite to it, many students of scientific methods have neglected to analyze generalizing behavior. This is understandable in view of the fact that generalizing thought begins early in childhood and continues at simple or complex levels through the years of elementary school, high school and college. Most such generalization is clearly pre-critical, following the patterns of parents, playmates and teachers by means of suggestion, imitation and insight. In spite of its universality, however, the process of generalization deserves careful analysis in order that it be fully understood and that errors in interpretation of experience due to faulty generalizing may be avoided.
1 Even this is not the primary generalization in the attitude scale. The Thurstone type of scale, which was the one actually employed to derive the data presented in this paper, was so constructed as to provide a numerical score for each of a number of statements (usually from 16 to 22). When two or more of these statements were agreed with by the subject, which was generally the case, the attitude score of each subject at any time his attitude was measured was a generalization (average) of the scores assigned to the statements with which he agreed.
2 Korzybski, Alfred, The Manhood of Humanity, New York, 1921, p. 60.
3 The use of equivalent forms of the same scale further protects the usefulness of many attitude scales, and particularly of the Thurstone scales used in the present examples.
4 Smith, Mapheus, “Change of Attitude with Reference to Birth Control,” School and Society, 1942, 56, 25–28.
5 This end has gradually been achieved through a series of attitude studies beginning in 1937. See Smith, Mapheus, “Spontaneous Change of Attitude Toward War,” School and Society, 1937, 46, 350–352; “Spontaneous Change of Attitude Toward Capital Punishment,” School and Society, 1938, 47, 318–320; “A Study of Change of Attitude Toward The Negro,” Journal of Negro Education, 1939, 8, 64–70; “Spontaneous Change of Attitude Toward Communism,” School and Society, 1940, 51, 684–688; “War Attitudes in Peace and War,” School and Society, 1942, 56, 640–644; “A Second Report on Change of Attitude Toward the Negro,” School and Society, 1943, 57, 388–392; “Change of Attitude Toward the Law,” School and Society, 1944, 60, 286–287; and “Change of Attitude Toward Punishment of Criminals,” School and Society, 1945, 61, 236–238.
6 Beginning with generalizing statement 2 only the new parts of the statements are italicized.