"attitude as a scientific concept"

"Attitude As a Scientific Concept"Author(s): C. Norman Alexander, Jr.Source: Social Forces, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Dec., 1966), pp. 278-281Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2574399 .

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COMMENTARY

"ATTITUDE AS A SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT" C. NORMAN ALEXANDER, JR.

Vanderbilt University

Fundamental to DeFleur and Westie's "At- titude as a Scientific Concept,"1 is the distinc- tion between latent process and probability conceptions of attitudinal phenomena. How- ever, both in defining their distinguishing characteristics and in subsequently discussing the approaches, the authors obscure the very critical difference between the conception of attitude that is generally shared by most theorists in the area and the conception they implicitly advo- cate.

The characteristics of latent process and probability conceptions are defined as follows: The probability concept implies that

attitudinal responses are more or less consistent. That is, a series of responses toward a given attitudinal stimulus is likely to show some degree of organization, structure, or predictability . . . The attitude, then, is an inferred property of the responses, namely their consistency.2

The latent process view

begins with the fact of response consistency, but goes a step beyond and postulates the opera- tion of some hidden or hypothetical variable, functioning within the behaving individual, which shapes, acts upon, or 'mediates' the observable behavior. That is, the observable organization of behavior is said to be 'due to' or can be 'explained' by the action of some mediating latent variable. The attitude, then, is not the manifest responses themselves, or their probability, but an intervening variable operating between stimulus and responses and inferred from the overt behavior.3

The above paragraph actually contains three distinguishable definitions of attitude, two of which are used at various times to apply to probability approaches and two of which refer to latent process approaches to attitudes. It is crucial that they be distinguished: (1) The first is the definition of attitude that DeFleur and Westie propose; and it is distinguished by the fact that attitude becomes, NOT an inner- state variable, but an inferred property of the the manifest responses. (2) The second approach is actually common to most of the theorists that DeFleur and Westie attempt to differentiate into "latent process" and "probability" camps, and here attitude is regarded as a concept referring to an inner-state and as- sessed by observation of responses to specified stimuli under specified conditions. (3) Finally, there is a third conception that provides the target for the authors' criticisms of latent process views; attitude is here reified as

some 'inner mechanism,' some unobservable 'some- thing' that constrains, influences, mediates or other- wise determines that consistency will appear among the individual's responses to the attitude stimulus.4

They recognize the important difference between

( 1 ) those . . . [theories] . . . which impute the empirical existence of a hidden mechanism, and (2) those which postulate a hypothetical mediating variable . . . which is simply a construction which serves as a convenient tool for analysis.5

Yet, despite this recognition, they persistently deal with latent process conceptions as if hidden mechanisms were necessary postulates. This provides them with a basis for claiming a "fallacy of expected correspondence."

1 Melvin L. DeFleur and Frank R. Westie, "Attitude as a Scientific Concept," Social Forces, 42 (October 1963), pp. 17-31. Cf., also, Norman C. Weissberg, "On DeFleur and Westie's 'Atti- tude as a Scientific Concept,"' and Melvin L. De- Fleur and Frank R. Westie, "Rejoinder," Social Forces, 43 (March 1965), pp. 422-427.

2 DeFleur and Westie, 42 (1963), p. 21. 3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., p. 23. 5 Ibid., p. 24.



COMMENTARY '279

With latent process approaches, not only are responses within a given behavioral dimension or category expected to show consistency over time, there must also logically be an expectation of covariation between one category and another if each is mediated by the same general latent attitude.6

This curious insistence that the use of a latent variable concept compels the theorist to explain all related behavior only in terms of that variable's influence is intelligible only if the latent variable is treated as an inner mechanism that "determines that consistency will appear among an individual's responses." Ob- viously, a "convenient" analytic construct cannot determine anything, nor would it be very convenient if it required expectations of correspondence among all relevant responses to a stimulus without regard for the influence of other internal and external variables in the response situations.

Not only is this claim of a fallacy of expected correspondence vacuous in the absence of a hidden mechanism, it is also quite clearly contrary to the explicit views of major latent process theorists. For example, Thurstone had unequivocal remarks on this very point:

We shall measure the subject's attitude as expressed by the acceptance or rejection of opinions. But we shall not thereby imply that he will necessarily act in accordance with the opinions that he has endorsed. Let this limitation be clear. The measurement of attitudes expressed by a man's opinions does not necessarily mean the prediction of what he will do.7

DeFleur and Westie have simply confused the definition and measurement of a concept with its subsequent use in a predictive theoretical system, and this leads them to find spurious difficulties in the frequently observed incon- sistency between what people say in one type of, response situation and what they do in another.

It seems clear that their cri.ticisms of latent process views are applicable only to a hypothetical theoretical position that actually postulates the existence of a hidden mechanism with causal

efficacy. Without such reification, their com- ments are simply irrelevant for distinguishing between latent process and probability views.

The confused and misleading attempt to dis- tinguish between these views is apparent when we consider the remarks of Green, who is cited extensively as a representative of the latent process approach. Green infers from responses an internal organization of behavioral tenden- cies-and nothing more:

In general terms a latent variable is used to describe the consistency or covariation of a num- ber of different responses to stimuli of the same general class.8

Even more succinctly:

The latent attitude is defined by the correlations among responses.9

And,

We are justified in using a comprehensive concept like attitude when the man's related responses are consistent.10

.Quite clearly, this conception of latent processes does not go beyond response consistency. What, then, is the distinguishing characteristic of the "probability" approach that is being proposed?

THE BEHAVIORISTIC CONCEPTION

OF ATTITUDE

To understand what DeFleur and Westie propose it is crucial to recognize that theirs is a striking departure from previous conceptions, for their definition anchors attitude to the specific, external stimulus situations in which the individual responds. Attitude has been regarded as an inner-state variable that exists dispositionally, but the authors are denying its independence of the specific stimulus situations in which responses are observed. Consequently, as Skinner observed long ago,1' an inner-state

6 Ibid., p. 25. 7 L. L. Thurstone, "Attitudes Can Be Measured,"

The Measurement of Values (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 217.

8 Bert F. Green (as quoted in DeFleur and Westie, op. cit., p. 23, emphasis added).

9 Bert F. Green, "Attitude Measurement," in Gardner Lindzey (ed.), Handbook of Social Psy- chology, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ad- dison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1954), p. 336 (emphasis added).

10 Bert F. Green (as quoted in DeFleur and Westie, op. cit., p. 24, emphasis added).

11 B. F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior



280 SOCIAL FORCES

directly expressed and totally exhausted by the probability of a class of responses is con- ceptually superfluous; it is necessary only to deal directly with the response probabilities. And this is exactly what DeFleur and Westie propose to do when conceptualizing attitudes:

Attitudes appear to be most usefully conceptualized as specific, in the sense that they may be viewed as probabilities of specific forms of response to specific social objects.12

Manifold difficulties with the response probability model have been detailed elsewhere.13 Here, I want only to ask: Of what use would such an approach be in a scientific theory of attitudinal behavior? The answer to this ques- tion reveals the essential sterility of a behavioral conception of attitude and enables us to comprehend some rather cryptic statements in the DeFleur and Westie discussion. They say that their response probability conceptuali- zation places "certain limitations" on the use of attitude in a scientific theory:

Explanations for attitudinal behavior must come from . . . other phenomena, say, a membership in certain groups present or past, which perhaps have been learning environments of a particular sort.14

The "perhaps" in this statement is misleading. If we are not going to deal with internal states, then we must explain response probabilities in terms of the external conditions (the "other phenomena") under which the responses were learned and in which they are presently emitted.

It is important to note the significance of this perspective for our "explanation" of behavior: we cannot account for a single item of behavior toward a stimulus in terms of any other current behaviors toward that stimulus or any other stimulus. That is, we cannot utilize one class of contemporary response probabilities to predict another class of response probabilities. Each operant class is a separate universe.

Each universe of behavior can be regarded as equally legitimate and the probability of each oc- curring under various circumstances, or their pos- sible correlation, becomes an empirical problem.15

The limitations of this view are, thus, severe indeed: attitude must always be a dependent variable in our theoretical systems. Defined as probability of emission of a given class of responses, it cannot be used to explain any other behaviors of the organism. Our pre- dictions to concomitant behaviors must remain ad hoc, empirical problems-relationships be tween two sets of response probabilities remain empirical generalizations based on observations of correlations between them. In other words, we do not have much of a scientific concept at all, at least not in any usual sense of the word. What we have is simply a defined set of behavioral responses which we may use to in- vestigate learning experiences in social situations. These responses are to be predicted from past exposures of the organism to external variables, and it is these historic variables and those in the present, external environment to which alone we may relate "attitude," thus defined, in any predictive equations.

Furthermore, our ability to generalize on the basis of observed correlations among different response probabilities is likewise re- stricted; for it is necessary to obtain these observations on a population of individuals who share identical, experimentally relevant, past learning experiences. Subsequent generalizations can, of course, apply only to similar populations. Thus, we see that the conceptual utility of attitude, as behavioristically defined by DeFleur and Westie, is severely limited: first, by its exclusive use as a dependent variable in studying social learning; and, once this theory of learning has specified all the variables and the sequential interaction effects, we may then determine the nature of the populations (in terms of identical past histories) which can be used to construct empirical, interdimensional, behavioral correlates.

The crucial objection to response-probability theories of human behaviors is this: they con-

(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1953), p. 34, et seq.

12 DeFleur and Westie, 42 (1963), p. 30. 13 See Noam Chomsky, "Review of Verbal Be-

havior, by B. F. Skinner," Language, 35 (Janu- ary-March 1959), pp. 26-58.

14 DeFleur and Westie, 42 (1963), p. 23. l5 Ibid., p. 26 (emphasis added).



COMMENTARY 281

tinually drive us back into the past, making it necessary to know all of the relevant, historical variables that contributed to learning a particular behavior. Our measure of response probability becomes an exclusively dependent variable. We cannot use it as a basis for pre- dictions of the organism's other behaviors unless we have knowledge of his reinforcement history; but, if we do possess this information, then we do not need to use current response probabilities to predict. Moreover, we cannot even generalize from observations of empirical correlations between two or more situational response probabilities unless we restrict these

generalizations to those individuals sharing identical past histories.

The response probability model leaves us stuck at the level of very specific responses to very specific situations. By abandoning at- tempts to assess internal states, the behaviorist binds response variance to highly unique, organism-in-environment situations, from which generalization may be achieved only by refer- ence to the "relevant" external factors that lie buried in the past. So defined, attitude becomes merely a category of highly specific behaviors that is scientifically useful only as a dependent variable in the study of social learning.



"attitude as a scientific concept"

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