tajfel 1967 a study of cognitive and affective attitudes

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AD 678 167A STUDY OF COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE ATTITUDESH. TajfelOxford UniversityOxford, England1967


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4-Reoroduced b'iheC L fAR I N G H 0 U 5 EF SR 68-232) for Fderal Senifc&ehniciinformation Spflngfi.31d Va. 27151

4 ARCH GRANT AF-EOAR 446

A study of cognitive and affective attitudes

H. TaifelUniversity of Oxford, England

CnroAae and eCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral aen-

Stanford, California (1966-67)

F KNL REPORTI'INation.Jiain has become once again a powerful force in world

affat tS. We have leamed from t.- past that this force can sez -a forconstructive ar destructive p'rpoes,, t.at it can becoe an importantfactor in the developmut of P cuntry' resources smc potentialities,but chat it can also unleash tunwiaeable conflicts. The determiningconditions under which one or the other ha.,pen't are largely qol ical,soc:l and economic. But it is also true that theso various con-ditions are welt ed to psychological proccssea responsible for themanner in vhi'h attitudes of natiornal affilistion develop amongstofthe citizen of a :ountry. A clearer underntandtng/these psychologicalprocesses in particu srly Important today, when interkpendence ofmany couutr'ie of the world to an estak'ils hed political fact, The sinpurpose of the research undertaktn under the Air Forct Grant EOAR 4-66wi s to explore some tapects of this problem in several countri(.- ofthe Western world.

The pr blr a with which thit research was specitfically concernedis 'It;,.. of the dvelopwent of iniational affil ,4"ions and of attitudes

is This A.'is een approvedt rublreleae 614d aeo ' its distrittin is uolmitad, IiI


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tmuards ft'reign countries iu children. There is a goo d-*eL of evidertcein psychology about the continity of certain p.;atert. of 2ttitteee

ofrom childhood to adidthood. Our attept~ to .tderstand th@ textute ofnational affiliations which are likely to becomne increasingly ij ortantto the Western world in the tv -ty yena to cm mnust therefore irtciud*gathering if more information about their inc~pientl and fornuative naturein the child. The main empirical issuts with wh ch the reerch de~At.can be specified as follovs:?

(a) Is there evidence for a cousensus in children between theages of 6 and 12 (i.e., from the bag_'ning of school age) in theirstructure of preferences concerning selected foreign countries?

(b) What is the relation of these preferences to the informationthat th e children have about the soag foreign countries?

(c) Is there evidence for the 4evelopment of affilttion with thechild's own country at that !wge?

(d) What is the relation bet'%een the child's system of preferencestowards various foreign countries and his perception of similarity ordissmailarity of these countries Lt. his mao country -and to eAch otm& ?

(e) To what extent is the child capable of percetvfi, relationsabetween nationails of various countries from the point of ' view other thanthat of his own country, and how does this capacity rtlatt to bi3 cyorernof peeecs

(f) To what extent the porcvption of similArity or dissimilarityto othar groups is a determinant of friendly or hosttil1. behavior toward..thin? (This part of the roaearch was done outside the context ofnational Attitudes).


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Ir nddtion to these principal recearch issues, a few othex minorstuiea vre canducted in which the --blems investigated inm ".ed:the o.Htc+s of comics on national attitudes; t: e relation of preferencesto .hqi ssimilation of new information; th e relation of social class of

hnId -1-o ia knowledge about, and atticudes toward, his own and othercm ies.+ the results of these latter idies re4uire further workof Sta=tUtiCal analysis, Lhey will be reported in detail at a later

(ai Children's consensv% concerning preferences for relatedforeign covuntr~es.

This xtLU- was conducted in England, Scotland, Austria, Belgium andGr' ct. The ame four foreign countries were used in ll these locationsfor &ssqosaig the development of a firm structuze of preferences; thesewere. Ante , Russia, France, Germany. The -implest way to summrtr-the retuv.L 14 to state that in all the European locations used therewas A clear -.nd towards preferences arranged in th e folloing orderfrom m to least preferred: America, France, Germany, Russia. Thesecond mwin finding is that, though this pattern is already clear atthe age *f 6 to 7, it becomes increasingly more conv.ncing at thechildren aroer. Thus, in Britain the differenc4s between th e yout.,rand . eo- chile:en are in the following direction: highly significantincrease with ge rf prmfer--ce for America; highly oignificant decreasewith age of preferen.e for Cermany and Russia; no significant trend wit:.age of prefeerce for Franre. In Belgium, '-ere is an increase with ageof preference for AWmr*.ca and France, & decrease with a&e of preference


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Stot Russia, and no sioniffiant trend for preference for rnny. InfGreec, the only signtficant trend with age is a decreaan of pseferencefor G Ly In Austria,, there are highly signif tcnt trends for in-:r ase with age of preference for America and a decreace of prererencefor Russia, while France and Germany remain stable. Thus, with the oneexception for Greece, there is a general consensus concerning thedevelopmnt of attitudes towards America and Russia, not only vithineach c;f the cnuntries itudied but also between the European countries.

The study included not only an assessment of preferences !ut alsoof the children's perception of intertiatiots, relations, with regard tofriendships beL een their own country and the four foreign countries andbetween these four countries. "ere also, there are some high concordancn-sin the children's Jidgments. For example, assessment of relations o)fown v'untry with America as f-icndly varies from 90.5% of the subjectsin Britain to 70.1 percent of the subjects in Greece. The generalperception of relations of the four countries vi.h own count- as frtendlyfollows the following orders from most to least.

In Britain: America, Fxance, Germany, RussiaIn Belgium: France, America, Rut a, GermanyIn Greece: France, America, Russia, GernmanvIn Austria: Gerrmany, France, America, RussiaThe differences between the countries in this last set of findings

are perhaps as ir.,erasting as the simiiarities previously discussed. Theconsensus, however, remains (with the exception of Germany f.;r Austrianchildren) in the perception of America and France as more friendly thanGermany and Russia.

!~


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ectl probis namely: the processes of r~tional affiliation in asituation where dirtinct ethnic or national groups compose th e nation-state (England, Scotland, Belgium and Israel); and the proulem of thedevelopment in children of physical stereotypes of their own nation (acomparison of Italian with the other European data).

The findings oi this study are multiple and complex. TheiL mainfeatures may be summarized as follows:

(1) In all the locations there is a highly significant preferencefor wn netional group.

(2) This does not apply when a national or ethnic sub-group istraditionally less clearly identified with the nation-state. Thus,results were not significa-&. for the dichotomy Scottish-not Scottish inScotland, while +hey were significant in Scotls-d for th e dichotomy ofBritish-not British intrc uced in a sopaare study; in th e s,me way, ii,the Israeli study, there was a cl-arer identification with the nation-state of photographs of European origin chan of photographs of Crientalorigin despite the fact that the population of the state is almostevenly divided beLween groups of tnese two origins. This finding appliedto groups of chiLJren who were bolh of European and of Oriental origin.

(3) 1- ,'tuation of acute awareness of -e, -ate national identityof one of Lhe subgroups fo.ming the nation-state kwhich is not th e c-aein Scotland, and even less so in the Oriental group iL. srael), there isin children evidence of identification both with th e nation-state aadwith the separAte group. If, he Belgian study Fle.mish children wereUsed. On* group worked in toerus of a dichotomy Belgian-kvt Belgian;another in terms of a dichotomy cf Flemish-not Flemish. Significant


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evidence! f affiliation was obtained from both groups.(4) From i comparison of the Italian with other E ropean data,

there is evidence that some ti-e between C-e ages of 6 and 11, childrendevelop some form of a n~cion about th e genecal physical stereotype oftheir own national group which they use with a fair degree of consist-envy in the upper half of our age range.

Other findings from this study :re of theoretical interest in thearea of the cognitive and affective basis for children'7 judgtients. They'w.11e reported in the detail-I publications emerftig from the project.

(d) Relations between the child's syst'm of preferences and hisperception simil:rity an d dissimilarity between various countrieE,

This Is an issue of considexable theoretical tad practical importa~ce.To what extent is it true that a- increase in the perception ot Aeaeralsimilarity of various hLz-an groups (or countries) is related to themanner in which e child constructs his matrix of preferences? An %-ploratory study on this iasue was conducted within the project in Leiden,lolLand. Children cngaged in various tasks, one of wh'ich consisted ofa deterulnation of parcetved similaricy betweon a number of countries,and another in a specification ot their relative preferences for thesame countries. 1.- resL":s show a close correspondence brrrvten t'letwo systems, i.e., that the more similar eny two contries are perceivedto be, the negrer they will be to on another in the genera. order cfrreferences.

(e) Relations between preferences a:d the capacity to perceiverelations betveen individuals from the point of view other than that


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of oin national group.A study on this problem jag cond"cted in Oxford, England. The

method was too elaoorat, to be described here in detail. it tnvol-edth e child fn taking concrete deciuosis in specific situations fo -nationals of his own and other countries. Two general bases fo thesedecisions were discovered: a patriotic preference fo r own rountry; anda teneral nor of fairness, With regard to the application of thesefoundations of hoice tc .i-tionala of foreign cuntries, th e folLowingpattern of results emerged: children who responded exclusively on thebasis oa preference fo r their (,.-n country were not able in many casesto conceive that th e national of a country they disliked would alsorespond on th e basis of his preference for hi s own country, and childrenwho responded on th e general basis of fairness tended to assuae that thenutonals of a country they disliked would be less capablz to act onthat basis than nationals of a country which was highly preferred,

(f) Relation of percept on of similarity ind dissimilarity tobehavior toward another group.

In this study no ..tempt was made to introduce :pxicitly the issueof nationaility. Its aiv was to explore further one of the fundamntaland general aipects of the findings described in (d)awve. Groups ofboys w-are engaged in a compatitiv game vith other groups which theyhad isvor net, neither during th-e game ro r befo-e. Tuo erpirivtntalconditions were used which differod in the nature 6f she informationthat tC. boys had about the general similarity or dissimilarity hetweentheir ovn and the cometing grok,. On& of the studies conducted inOxford, provided striking evidence of the relatocn bv.wea. ass.m-d


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simil+arity to the other group and -he degree of gen .rosiry shown tothat group. The necond study, conducted in Utrecht, Holland, specifiedthese results further, showing that this reiationphip was not Atao)ebut dependent upon the personality type of the boys engaged in thegame,Co-clusion

The findings de6ribed above point toward the need for Lurt'-eri:tense research into the development of national attitudes in childrenfor resasous vhich are both of theoretical and practical nature.Theoretically, we need to kno more about the manner in which a humanbeing rel;- 's himself to the ' ,rge groups of which he is a number. Thepracti al tssues are fairly obvious: the system of preferences and thpinforwrion that children asa


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-- TRI ASSIFIED, , DC,'ks 4EKT CONTROL DATA, - R D

0: ford Univers ityL __ j_

Oxford, Englaznd

A STUDY OF COGNITIVE AND AFI7CTIVE ATTITY-MESVFt~n E - 0T E S (Typ* af te~wi an d In cus i e do to )

Scientific Final7 AU TH SI Fi*,- n iea, middie ite;, tear nomo)

H. Tajfel6 REPORT DATE T78OTAL 0O . OF ,G.S yb. NO . CF AE'r

November 1968 10 12CONTRACT 0.4 GRAN T NO AF-EOAR4-66 9&. MIGATOqS IREPORr 6QUMEELR(S

b. PO.:EcYNC 9777-016144501F OTHER~ REPORT NOM~ (Any. oth.? num*ts M*fmay be azatgnod

d. 681313 1 "FOS68-2329;0 DISTVtMUTCOM S T A T E ME N 71. This docume,:t has been approved for public release and sale; i-s distribution isunlimited.

11UrPLEMEN7ARY NOTFES 11PONSOPRING MILI TARY AC-~VTvAir Force Office of Scientific ResearchTECH, OTHER 1400 Wilson Boulevard ( SRLB )

__Axlington, Virginia 222273 At ST AC T

This research is a study of childrens' (ages six to twelve) developing attitudestoward foreign coUlntries, affiliation with their own country, perception ofsimilarities and dissitailaricies of foreign c,Antries, perception of relationsbetween nationals of forei n countrieb, and perception of similarities anddiesimilarities to other eups as determinants of friendly or hostile behavior.The research was conducted in England, Scotland, Austria, Belgium, and Greece.Preferences were found to be arranged in the following order: America, France,Germany, Russia. This pattern is clear at ages 6 to 7 and becomes increasinglymore convincing as the children grower older.

POM1473


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UNCLASSIFIED14. KEY WORDS

ChIidrens* attirudel toward foreignersDevelopment of National affiliationChiildrens' perceptions of ioreigners

tajfel 1967 a study of cognitive and affective attitudes

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