AGREEMENT SET AND ANTICONTENT ATTITUDES IN THE F SCALE: A REINTERPRETATION.

The results of Peabody's (1961) study of attitude content and agreement set, presumably finding 2 kinds of Ss, one prone to agree irrespective of item content, the other likely to take an antiauthoritarian position irrespective of item direction, were reanalyzed. An alternative hypothesis was proposed, which explained the asymmetric results as mainly due to asymmetric reversals of F Scale items and consequent displacement of the neutral points of the reversed items. This displacement made the Ss scoring low on the original scale appear consistent, and the high scorers appear inconsistent in their attitudes at the phenotypic level. Yet while there is some evidence of possible response set, the majority of responses by most Ss seem perfectly consistent if the variation in item location is taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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