A Double-Directed Analysis of Preference Motivations and Other Pal-Description Statements: Studies in Socio-Perceptual Selectivity

SUMMARYThis paper gives a methodological discussion of choice-motivations in sociometric preference analysis and other similar pal-description statements and illustrates a two-way analysis of such statements: (a) an object-directed analysis in terms of pal-perceptions as object-determined; and (b) a subject-directed analysis in terms of pal-perceptions as subject-determined.The first section is devoted to general considerations about the difficulties in the analysis of choice motivations. It is concluded that although we cannot always rely on a direct “text interpretation”, we may perhaps make some use of a prudent “context interpretation”. Regardless of whether the communications are “true” or “false”, they are behavioral units of the communicator, and some interesting relation between these and other units of behavior may perhaps be found.In order to clarify some aspects of these problems it seemed to be practical to start not with the spontaneous choice-motivations, which are sometimes too complex, but to use similar statements in a special pal-description device. The construction of such a device on the basis of choice-motivations is illustrated, and an empirical demonstration is given of an object-directed analysis of socio-perceptual selectivity. The pal- description rating status is found to correlate significantly with the sociometric status as here analyzed.In the final section a subject-directed analysis of socio-perceptual selectivity is given, i. e. the pal-description device was used as a test of the perceiver. Whereas we earlier had interpreted inter-subjective consistencies as signs of object-determination, we now tried to interpret inter-subjective differences as signs of subject-determination. From the empirical data it was seen that: (a) there is a very clear tendency to perceive members of one's own sex in positive roles more often than members of the opposite sex; (b) there is no corresponding tendency to perceive members of the opposite sex more often in negative roles; (c) overrating of one's own sex is greater for overrejected pupils than for overchosen pupils, i. e. the overchosen children seem to be less sex-role-determined in their pal-descriptions.Pal-description devices of this kind—many variants may be constructed according to the specific conditions of the research problem and the intended population—may be of use in at least two respects: (a) they may show that the difficulties concerning the “objectivity” of pal-description statements may be made psychologically fruitful when given a subject-directed analysis; (b) they may be used in their own right for rating purposes in order to validate other reputational measures, such as the sociometric choice technique.