The Structure of Social Attitudes

A factor‐analytic study is described of the relationships of 88 social attitude questions‐social class, sex and age, for a random sample of the population ( n = 368). Ten meaningful correlated factors were extracted from the matrix of intercorrelations. The intercorrelations between these ten factors were in turn factor‐analysed, and three second‐order factors extracted. These were interpreted to represent (1) general conservative‐radical ideology; (2) socio‐economic conservatism v. socialism; (3) tough‐mindedness v. tender‐mindedness. These factors were almost completely orthogonal and independent of each other; thus there are clearly two kinds of ‘conservatism’, independent of each other, and related in different ways to social class. Middle‐class people tend to be more radical with respect to general attitudes, but more conservative with respect to economic attitudes, than working‐class people.