Verbal Attitudes and Overt Acts: An Experiment on the Salience of Attitudes

turning up new leads for questioning, observation, and interpretation. The method of participant observation was adopted in this case only after responsible Air Force personnel believed they had obtained about all they could from general observation, questionnaires, and formal interviews. In addition, they suspected that airmen, like other human beings, could and did maintain false fronts, often deceiving officers, researchers, and perhaps themselves. Here seemed to be a new approach that might probe beneath the surface in a revealing way. Now that the study has been completed, both responsible Air Force personnel and we ourselves believe that significant results were obtained. Obviously no other study could duplicate our procedures in complete detail. But something of the sort could profitably be done, we believe, in the study of institutions such as prisons and hospitals. We suspect that heretofore most would-be participant observers have been early spotted by the objects of study and thereby prevented from entering fully into the life of the group in question. This study has at least demonstrated that thorough-going participant observation is very difficult, but not impossible.