William A. Scott

Generality and topic specificity of cognitive styles

Abstract A multitrait-multimethod strategy was used to assess eight structural properties of cognition applied to several classes of objects by 88 university students in Boulder, Colorado, United States, and 80 university students in Kyoto and Otsu, Japan. Each cognitive style was found to display some degree of generality over object classes and also some degree of class specificity. It is concluded that cognitive style depends on the subject, the class of objects considered, and an interaction between the two.

The Distribution of Test Scores1

FOR a test composed of dichotomous items, it is well known that the distribution of total scores depends on the number of items, their difficulties, and their intercorrelations (see, for example, Nunnally, 1967). There are differing points of view concerning the ideal shape for a score distribution, some preferring a normal distribution (Cronbach, 1960, p. 135), some a rectangular distribution (Ferguson, 1949; Guilford, 1954, p. 360; Humphreys, 1956), others

A broad orientation to research on international attitudes: a review and discussion: Bjørn Christianson, Attitudes towards foreign affairs as a function of personality

trative testing ground for theories of attitudes and personality. Bj¢rn Christianson’s Attitudes towards Foreign Affairs as a Function of Personality is strongly flavored with the last of these aims; hence quite apart from the attitudinal content, it treats problems of general concem for personality psychologists. It is also ambitious in scope. Any investigation which incorporates the Blacky Test of psychosexual conflict in a survey of opinions about foreign policy clearly reflects a broader orientation toward the subject matter than does the typical research on international attitudes. In order to assess Christianson’s contribution against actual as well as ideal standards, it may help to review briefly some orientations toward research which are currently found in this area. Any investigator may possess both a usual mode of research practice and an ideology concerning desirable practice. Both of these are here treated as orientations toward research, the one proclaimed by the investigator himself, the other inferred by the person who watches him. Congruity between an ideal and a practice is hard enough to find when both are maintained by the same individual; when the ideal and the practice reside in different researchers, considerable discrepancy be-