Psychological Reports. 1972, 31, 483-486.

@ Psychological Reports 1972

PERSONAL. ADJUSTLUENT AND AUTHORITARIAN ATTITUDES

TOWARD THE MENTALLY ILL

J O H N FRACCHLA, CHARLES SHEPPARD, JOSEPH PINTYR,

JAMES CROVELLO AND SIDNEY MERLlS
Researcb Division, Cmtral Islip Stare Hospital

Suntn~ary.-The relationship between authoritarian attitudes, which reflect

the belief that mentally I11 persons comprise an inferior class requiring coercive
handling, and personal adjusunent was examined for 77 female psychiatric aides
at a large state mental hospital. Correlations and analysis of variance suggested
the lack of a systematic association between the two variables.

A study by Lieberman (1970) suggests that both being more tolerant of

the mentally ill and being better informed about mental illness are negatively re-
lated to personal adjustment. That is, the most tolerant (least authoritarian) and
best-informed individuals in a sample of college students had the most deviant
MMPI profile patterns. The author resuicts these relationships to nonpatient,
nonprofessional samples shce he reasons that it is unlikely examinations of the
most tolerant, best-informed persons (psychologists and psychiatrists) would
find these persons most disturbed. Rather the hypothesis that people having
psychological problems become interested in mental health and illness and in-
form themselves about these is used to account for these findings. The inference
being that the inueased tolerance is a consequence of the increased knowledge.
The present study examines the relationship between personal adjustment
as measured by responses on the Emotions Profile Index (EPI; Kellerman & Plut-
chik, 1966) and authoritarian attitudes toward the mentally ill as assessed by the
A factor scale of the Opinions About Mental Illness Scale (OMI; Cohen &
Struening, 1963) in a gro;lp of female psychiatric attendants. For this group,
knowledge about mental illness results from institutional training programs and
actual experience with psychiatric patients rather than from an essentially intel-
lectual process. Thus, if Lieberman's results are indeed limited to nonpatient,
nonprofessional samples, differences on the authoritarianism ( A ) factor of the
Opinion scale should not he systematically related to deviant EPI characteristics
for this professionally involved group. Specifically, the A factor should correlate
only in a random fashion with the various EPI emotion dimensions and low,
medium and high A Ss should have similar mean percent scores in the EPI.
MBTHOD
The EPI and a modified form of the Opinion scale were administered to 77
female psychiatric attendants staffing a number of female continued treatment
services at a large state mesltal hospital. The average age of the sample was 45
(SD = 12 yr.). Ss had completed on the average 11 yr. of school (SD = 1.5
yr.) and been employed by the hospital for 15 yr. (SD = 10 yr.).
484 J. FRACCHIA, ET AL.

The EPI consists of paired words representing eight prototypic emotion

dimensions. It is a self-report, forced-choice test pairing each word with every
other test word. The 66 items are scored on the basis of the underlying emo-
tions they represent. The raw score is converted to a percent score which repre-
sents the number of items checked compared to the number of items which
could have been checked for that emotion dimension. Scores are obtained for
eight primary emotional dimensions: incorporation (acceptance), reproduction
(joy), exploration (anticipation), protection (fear), orientation (surprise), re-
jection (disgust), deprivation (sadness), destruction (anger) and a measure of
social desirability bias.
The modification of the Opinion scale consisted of rewording some items to
make these items more directly applicable to the respondents' experiences (sub-
stituting "your patients," "patients on your ward"). The Opinion scale has 51
statements selected from a larger factor analyzed pool for which the responder in-
dicates the amount of agreement on a six-point scale. The instrument is scored
for five factors: Authoritatianism (A), Benevolence ( B ) , Mental Health Ideol-
ogy ( C ) , Social Restrictiveness ( D ) and Interpersonal Etiology ( E ) . The
authoritarian factor is defined as an attitude that ". . . includes authoritarian sub-
mission and anti-intraception and reveals a view of the mentally ill as an inferior
class requiring coercive handling" (Cohen & Struening, 1963, p. 111). Scores
on this factor were used to divide the sample into low (score L 20, N = 28,
M = 1 6 ) , medium (scores of 21 to 25, N = 20, M = 23) and high (score ' .
26, N = 29, M = 32) authoritarian groups. Mean differences were significant
by analysis of variance (P = 154, df = 2/74, P = .001).
Product-moment correlation coefficients ( r ) were computed for the total
group between A factor scores and each EPI percent score. The significance of
mean percent score differences for each emotion dimension among the three
groups was tested for by analysis of variance.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 1 shows the r for each EPI emotion dimension with the A factor of
the Opinion scale, mean EPI percent scores on these dimensions for the low
medium and high A groups and F ratios. It can be seen both the direction and
magnitude of the rs suggest no systematic relationship between A and the eight
dimensions. None of the rs achieved statistical significance; five are .05 or less,
and the ratio of positive to negative rs is three to five. The analysis of variance
of differences among emotion dimension percent scores also indicated no signif-
icant EPI differences in the three authoritarian groups. That is, the degree of
personal adjustment in the groups as measured by the EPI is identical.
For this sample, then, tolerance of the mentally ill, as inferred from authori-
tarian attitudes, does not appear to be related to personal adjustment. It should
also be noted that only one r (A-Bias, .24) was significant at the .05 level. T o
 ATTITUDES TOWARD MENTALLY ILL 485

TABLE I
CORRELATIONBETWEENEPI EMOTIONALDIMENSIONS
AND AUTHOR~TARIANISM
AND EPI MEANS FOR LOW, MEDIUMAND HIGHAUTHORITARIANGROUPS
EPI Correlation Mean Percent Score F
Dimension With A low
A Medium A High A
Incorporation .16 76 78 80 .47
Reproduction -.04 80 78 78 .08
Destruction -.01 22 23 23 .ll
Exploration .01 62 62 64 .19
Rejection -.05 27 28 27 .08
Deprivation -.04 30 24 27 1.3
Protection .17 60 63 65 .74
Orientation - 03 55 54 53 .14
Bias .24' 76 78 81 1.8

the extent the authoritarian individual tends toward conformity, i.e., responding
in a socially accepted fashion, this finding is consistenc with the separation of the
groups on the A factor.
It might be argued these findings could also be explained by a lack of sensi-
tivity on the part of the measurement device for personal adjustment. How-
ever, other data show that: ( l ) Individuals with different MMPI profile patterns
respond differentially to the EPI (Sheppard, Fiorentino, Collins, & Merlis, 1969;
Fiorentino, Sheppard, & Merlis, 1970; Sheppard, Fracchia, & Merlis, 1970), ( 2 )
Conflict scores derived from the EPI reflect the severity of MMPI defined psy-
chopathological states (Shepprd, O'Neill, Fracchia, & Merlis, 1970), and ( 3 )
Psychiatric residents inscruczed to fill out EPI as would patients manifesting dif-
ferent types of pathology produce reliable and distinctly different EPI profiles for
the various diagnostic categories (Sheppard, Reinhardt, Merlis, & Fracchia,
1972 ) . The ability of the EPI to detect clinical differences was also suggested in
a study of age-related syrnptomatology in hospitalized psychiatric patients
(Merlis, Beyel, Fiorentino, Fracchia, & Sheppard, 1971). The EPI identified
age-relaced symptom characteristics that were also detected by comparable scales
on the MMPI and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (Overall & Gorham, 1962).
If one accepts these studies as establishing differentiating ability of the EPI,
the present data strongly scggest the lack of a systematic relationship between
authoritarian attitudes towacd the mentally ill and the degree of personal adjust-
ment of female psychiatric aides.
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486 J. FRACCHIA, ET AL.

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Accepted June 22, 1972.