Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes

Book excerpt: Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes: Volume 1 in Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes Series provides a comprehensive guide to the most promising and useful measures of important social science concepts. This book is divided into 12 chapters and begins with a description of the Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes Project's background and the major criteria for scale construction. The subsequent chapters review measures of "response set"; the scales dealing with the most general affective states, including life satisfaction and happiness; and the measured of self-esteem. These topics are followed by discussions of measures of social anxiety, which is conceived a major inhibitor of social interaction, as well as the negative states of depression and loneliness. Other chapters examine the separate dimensions of alienation, the predictive value of interpersonal trust and attitudes in studies of occupational choice and racial attitude change, and the attitude scales related to locus of control. The final chapters look into the measures related to authoritarianism, androgyny, and values. This book is of great value to social and political scientists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, non-academic professionals, and students.