An Analysis of the Attitudes of College Students Concerning the War in Vietnam

Attitudes of a sampling of students at Morningside College was compared with results from a poll conducted by church magazines. A locally developed Hawk-Dove scale was designed and administered to the college sample and the results compared with certain personal and personality attributes. It was found that college seniors were much more critical of the war than college freshmen. The former were similar to attitudes of clergy while the latter were more similar to the attitudes of laymen. However, aggression scores on the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) were almost identical for freshmen and seniors. For dominance on the EPPS, seniors and veterans had almost identical scores. Veterans were more optimistic about the war than non-veterans. Students majoring in the humanities were less favorable to war than those majoring in the natural sciences. These are preliminary observations of small portions of a large mass of data