Attitudes toward the elderly : the relationship between self-ratings and ratings assigned to an elderly woman

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between self-ratings and ratings assigned to an elderly woman 65 years of age and older. Ninety-one males and one hundred and forty-nine females responded to a test battery that consisted of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test (MBTI), Signori's 69 Bipolar Adjective Scales (69AS) and modified, seven point Likert versions of the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI), Wilson's Conservatism Scale (C), and Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control (LoC). Subjects completed the test battery under two conditions, one as the items related to themselves and the other, excluding the MBTI, as they felt the items would be responded to by an elderly woman. Both the order of the items in each test and the order of each test in the battery were completely randomized for every subject. Analysis of the male data indicated that there was a highly significant, positive relationship between the two types of ratings for the variables of locus of control and the 69AS, whereas the female data revealed high significant relationships for the variable of extraversion-introversion (EPI), neuroticism (EPI), locus of control and the 69AS. Discriminant functions on the eight Jungian types revealed that only the extraverted-introverted types were clearly distinguishable from their self-ratings on the various personality measures in the battery. An examination of the discriminant coefficients revealed that the 69AS contributed the most in classifying subjects into their respective types. Both the limitations and implications of the findings were discussed.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat