1983 Volume 20 Issue 1.2 Pages 19-32
This is a pilot study to examine the prisoners’ attitude in answering a questionnaire. A questionnaire was carried out to the sentenced male prisoners(N=86, average age=43 yrs. old, and average IQ=81). The questionnaire consisted of 40 items; 19 items were opinion-survey-type questions to reflect the prisoners’ opinions on prison life, term of imprisonment, correctional workers’ attitude toward prisoners, and causes of their offense; and the other 21 items were personality-inventory-type questions to ask them their attitude and personality traits. Each question item was addressed to the subjects in two types of questioning. “Does the statement hold good with you?” was the one type of questioning, which was called self-oriented questioning. “Guess whether the statement holds good with other prisoners or not.” was the other type, which was called others-oriented questioning. Thus, two rating values, namely self-oriented rating and others-oriented rating, were obtained for each statement.
Considerable differences were found between self-oriented ratings and others-oriented ratings. Examination of the results were shown as follows.
Forty questions (items, statements) were classified into two categories, namely ego-defensive questions and non-ego-defensive ones. The ego-defensive questions were those which made the subjects rather ego-defensive to answer affirmatively. An example of the question (statement) was “have a short temper”. It was assumed that each subject became ego-defensive to accept “I have a short temper.” It was found here that the difference between self-oriented ratings and others-oriented ratings were considerably larger in the ego-defensive questions than in the non-ego-defensive ones. It was also found that the subjects’ responses had a tendency to be “expected” or “generally accepted”answers in self-oriented ratings while they did not in others-oriented ratings. It was considered in this sense that self-oriented ratings were biased because of their ego-defensive attitude.
Eighty-six subjects were then classified into two groups, namely strongly-defensive group and weakly-defensive group, by the use of L-scale (lie scale) and Ed-scale (ego-defense scale) of MJPI (Ministry of Justice’s Personality Inventory). It was observed that the difference between the two ratings was larger in the strongly-defensive group than in the weakly-defensive group. It was exactly the case in the 21 questions of personality-inventory-type. It was considered that self-oriented ratings of the strongly-defensive subjects were biased more than those of the weakly-defensive subjects. On the other hand, others-oriented ratings were not so different each other between the two groups.
Therefore the followings were tentatively concluded. 1) In a questionnaire, prisoners’ answers do not always express their “real” opinions in self-oriented questionning. It is assumed that self-oriented ratings are biased because of their ego-defensive attitude. 2) Some of their “real” opinions may be clearly expressed in others-oriented ratings.