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National Attitudes on the Far Eastern Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

James T. Russell  and
Quincy Wright
James T. Russell
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Quincy Wright
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

Students of international relations are concerned with the description, prediction, and control of the external behavior of states, particularly of their more violent types of behavior such as intervention, hostilities, and war. It is clear that mere description of a diplomatic or military event has little meaning by itself and that such an event can neither be predicted nor controlled unless account is taken of the circumstances which preceded it within each of the states involved. Among the internal circumstances which have been studied are the correspondence of statesmen, the declarations of legislatures, executives, foreign offices, and political parties, the prescriptions of constitutional law and procedure, the traditional policies manifested by the history of the state, and the understandings of treaty and international law accepted by the community of nations at the time and presumably by the states involved.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , August 1933 , pp. 555 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1933

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References

1 See, for example, comments on the methods of Turner, F. J. by Curti, Merle, in Rice, S. A., Methods in Social Science (Chicago, 1931), p. 364Google Scholar.

2 Franklin Fearing, Experimental Study of Attitudes, in Rice, op. cit. p. 716 ff.

3 Thurstone, L. L., “Attitudes Can be Measured,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33, p. 532 ffGoogle Scholar. See also definitions of attitude by J. M. Williams and S. A. Rice, in Rice, op. cit., pp. 460, 586, 726.

3a It may be suggested that a high proportion of extreme attitudes on political questions indicates a high tension level in the community, unfavorable to political stability. This conforms to President Lowell's suggestion for measuring the healthiness of the state by the degree of concentration of political parties toward the center. Public Opinion and Popular Government (New York, 1914), p. 94Google Scholar.

4 The percentage distribution of attitude statements from the Chinese and Japanese papers during the entire period of three years is indicated in figure 4. The close correspondence of the curves for the two countries is significant. The graph for the Japanese papers exhibits a slight bi-modal character, while that for the Chinese papers does not. It is perhaps significant that this tendency toward positive statements pro or con in preference to neutral statements should appear more in the Japanese than in the Chinese press. Figure 3 indicates that the Chicago papers tend to be even more positive in this sense than the Japanese, while the New York Times displays a more normal distribution curve.

5 The dates and events are taken from the chronology in the bi-weekly bulletin issued by the Royal Institute of International Affairs of London. These data based on contemporary reports probably give a better indication of what seemed important, and so influenced opinion at the time, than would subsequent historical accounts, which, while perhaps more accurate in details, would be influenced by knowledge of the consequences, in their judgments on the importance of events.

6 The results were: Minseito, 273 seats; Seyukai, 174 seats.

7 Watson, Goodwin B., Orient and Occident; A Preliminary Study of Opinions and Attitudes of Groups of Americans Regarding Oriental Peoples and Questions (Teachers College, Columbia University, 1927)Google Scholar.

8 Rice, S. A., “Differential Changes of Political Preference Under Campaign Stimulation,” Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, Vol. 21, pp. 297–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Rice, S. A., Farmers and Workers in American Politics (Columbia Univ. Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, No. 253, New York, 1924)Google Scholar. See also Rice, , (ed.), Statistics in Social Studies (Univ. of Penna. Press, Philadelphia, 1930)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ibid., Quantitative Methods in Politics (New York, 1928).

10 Hart, Hornell, “Changing Social Attitudes and Interests,” in Recent Social Trends in the United States (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1933), Vol. 1, pp. 382ff, 435Google Scholar.

11 Bogardus, E. S., “Social Distance and its Origins,” Journal of Applied Sociology Vol. 9, pp. 216–226Google Scholar.

12 Allport, F. H. and Hartman, D. A., “The Measurement and Motivation of Atypical Opinion in a Certain Group,” in this Review, Vol. 18, pp. 735–760Google Scholar.

13 Thurstone, L. L., “The Method of Paired Comparisons for Social Values,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 21, pp. 384–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Attitudes Can be Measured,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33, pp. 529–554CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “An Experimental Study of Nationality Preferences,” Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 1, pp. 405–425CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Theory of Attitude Measurement,” Psychological Review, Vol. 36, pp. 222–241CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Measurement of Social Attitudes,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 26, pp. 249–269CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Rank Order as a Psychophysical Method,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 14, pp. 187–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stouffer, S. A., “Experimental Comparison of a Statistical and a Case History Technique of Attitude Research,” American Sociological Society Publications, Vol. 25, pp. 154–156Google Scholar; Droba, D. D., “Methods for Measuring Attitudes,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 29, pp. 309–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thurstone, L. L. and Chave, E. J., The Measurement of Attitudes (Chicago, 1930)Google Scholar; Murphy, G. and Murphy, L. B., Experimental Social Psychology (New York, 1931), Chap. 11Google Scholar.

14 Russell, James T., “Measurement of Trends in International Attitude” (to be submitted to the Journal of Social PsychologyGoogle Scholar.

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