ABSTRACT
Traditionally, psychology's concern with political issues has taken a narrow focus defining 'political' mainly in terms of party politics and assuming that individuals hold consistent political viewpoints which can be measured using attitude scales. These make way for the categorization of participants into political 'types'. Many of these psychological scales and surveys rely on detailed statements expressing an opinion to which respondents register their level of agreement or disagreement (see for a recent example, Jowell et ai., 1990). The statements only provide opinions towards certain topics, in some cases as set within a specific context (for example, 'If people worked hard at their jobs, they would reap the full benefits of our society' (Christie et al., 1968». However, the use of propositional statements has been criticized as being inadequate on the basis that the initial emotional response of the subject would be tempered by consideration of the qualifications and justification posed in the statement (Wilson and Patterson, 1968). It has been suggested that this form of statement hinders the respondent because they feel committed to providing a rational and considered judgement.
