PURPOSEData have been published that describe body attitudes and perceptions among various clinical and "normal" l o ) . This line of research also has been extended into the area of attitudes toward body-products. Based upon Kubie'sc') theoretical formulation of a universal hierarchy of dirt, several experiments (3. 6 , have supported the concept of a universal hierarchy of negative attitudes toward such body products as saliva, feces, semen, vomit, human milk, etc. All these studies have been concerned with establishment of the existence of this hierarchy and elucidation of its structure. No data have been presented with regard to individual differences in attitudes toward body-products. There are, however, some clinical psychiatric reports 9 ) that suggest that fantasies of destruction and mutilation often are attributed to such body products as feces by psychotics. Additionally, Klein has reported the occurrence of alien and destructive fantasies about body products among disturbed children.This study investigated the generalizability of a universal hierarchy of dirt to clinical groups and examined individual differences in attitudes toward body products.
METHODSs were 25 hospitalized schizophrenics, 25 hospitalized paraplegic patients, and 25 normals. Each schizophrenic was judged free of organic brain damage by the hospital staff and had been hospitalized for two or more years (&I = 6.7). The mean age of this group was 44.8 years, with a mean educational level of 10.9 years. The paraplegic Ss were considered free of psychiatric involvement, had a mean length of hospitalization of 4.4 years, had the same educational level as the schizophrenics, and were somewhat younger (A4 age = 35.8). The normals had a mean age of 43 years and averaged 12 years of education. They were volunteers solicited from a local businessmen's club. Each S was individually administered a semantic differential. S's task was t o rate each of 21 body-product concepts along nine bi-polar 7-point scales that sample Osgood's three major attitude dimensions.The nine scales were chosen for the purity of their factor loadings on each of the three major attitudinal dimensions and on the basis of their relative freedom from denotative association with the concepts that were being rated. The poles of the adjectival scales and the position of the dimensions were counterbalanced systematically.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONThe intercorrelations among the three attitude dimensions and the variance of each made it impossible to use a single summary score, as had been used in some previous studies. Furthermore, factor analysis of the semantic differential ratings suggested that more than one factor was required t o account for most of the communal variance.Examination of the responses of the three groups on the evaluation, potency and activity dimensions indicated no significant group differences, which suggests further support for Kubie's ( 4 ) postulation of a universal hierarchy sf dirt.The scaling behavior of each sample was highly consistent. Each group...