The Army-McCarthy Hearings and the Public Conscience

Abstract

A small sample study of attitudes toward the Army-McCarthy hearings reveals some surprises about the value judgments of housewives and storekeepers in two geographically separate American communities. Interviewers did not find the expected reaffirmation of civil rights values as a result of the hearings. The responses they did obtain revealed other value themes which the author has extracted and traced to the formation of the superego in childhood. He then considers the implications of his conclusions for the inculcation of civil rights values and related political ideology.