The empirical study of psychological structure of bureaucratization by the masses

The present study aimed to examine the psychological structure of a critical attitude against governmental bureaucracy in Japan on the basis of Ortega's concept of the "masses" and Weber's concept of the "bureaucracy". A questionnaire survey (n = 400) was conducted using several measurements such as the vulgarity scale, which was constituted of the two subscales, i.e. arrogance and autistic, to measure the psychological personality of the masses, the tendency of overweighting formality in ambiguous situation to measure a bureaucratic attitude, and measurements regarding political and social bureaucratization. The result showed that the vulgarity scale and tendency of overweighting formality in ambiguous situation had a positive association, which implied that the higher the vulgarity of an individual is, the more the individual tends to adopt an attitude like a petty official. It was also shown that the arrogance factor was positively related with an attitude supporting a petty bureaucrat, while the autistic factor was negatively related with an attitude supporting a political bureaucrat. Furthermore, the arrogance factor was shown generally to have positive relationships with attitudes towards social bureaucratization. Finally, given the present results, measures to reduce the negative impacts of bureaucratization by the masses were discussed.