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August 25, 2003

AUTHORITARIANISM, DOMINANCE AND ASSERTIVENESS

Summary:

It is shown that there are definitions of the three constructs of authoritarianism, dominance and assertiveness which read very similarly; so much so that no distinction is immediately evident. It is proposed that authoritarianism might be conceived as aggressive dominance, and at least some types of assertiveness as non-aggressive dominance. A new scale of Dominance suitable for general population use was produced and compared with the existing Ray ( 1976) behavior inventory of authoritarianism. Both scales showed highly significant correlations with peer-rated dominance and submission (the latter being negative in sign) but only the authoritarianism scale showed significant correlations with rated aggressiveness and rigidity. It was concluded that the new definitions could be operationalized into valid scales.

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August 24, 2003

IS THE NED KELLY SYNDROME DEAD? - SOME AUSTRALIAN DATA ON ATTITUDES TO SHOPLIFTING

Summary

To a sample of 54 club members, 32 shop assistants, 36 schoolboys and 43 Lebanese immigrants was administered a set of 32 questions concerning attitudes to shoplifting and the Ray (1974) Alienation scale. There were no significant differences on mean attitude to shoplifting among the four groups and all groups overall were strongly disapproving of shoplifting. On two groups there was a significant correlation between alienation and acceptance of shoplifting. The 32 attitude to shoplifting items were shown to form a scale of satisfactory reliability

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August 23, 2003

IS THE ACQUIESCENT RESPONSE STYLE NOT SO MYTHICAL AFTER ALL? Some Results From a Successful Balanced F Scale

Summary:

It is shown that Rorer's exoneration of the F scale from acquiescent response style contamination is dependent on the finding that various acquiescence measures fail to intercorrelate. When acquiescence is measured as the total score on adequate balanced scales scored without reversals, significant internal reliability is found. It is found, in fact, even with scales that are not particularly ambiguous. It is concluded that some scales are not responded to meaningfully by some people and if these people are not to be confounded with real high scorers, balancing against acquiescence is still needed.

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August 22, 2003

AUTHORITARIANISM, CONSERVATISM AND RACISM

Excerpts:

Our understanding of the phenomena of racial discrimination has been considerably influenced by Sumner's concept of 'ethnocentrism' -- the idea that some people value the characteristics and ways of their own group excessively highly and therefore tend to devalue and scorn those who do not share such characteristics and folkways. Racial prejudice is seen as the other side of the coin of ethnic chauvinism.....

Nonetheless, with both Australian and British research now showing attitude to blacks and patriotism to be unrelated it must be stressed that the concept of 'ethnocentrism' is seriously called into question. If thinking well of one's own society does not imply thinking ill of outgroups, the many extant scales which purport to measure ethnocentrism may be measuring an entirely artificial construct.

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August 20, 2003

DISSECTING THE A-B PERSONALITY TYPE

Summary

It is suggested that 'freneticism' might be an appropriate name for the type of personality said by Rosenman, Friedman and Jenkins to be at risk from coronary heart disease. In study 1 the measure of this personality type (the JAS) was given a uniform answer format and, as such, was found to give improved reliability. It was administered to a random postal sample of Australians. A short form of 24 items was also produced. In study 2 a similar sample received the 24-item form and scales to measure achievement motivation, dominance and extraversion. 'A' types were found to be very much achievement motivated and dominant. A factor analysis showed these two traits as the main components of the A-B concept with only a third factor of 'freneticism'. This factor was measured in a third study which showed that the factor could be used as a scale in its own right.

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August 18, 2003

ARE SCOTTISH NATIONALISTS AUTHORITARIAN AND CONSERVATIVE?

Summary

The psychology of Scottish Nationalism has been little explored. Using a mainly student sample, Britton (1971) showed S.N.P. voters to be low on authoritarianism where theory would predict them to be high. The Ray (1976) Directiveness scale and 10 items from the Wilson (1973a) conservatism scale were applied to 100 randomly sampled Glaswegians. The S.N.P. voters were neither authoritarian nor conservative. The S.N.P. was identified as being supported by voters of the political centre.

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August 15, 2003

DOGMATISM IN RELATION TO SUB-TYPES OF CONSERVATISM: Some Australian data

Summary

An examination of the relation between authoritarianism and conservatism is made using newly developed balanced forms of the 'D' and 'F' scales together with scales to measure political, social, moral and economic conservatism. Neither 'BD' nor 'BF scales predicted voting preference. The 'BD' scale was significantly positively related to the political, social and moral conservatism scales but was non-significantly negatively related to economic conservatism. It was concluded that both the 'BD' and 'BF scales are equally good measures of general authoritarianism among supporters of Australian political parties and that while it is in general true that dogmatic people tend to be ideologically conservative, an exception must be made for economic conservatism. This exception is seen to be inferable from the theory of 'working class authoritarianism' advanced by Lipset (1960).

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August 14, 2003

DETERMINANTS OF RACIAL ATTITUDES

Excerpts

Not only has Britain now virtually closed its doors against coloured immigration; it also seems committed to a further tightening up on the remaining loopholes. This is a bipartisan trend but one in which the Conservatives seem a little more enthusiastic. It is also clear that such measures do enjoy considerable popular support.... There is still no solid consensus among social scientists about the causes of the racial prejudice which demands such restrictive policies. The traditional explanation that racism is some brand of irrationality or psychological maladjustment (see Adorno et al., 1950) now seems a little suspect in view of the wide support that is enjoyed by policies designed to exclude coloured immigration. If psychological abnormality underlies racial prejudice, it must be abnormality sufficiently paradoxical for it to be shared by most of the population.....

In neither London nor Glasgow was there found to be any connection between political party preference and attitude to coloured immigration.....

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August 13, 2003

AUTHORITARIANISM OF THE LEFT REVISITED

Summary

Eysenck and Shils observed that in political life authoritarianism seems roughly equally likely on the political Left and Right. There have however been difficulties in measuring authoritarianism of the Left. The Ray Humanistic Radicalism (HR) scale expresses classically liberal and humanist sentiments and yet has shown high positive correlations with the Adorno Fascism (F) and Dogmatism (D) scales. It appears to show that liberalism can be Fascist. The correlations could however be an acquiescence artefact. The HR Scale was therefore administered to a random sample of 99 Australians together with a balanced F scale (BF scale). Scores on the BF scale did thus have acquiescence experimentally controlled against. The positive F-scale items were again found to correlate positively with the HR scale but the BF scale as a whole showed no significant correlation. As Eysenck predicted then, social attitudes were found to be two-dimensional, with liberalism orthogonal to authoritarianism rather than opposed to it. It was quite possible for people to accept the liberal sentiments of the HR scale and the aggressive sentiments of the F scale simultaneously.

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August 11, 2003

IS THE INFLUENCE OF ACQUIESCENCE ON "CATCHPHRASE" TYPE ATTITUDE SCALE ITEMS NOT SO MYTHICAL AFTER ALL?

Summary

It is argued that the inherent ambiguity of the one-word items in the Wilson C-scale might make them particularly subject to acquiescent responding. When administered in classroom settings there is already some evidence that the Wilson scale is so affected. In a study of 110 Australian Army conscripts, the Wilson scale was found to show a correlation between its radical and conservative items of only -.199. Scored without reversals, it made an acquiescence scale with a reliability of .61. In a second study with 126 Australian Army officers, a revised C-scale was used but the equivalent statistics were still -.226 and .60. It is concluded that the Wilson scale may be valid and acquiescence-free only when personal help is given with the answering of each item.

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August 10, 2003

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN: Some Australian data

Summary

An attempt is made to find out what psychological traits (if any) are characteristic of the environmentalism supporter in the community at large. In an Australia-wide mail survey, 'environmentalists' were found to be consumer-conscious, anti-authoritarian, anti-Australia, less interested in personal 'success', anti-fashion, counter-culturally oriented and hedonistic. All except the first were however very weak tendencies. They were found to be equally likely to go either way on social conservatism, economic conservatism, sociability and misanthropy.

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August 9, 2003

BALANCED DOGMATISM SCALES

Summary

Balancing of one-way worded scales such as the D scale has been sought by several authors. So far only the Ray (1970) BD scale has appeared successful. It is here examined whether the 1970 success can be replicated and also whether a new scale can be produced which will be suitable for use with community samples -- not only with students. The suitability of the 1970 "Mark I" version of the BD scale for use with students was confirmed and a new "Mark II" BD scale was produced which was suitable for general use. An attempt to construct an eclectic scale using the best items of Mark I and Mark II was not successful

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August 8, 2003

THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE POLITICAL LEFT

Excerpts:

One of the more distressing consequences of the characteristic ideological polarization among social scientists is that the entire discipline seems to have suffered an almost total inability to see that there are many psychopathological syndromes on the Left too....... it may be that I am one of the few who can do something to help rectify the strange selective blindness that seems to have characterized psychology since the Second World War ....... Why has the search for psychological authoritarianism on the Left proved so difficult? Perhaps the most obvious reason is that authoritarianism has usually been defined in ways that make it virtually synonymous with conservatism ........ So what we have on the part of the extreme Left is a complete opposition between attitude and behavior. The claimed attitudes are kindly but the governments they create are almost terminally brutal....... If we do as the law courts do and infer people's real motives from their behaviour, we have to say that extreme Leftists are people with the most brutal and tyrannical real motives which they are totally incapable of acknowledging even to themselves. Their total success at denial of unsavoury motives would surely in Freudian terms be psychopathology of the most serious and tragic sort. Whether we call it hypocrisy, self-deception or Freudian denial really matters very little....... To be an extreme Leftist is to be totally unable to acknowledge one's own real motives. Extreme Leftists are people who hide the most dismal motivations behind the cloak of good intentions.

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August 5, 2003

A NEW BALANCED F SCALE, and Its Relation to Social Class

Summary

A balanced F scale using only items which are versions of originals has been produced. It was normed on a heterogenous sample and the correlations between its positive and negative halves range from -.71 to -.53. Reliabilities range from .87 to .83. Validity coefficients range from .65 to .26. Using this scale, a test of Lipset's "working class authoritarianism" thesis shows that high authoritarianism is related to membership in manual occupations but is not related to subjective social class.

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August 4, 2003

AUTHORITARIANISM, RACISM AND ANARCHOCAPITALISM: A Rejoinder to Eckhardt

Summary

In his critique of my paper Eckhardt correctly identifies me as an anarchocapitalist but assumes that I vote conservative. I, in fact, vote for nobody. Eckhardt goes on to mention a number of studies which in his view support the authoritarian personality theory of Adorno et al. (1950). I systematically examine each such study and show why it is inadequate to the task Eckhardt asks of it. Problems in defining "conservatism" are then examined.

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August 3, 2003

ARE CONSERVATISM SCALES IRREVERSIBLE?

Summary

It is proposed that the low negative correlation observed between positive and negative halves of balanced F scales is not atypical of scales in this general content area. An extreme form of this view is Kerlinger's theory that liberalism and conservatism are innately orthogonal. This theory was tested using two conservatism scales: one a revision of Wilson & Patterson's C Scale and one a scale using items in the conventional format. Low negative correlations between positive and negative halves were found in both cases. It was reasoned that orthogonality between one-way worded scales indicates a negative relationship in the real attitudes being measured. Kerlinger's theory is therefore rejected as inadequate and as contra-indicated by the results. It is concluded, however, that some balanced versions of the California F Scale may have been too hastily rejected. Conversely, it is held that the Wilson & Patterson C Scale might be rejected in favour of one of the new conservatism scales developed in this study. This is because the original C Scale showed a positive correlation between its supposedly negative and positive halves.

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August 2, 2003

WHY THE F SCALE PREDICTS RACISM: A Critical Review

Summary

This paper points out the paradox that although there is now a considerable accumulation of evidence against almost every single aspect of authoritarian personality theory, the F scale still continues to predict racism - even after the methodological criticisms of the original work by Adorno, et al. (1950) are allowed for. Aspects of the F scale that might be involved in this prediction are considered. Major themes in the F scale are identified as insecurity, authoritarian submission, general intolerance, and old-fashioned outlook. Reasons are given for attributing the correlation with racism entirely to the old-fashioned nature of the F scale items. It is shown that authoritarians are not racists.

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August 1, 2003

CAPITALISM AND COMPASSION: a test of Milbrath's environmental theory

Summary

From his observations of environmentalists Milbrath extracts the generalization that there is something inimical between capitalism and compassion. This was tested by applying scales of altruistic compassion and materialistic achievement motivation to supporters of three political parties in Queensland, Australia: a Leftist party, a moderate Conservative party and a Rightist party much given to advocating capitalism. Voters for the Rightist and Leftist parties showed a difference in compassion of only borderline significance. It is concluded that there are many roads to compassion, capitalism not excepted.

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July 31, 2003

HALF OF ALL AUTHORITARIANS ARE LEFT-WING: A Reply to Eysenck and Stone

Summary

Evidence is summarized to show that: (1) if authoritarianism is measured by a behavior inventory, it is uncorrelated with either political party vote or ideology; (2) if measured by the California F scale, it shows little if any correlation with vote; and (3) scales of leftist political sentiment can be constructed which have high positive correlation with the F scale. As voting is arguably the most important political behavior for most people in a democracy, the roughly 50% of high Fscale scorers who vote leftist are proposed as the long-lost authoritarians of the left.

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July 30, 2003

COGNITIVE STYLE as a Predictor of Authoritarianism, Conservatism, and Racism: A Fantasy in Many Movements

Summary

Research in the 1950s and 1960s failed to show the expected relationship between cognitive complexity and authoritarianism/conservatism. Cognitive complexity/ rigidity was found to be highly multidimensional rather than unidimensional. Recent work in the field is reviewed with similar conclusions but two dissenting voices are noted: Rump and Sidanius. Close examination of the work by these authors does, however, show that their data provide poor support for that dissent. It is concluded that intolerance of ambiguity/rigidity is best conceived of as a situational response rather than as a trait and that it does not in any case predict conservatism, authoritarianism or racism.

The prominent Nazi psychologist Jaensch (1938) appears to have originated the theory that variables from the psychology of perception have an important bearing on personality. To him there was an ideal Nazi personality or "type" which was characterized by precise and orderly perceptual abilities. The attractiveness of such theories to psychologists can be perhaps gauged by the fact that the Jaensch theory was taken over substantially unchanged by a group of postwar psychologists ....

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July 28, 2003

REVIVING THE PROBLEM OF ACQUIESCENT RESPONSE BIAS

Summary

Rorer's claim that meaningless acquiescence to attitude and personality scale items does not generalize and hence cannot be a source of artifactual relationships is critically examined. Rorer excepts ambiguous scales from his own generalizations without providing or suggesting any test to tell which scales are ambiguous to a problematical degree; thus his generalizations are of unknown applicability. Three studies are reported in which balanced scales are scored for acquiescence only -- i.e., scored without any reverse-scoring. Many high correlations between such scores were found -- in direct contradiction of the findings used by Rorer. Correlations between acquiescence scores derived from balanced attitude scales and balanced personality scales were, however, generally low. It is concluded that meaningless acquiescence may be evinced by respondents to any scale if they find its items ambiguous and that such acquiescence will generalize from scale to scale. Meaningless acquiescence could then create many spurious relationships between unbalanced scales.

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July 25, 2003

THE PUNITIVE PERSONALITY



Summary

Little support exists for the claim by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950) that punitiveness is associated with authoritarianism. A balanced 12-item Likert scale of punitiveness toward criminals was composed and tested on a random postal sample of 128 Australians. It showed a reliability (alpha) of .78 and was found to predict strict rather than permissive views on child rearing. It did not predict Machiavellianism, psychopathy, satisfaction with personal relationships, or social desirability responding. The findings indicate both convergent and discriminant validity and tend to undermine the view of punitiveness as psychopathological. On a second random doorstep sample of 113 Australians, the scale had a reliability of .83 and showed a highly significant tendency to be correlated with length of sentence thought appropriate for particular crimes. Again, it did not correlate with a measure of psychopathology (trait anxiety). Mean scores in both samples indicated more punitive than impunitive responses. Punitiveness, therefore, was normal rather than psychopathological, but punitiveness itself may be multidimensional.

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July 23, 2003

THE CATTELLIAN METHOD OF PREDICTING CHILD PERSONALITY

Summary:

A close reading of papers by Barton, Dielman, and Cattell suggests that supposed relationships reported between parental attitudes and child personality may have been less significant than at first appears. They may have been nothing more than the occasional large correlation that is to be expected in any large matrix of correlations by chance alone. A partial replication of the Barton, Dielman, and Cattell work was carried out by using two samples of 328 girls and their mothers and 327 boys and their mothers reached through schools of rural Punjab. Results very similar to those reported earlier were found -- confirming suspicions that non-significant results had previously been reported as significant

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July 22, 2003

THE GREAT ANDROGYNY MYTH: Sex Roles and Mental Health in the Community at Large

Summary

Previous research on androgyny has focused heavily on college-student populations and has used measuring instruments open to several methodological criticisms. The present research used a random postal sample (N = 214) of an entire state and a modified form of a new sex role inventory by Antill, Cunningham, Russell, and Thompson (1981). The modifications were designed to control against acquiescent response bias. Only a minority of the items discriminated the male and female respondents, making scale construction difficult. Two 12-item inventories of male and female orientation were produced but without balancing against acquiescence. Femininity was found to correlate strongly with neuroticism, lack of assertiveness, and lack of self-esteem. Masculine orientation, however, also went with low self-esteem and low assertiveness. It was concluded that the best mental health was shown by undifferentiated respondents (those who tended to say that sexually polarized self-descriptions were inapplicable to them). Those who were androgynous were generally low scorers on the three indices of mental health

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July 18, 2003

ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION AS A SOURCE OF RACISM, CONSERVATISM, AND AUTHORITARIANISM

Summary:

In a random general population sample (N = 100) of Sydney, Australia, scales to measure three attributes commonly seen as associated in the authoritarianism literature (Directiveness, Conservatism, and Ethnocentrism) were correlated with a scale of materialistic achievement orientation. Conservatives were found to be neither more authoritarian (directive) nor more "greedy" (achievement oriented) than liberals but were slightly more likely to be ethnocentric (r = .26). Achievement orientation predicted Directiveness (.41) and Ethnocentrism (.27). It was concluded that achievement motivation may be responsible for many instances of authoritarian behavior and that some ethnocentrism is an outcome of economic competition

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July 16, 2003

A Quick Measure of Achievement Motivation - Validated in Australia and Reliable in Britain and South Africa

Summary

A 14 item short form of the Ray Achievement Motivation scale was developed. When tested on seven samples from Sydney, London, Glasgow and Johannesburg it showed reliabilities of over .70 when applied to English speakers. It is also balanced against acquiescent response set and has validities well comparable with other longer scales. General population norms obtained in the four countries revealed the English, Scots and Australians to have similar levels of achievement motivation with South Africans significantly higher. The scale would appear to be unlike previous scales in that it was developed on general population rather than student samples

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July 15, 2003

EFFECTS OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ON PRODUCTIVITY AMONG FARMERS IN INDIA

Summary:

Previous findings by authors such as Sandhu and Allen and Sutcliff have been held to suggest that individual differences do not play an important role in explaining why some third world farmers increase their productivity and some do not. The present study of 200 Punjab farmers obtained measures of four demographic variables and 21 psychological variables, 11 of which predicted degree of output improvement over a five-year. period. The major ones were TAT achievement motivation, nonverbal intelligence, career interest, and self-sentiment. Of the four demographic variables, size of landholding was a weak predictor, but age, education, and social status, did not predict at all.

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July 13, 2003

DOES AUTHORITARIANISM OF PERSONALITY GO WITH CONSERVATISM?

Summary:

Existing scales of authoritarianism are generally lacking in validity. Their correlations with conservatism are therefore uninformative. A new scale of authoritarianism in personality scale format has been devised and shown to be valid. Various correlates of this scale in Australia suggest that it is not related to conservatism. Two general population studies in England and Scotland found that there were no correlations between the new scale and various conservatism attitude items. It was concluded that authoritarianism of personality is equally likely to be found on either side of the political divide even if admiration of traditional authority is generally associated with conservatism only

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July 12, 2003

THE AUTHORITARIAN AS MEASURED BY A PERSONALITY SCALE: SOLID CITIZEN OR MISFIT?

Summary

A quota sample (N = 87) in Sydney, Australia, received the Ray "Directiveness" scale -- a scale of authoritarianism in behavior inventory format -- together with other measures of important social science constructs. Authoritarians were found not to be older, not to be more likely to be males, not to be more likely to be manual workers, not to be less well educated, not to be more likely to vote conservative, not to be more neurotic, and not to be more dogmatic. Instead, they were internally controlled, achievement motivated, and unalienated. These differences from the normal concept of the authoritarian were held to be explainable by the previously demonstrated greater behavioral validity of a personality scale approach to measurement of authoritarianism

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July 11, 2003

LIBERTARIANS AND THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY

Excerpt:

Since any party's economic policies are a very salient part of its image and since free market policies in general tend to be associated with the political Right, the finding that libertarians advocate extreme market freedom seems to justify an assumption that they are extremely right-wing.

In these circumstances, any proof that libertarians can offer to show that libertarianism is not right-wing must be seen as very welcome. There is in the social science literature a very large body of such proof. This paper will review some of it. A reason why the proof might not be well-known to many libertarians is that it goes under the label of the antonym to libertarianism"authoritarianism".

What the literature shows, then, is ...

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July 10, 2003

IS THE DOGMATISM SCALE IRREVERSIBLE?

Summary

A review of various attempts to produce balanced versions of the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale ('D' scale) shows that the highest positive-negative correlation obtained on a general population sample was -0.32. This was obtained with the Ray (1974a) 'BD' Scale Mark II. An attempt to improve on this figure was made by administering only the best eight items of this scale to a community sample of 87 Sydney people. The positive-negative correlation obtained was -0.37. It was pointed out that Rorer's (1965) work showed only that there was no such thing as a general tendency to acquiesce. It did not rule out acquiescence as a response to ambiguity (Peabody 1966). Balanced scales are therefore still necessary. It was concluded that the 'D' Scale may be inherently and unacceptably ambiguous.

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July 7, 2003

THE BEHAVIORAL VALIDITY OF SOME RECENT MEASURES OF AUTHORITARIANISM

Summary

The Rigby and Rump attitude to authority scale, the Hogan symbolic authoritarianism measure, the Ray Directiveness scale, and a balanced F scale were administered to a group of people selected and rated by students. An achievement motivation scale was also included because of recent findings suggesting that achievement motivation may be one source of authoritarian behavior. The responses of the 82 Ss showed the five scales as adequate in reliability. The composition of the sample was representative by basic demographic criteria. Ratings of 11 attributes important in the authoritarianism literature were gathered for each S. The highest correlation with rated overall authoritarian behavior was recorded for the achievement motivation scale followed closely by the Ray Directiveness scale. Equivalent correlations for the other three scales were nonsignificant. It was concluded that future research into authoritarianism should restrict itself to the use of behavior inventories as measuring instruments.

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July 6, 2003

ATTITUDE TO AUTHORITY AND AUTHORITARIANISM AMONG SCHOOLCHILDREN

Summary:

Two scales were devised to measure not only attitude to authority but also rebellious or submissive behavior tendency among schoolchildren in Grades 7 to 11. Each of the two scales also had two subscales concerning teachers and parents. High (.86 and .84) reliabilities were demonstrated on a sample of 120 pupils drawn from several schools in the Wollongong area of Australia. Contrary to findings among adults, attitude and behavior among children were found to be highly correlated (.65).

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July 4, 2003

DO AUTHORITARIANS HOLD AUTHORITARIAN ATTITUDES?

Summary and excerpt

It is pointed out that there is little evidence that authoritarian attitudes and authoritarian behavior are associated. An attempt is made to construct a new scale which will predict authoritarian behavior. Against a peer-rating validity criterion, the new scale (in behavior inventory format) correlated .54, compared to a correlation with the same criterion by an attitude scale of .19.

Where the present study would appear to differ from previous ones is in its failure to-accept the orthodoxy that the much flawed "California F scale" is a valid measure of authoritarianism. Once this view is cast off, the way is opened to a whole new view of the field....

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July 3, 2003

HALF OF ALL RACISTS ARE LEFT-WING

Summary:

Although right-wing authoritarian attitudes as measured by the F scale always predict racism (E), this could be due to any one of several components built into the scale by its authors. Another scale designed to measure much the same thing (the "A" scale) has been found in a sample of army conscripts, not to predict ethnocentrism. It was therefore readministered to a random Australian sample or 99 Sydney people together with a derivative scale (the "AA" scale), a balanced F scale, and an E scale. The "A" scale showed psychometric weaknesses, but, when revised to eliminate these, again failed to predict E. The balanced F scale correlated 0.48 with E. Political party preference (vote) did not predict E. On both behavioral (vote) and attitudinal ("A"-scale) criteria, then, it was concluded that both anti-authoritarian leftists and pro-authoritarian rightists are equally likely to be racists.

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July 1, 2003

WHITE SOUTH AFRICAN'S VIEWS OF BLACKS

Excerpts:

It is very clear that the rest of the world would expect South Africans to be extremely racist - the realities of Apartheid are well-known. What is missing, however, is actual details of how they do see blacks. In what way do they think that blacks are different? There is now some evidence that the attitudes of white South Africans have undergone a vast change in recent years (2).

We see then some rather surprising things in the distribution of answers given: Everybody knows that the meaning of the Afrikaans word apartheid is "apartness" or "separate development", yet 65% of our South Africans disagreed with the proposition that the blacks should be kept separate. Only 22% agreed. The "Noes" outnumbered the "Yeses" 3 to 1! Since half of all South Africa's blacks live in "white" areas anyhow (5), this result would, however, only be surprising to a non-South-African.

Other surprises are the overwhelming support for black education (Q. 3), the predominant support for reforms in the Apartheid policy (Q. 1), the overwhelming belief in the fitness of blacks for clerical work (Q. 4), the overwhelming belief that blacks are good workers (Q. 10), the emphatic rejection of blacks being ugly (Q. 13) and the large majority believing that whites could learn from the blacks (Q. 14).

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June 30, 2003

AMBITION AND DOMINANCE AMONG THE PARSEES OF INDIA

Summary

The Parsees are Indians descended from Zoroastrian refugees who fled Persia at the time of the Moslem conquest. They are highly Westernized and economically very successful. A sample of the Bombay Parsee community answered a questionnaire which included scales of achievement motivation, authoritarianism, neuroticism, and social desirability. The same scales had previously been administered to a random sample of the whole of Bombay and a sample of Bombay residents with college education. Various international comparisons were also available. When compared with other Indians, Parsees were found to be low on achievement motivation and high on interpersonal authoritarianism. The previous sample showing a level of achievement motivation nearest to that of the Parsees was a sample of Los Angelenos. The results were consistent with previous findings showing that --contrary to McClelland's thesis -- economic success is associated more with dominance than with ambition.

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June, 28, 2003

AUTHORITARIANISM AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION IN INDIA

Summary:

Indian psychologists have shown considerable interest in the applicability of the two constructs of authoritarianism and achievement motivation to their society. General population sampling has, however, been lacking in the research to date. In the present study, scales to measure authoritarianism, achievement motivation, neuroticism, and social desirability were administered to a random cluster sample of 305 people in Bombay. Authoritarianism was measured by the Ray "Directiveness" scale rather than by the F scale. Indian respondents were found to be more submissive and more ambitious than respondents in comparable previous samples gathered in Australia, Scotland, and England. Authoritarianism correlated slightly with neuroticism and social desirability but motivation did not. After some deletions of inappropriate items, all scales showed satisfactory internal reliability. Both authoritarianism and achievement motivation therefore may be important constructs to be employed in understanding India today

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