Conservative Attitudes and Authoritarian Values

Summary

The aim of the study was to determine the structure and dimensionality of social-political attitudes. Also investigated was the hypothesis that the liberal vs. conservative attitude dimension was synonymous with the value dimension rule free vs. authoritarian. An attitude measure consisting of simply stated social-political issues and a personal values inventory were administered to a varied sample of 300 men and women. Analysis of the attitude items disclosed three factors—Liberal vs. Conservative, Freedom of Sex Expression, and Equalitarianism—whose intercorrelations indicated a common dimension of conservatism. The cross-correlations in both the male and female samples support the hypothesis that conservative attitudes and authoritarian values were essentially identical constructs. Groups ranked by conservativism and groups ranked as to age increased significantly in mean conservativism score as anticipated.