The authoritarian personality , 1950 , 1973 , 2008

Whitten (1976) employed the California F-scale to assess authoritarian attitudes in 1950 and in 1973. He was also able to draw some conclusions about the changes between attitudes found in 1950 and those of 1973. He explained the changes as an evolution of patterns in social phenomena. The study replicates the Whitten (1976) study utilizing the same survey methodology. This paper employs comparative analyses across the 1950, 1973 and 2008 data to draw inferences about the current attitudes based on the California F-scale. The paper reports that young adults in the most recent period are more authoritarian than the 1973 group, and are even more authoritarian than the 1950 group. There was no significant differences between men and women in terms of authoritarian personality factors. High academic performance (a proxy for intelligence) is associated with lower authoritarian tendencies.