Gender Differences and Academic Performance in Authoritarian Personality, Slides of Printing

Download Gender Differences and Academic Performance in Authoritarian Personality and more Slides Printing in PDF only on Docsity! SC15033 The authoritarian personality, 1950, 1973, 2008 Mina Lee Xavier University James Turner Xavier University Harish Gopalan HCL Technologies, India ABSTRACT 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. Keywords: Authoritarian Personality, Fascism SC15033 INTRODUCTION Norman Whitten, Sr. completed a survey assessing authoritarian attitudes among college-age people in the U.S. in 1950. His survey was in response to the publication of The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno, Frankel-Brunswick, Levinson, and Sanford (1950), attempting to better understand the underpinnings of fascism’s emergence pre WWII. Whitten replicated his survey in 1973 in order to update the attitudinal findings post-Kent State. Because of the events at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, which were highly publicized, the authors decided to conduct yet another replication of the Authoritarian Attitude survey among young adults to track changes in authoritarian attitudes. The authors also wanted to follow the replication by relating additional personality constructs to the dimensions of authoritarianism. Whitten’s gap between 1950 and 1973 was 23 years -- a generation. The present replication and expanded data span approximately another generation. Therefore, this survey is approximately one more generation removed from the original survey. In addition, this paper also examined the roles of age, gender, and GPA with respect to authoritarian personalities. This paper investigated the following research questions: 1. Is the current generation of young adults more authoritarian than the 1950 and 1973 groups? 2. Are men more authoritarian than women? 3. Is academic performance (intelligence) associated with an authoritarian personality? 4. Are the authoritarian submission and authoritarian aggression related differently to intelligence? METHOD Participants The authors administered the Whitten survey to 377 undergraduate students from two Midwestern U.S. universities enrolled in management classes. These 377 students answered the Whitten survey; however, for research purposes, the authors administered the survey twice. Whitten’s survey results were based on a 4-point Likert response set. However, because the authors also wanted to place the constructs of authoritarianism within a broader study of personality constructs, the authors administered the survey a second time utilizing a 7-point Likert response set. Employing a 7-point scale introduced more variation, which should produce a clearer picture of the relationship of authoritarianism to other personality constructs (that were also captured using a 7-point response set). Among 377 students, only 355 students reported their gender (216 men, 139 women). The sample in this paper to compare with the 1950 and 1973 groups was 377 students. However, to test differences in the authoritarian personalities between genders, the authors used the sample of SC15033 does not reveal a consistent relationship between gender and authoritarianism. The results do little to clarify a gender distinction. Third, in the study, better academic performance is positively associated with lower authoritarianism. Previous studies also report that high intelligence is negatively associated with F-scale scores (Smith, Murphy, and Wheeler, 1964). The results confirm this finding. Lastly, academic performance, the proxy for intelligence, is negatively associated with authoritarian submission, but not with authoritarian aggression. It implies that people with higher intelligence are less likely to show the character of authoritarian submission. All of these findings were clearer when the authors used the 7-point versus the 4-point Likert scale. It is important to note that the second and third findings show that gender differences in authoritarian personalities and the association of intelligence with the authoritarian personality are consistent with previous findings, even with the updated survey. However, authoritarian personalities in the U.S. have changed over different generations, indicating that this generation is more authoritarian than the previous two generations. CONTEXT In 1950, as Adorno et al. published their work on the authoritarian personality, (which included the California F-scale), the world had already entered a cold war; the Soviets tested their own nuclear device in 1949. The fear of a nuclear exchange was growing. Many families built fallout shelters in order to survive a nuclear war. Cities appointed civil defense wardens and identified buildings and natural structures that could serve as shelters during and after a nuclear exchange. These shelters were provisioned and drills were conducted to practice for the unthinkable. The 1960s were filled with civil rights protests (Graham, 1992). During this period, it became more and more acceptable to collectively oppose unjust laws and norms (Anderson, 1996). Anti- authoritarian sit-ins, boycotts, and protests filled the decade—culminating in riots in many American cities. Opposition to the Vietnam War also developed an anti-authoritarian component. In 1973, the U.S. was divided over the Vietnam War. Even as the war was ending, young people in the country (potential draftees) were protesting it, especially on college campuses. This anti-authoritarian mood led to violent protests on many college campuses—occupying campus buildings, demanding concessions, even destroying property. On May 4, 1970, the campus of Kent State University (OH) was wracked by such a protest (President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, 1970). The Ohio National Guard was sent to the campus to restore order. In their confrontation with students, National Guardsmen fired on unarmed student protesters, killing four students. Two more students were killed at Jackson State University in a similar protest two weeks later (Spoff, 1988). On September 11, 2001, fear was again introduced into the collective psyche of the U.S. public (Faludi, 2007: 288). With the destruction of the World Trade Center, the U.S. was engaged in a new enemy—Muslim terrorists (Engle, 2004). In 2014, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reported that the Central Intelligence Agency had been withholding details of the severity of “enhanced interrogation” techniques. (Miller, SC15033 Goldman, and Nakashima, March 31, 2014). In 2004, it was disclosed that prisoners were tortured and humiliated at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq (Lewis, Lichtblau, and Fleck, 2004). At Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the U.S. public further discovered in 2005 that two innocent prisoners were systematically beaten to death over a period of several days (Grisham, August 11 2013). These examples show how aggressively the U.S. has acted in response to September 11th. Perhaps even more revealing than these events has been the U.S. public’s reaction to them. Acts that have been identified by treaty as torture (e.g., water boarding) have been the subject of debate with a large segment of the citizenry and media willing to accept these acts as morally consistent with the collective ethic (Ignatius, December 13 2012). It should be apparent that this is the issue Adorno et al. (1950), set out to address. Viewing the atrocities of Nazi Germany, how do the authors understand these acts occurring in a civilized, developed society? Even more, how can others, not prone to extreme behavior, accept, condone, and ignore such behavior? The authoritarian personality and its dimensions examine the attitudes that may help answer such questions. Placing the Whitten surveys (1950 and 1973) and the replication (2008) into this context can perhaps make the results more meaningful. Understanding the context allows one to see that the societal level of fear may predispose one to engage in or accept the behaviors of others who are acting to fend off a threat. In 1950, Whitten examined authoritarianism using the California F-scale. The context that triggered his initial study included the August 29, 1949, explosion of a nuclear warhead by the Soviet Union, the Berlin blockade (1948-1949), and the publication of the Adorno et al. (1950) instrument to measure authoritarian attitudes. Whitten’s 1973 replication was a response to the Kent State and Jackson State killings, where young men (approximately the same age as that of the protesters) fired into groups of unarmed protesting students, very much akin to Milgram’s (1969) subjects, who made an impact on a confederate learner on command. The 2008 replication was a response to the events at Bagram Air Base and at Abu Ghraib Prison and their eerie similarity to the Stanford Prison Experiments (Zimbardo, 1971). This study updates Whitten’s research (1950 and 1973) on the authoritarian personality. This paper utilized the same survey and examined the differences among young adults in 1950, 1973, (Whitten, 1976) and the present. SC15033 REFERENCES Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row. Anderson, T. H. (1996). The movement and the sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee. Oxford University Press. Cohen, J. (1962). The statistical power of abnormal-social psychological research: A review. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 65, 145-153. Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16, 297-334. Denmark, F. L. & Diggory, James C. (1966). Sex differences in attitudes toward leaders’ display of authoritarian behavior. Psychological Reports, 18, 863-872. Engle, K. (2004). Constructing good aliens and good citizens: Legitimizing the war on terror. University of Colorado Law Review, 59, 72-77. Faludi, S. (2007). The terror dream: Fear and Fantasy in post-9/11 America. Metropolitan Books. Gragam, H. D. (1992). Civil rights and the presidency: Race and Gender in American Politics, 1960-1972. Oxford University Press. Grisham, J. (August 11, 2013). After Guantanamo, another injustice. The New York Times. Ignatius, D. (December 13, 2012). A moral choice on torture. The Washington Post. Lewis, N. A., Lichtblau, E., & Fleck, F. (May 7, 2004). Red Cross says that for months it complained of Iraq prison abuses to the U.S. The New York Times. Maher, K. J. (1997). Gender-related stereotypes of transformational and transactional leadership. Sex Roles, 37, 209- 225. Milgram, Stanley (1969). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper & Row. Miller, G., Goldman, A., & Nakashima, E. (March 31, 2014). CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says. The Washington Post. President’s Commission on Campus Unrest (1970). The report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest. U.S. Government Printing Office. Available online: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED083899.pdf. Accessed on 09/03/2014. Smith, C. U. & Prothro, J. W. 1957. Ethnic differences in Authoritarian Personality. Social Forces, 35 (4), 334-338. Smith, S., Murphy, D. B., & Wheeler, L. S. (1964). Relation of intelligence and authoritarianism to behavioral contagion and conformity. Psychological Reports, 14, 248. Spoff, T. (1988). Lynch Street: The May 1970 slayings at Jackson State College. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. Whitten, N. (1976). Authoritarian personalities, 1950-1973. Journal of Personality Assessment, 40, 622-625. Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). The power and pathology of imprisonment. Congressional Record. (Serial No. 15, 1971-10-25). Hearings before Subcommittee No. 3, of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session on Corrections, Part II, Prisons, Prison Reform and Prisoner's Rights: California. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. SC15033 7-point Factor 4 20.38 5.19 7-point Factor 5 12.44 3.56 7-point Factor 6 12.29 3.73 Note: n = 377 for 4-point Q1~Q17, 7-point Q1~Q17, 4-point factor 1~6, 7-point factor 1~6. n = 355 for gender n = 217 for age n = 187 for GPA SC15033 Table 2. Responses to the Anti-Democratic Trends Scale by 1950, 1973, and current Groups (Percentage) Opinion Degree of Acceptance Agree Disagree 1 2 3 4 1 Modern people are superficial and tend to lack the finer qualities of manhood and womanhood. 195 0 1973 current .0 5 .01 .08 .2 6 .25 .36 .3 9 .44 .41 .3 0 .30 .14 2 Most men are evil at heart and it is only the restraints of civilization that keeps their evil nature within bounds. 195 0 1973 current .0 4 .02 .01 .0 2 .07 .07 .2 9 .33 .34 .6 5 .58 .57 3 In our kind of society, a person's first duty is to protect himself and those dear to him from harm. 195 0 1973 current .1 4 .19 .33 .4 3 .48 .50 .3 1 .24 .14 .1 2 .09 .03 4 We would be better off if there were no psychoanalysts probing and delving into the human mind. 195 0 1973 current .0 2 .03 .03 .1 4 .08 .18 .5 0 .44 .56 .3 4 .45 .23 5 We ought to make the best of what we have if for no other reason than that there are plenty of people worse off than we are. 195 0 1973 current .4 1 .23 .46 .4 0 .45 .42 .1 3 .20 .11 .0 6 .12 .01 6 To revolt mentally against one’s lot in life is wrong -- "God fits the burden to the back.” 195 0 1973 current .1 8 .01 .06 .2 6 .09 .33 .3 1 .30 .44 .2 5 .60 .16 7 There would be no need of psychiatrists if we all did what we instinctively knew to be the right thing. 195 0 1973 current .0 6 .02 .07 .2 0 .11 .19 .5 0 .44 .50 .2 4 .43 .24 8 The minds of young people are being poisoned by bad books. 195 0 1973 current .0 5 .01 .02 .2 1 .05 .11 .4 5 .23 .37 .2 9 .71 .49 9 Our leaders should enforce a stronger code of censorship over the morality of books and movies. 195 0 1973 current .1 4 .01 .05 .4 0 .08 .18 .3 2 .27 .32 .1 4 .64 .45 SC15033 1 0 Any sexual perversion is an insult to humanity and should be severely punished. 195 0 1973 current .0 9 0 .12 .1 3 .06 .29 .4 3 .37 .36 .3 5 .57 .23 1 1 Adolescents should be severely punished for using filthy language. 195 0 1973 current .0 4 0 .05 .1 2 .05 .16 .5 2 .42 .47 .3 2 .53 .31 1 2 What the country needs, more than laws or politics, is a few fearless and devoted leaders in whom the people can have faith. 195 0 1973 current .3 4 .19 .19 .3 6 .35 .45 .1 6 .26 .26 .1 4 .20 .09 1 3 We ought to get tougher with so-called liberals because their soft-headedness really makes them Communist supporters. 195 0 1973 current .0 8 0 .03 .3 2 .04 .16 .4 0 .30 .40 .2 0 .66 .41 1 4 Army training will be good for most youth because of the strict discipline they get. 195 0 1973 current .1 1 .02 .10 .3 3 .19 .40 .4 0 .31 .36 .1 6 .47 .14 1 5 Action and adventure movies are much better for people than movies about man's inmost thoughts and emotions. 195 0 1973 current .0 8 .01 .03 .3 0 .09 .18 .4 7 .47 .58 .1 5 .43 .21 1 6 Modern education places too much emphasis on ideas and abstract subjects and not enough emphasis on the practical matters of earning a living. 195 0 1973 current .1 8 .10 .14 .4 0 .40 .40 .3 0 .31 .37 .1 2 .19 .09 1 7 People would be better off if they did more good hard work and less thinking about other people's problems. 195 0 1973 current .1 4 .04 .22 .2 8 .19 .44 .4 0 .48 .28 .1 8 .29 .07 1 –“Strongly agree or accept” 2 –“Tend to agree or accept” 3 – “Tend to disagree or reject” 4- “Strongly disagree, certainly reject” SC15033 Table 5. Ordinary Least Squares Regression (OLS) model. Academic performance and authoritarian personality. Model 1 Model 2 Intercept 34.9945 42.7680 Standard error 3.6196 6.9468 p value <0.0001 <0.0001 Age 0.0931 0.3255 Standard error 0.0857 0.1644 p value 0.279 0.0049 Female 0.2234 0.1482 Standard error 0.09953 1.9101 p value 0.823 0.938 GPA 2.6161 7.4422 Standard error 1.1269 2.1628 p value 0.021 0.001 R2 0.0495 0.1093 Note. n = 183. Model 1 = 4-point Likert Scale. Model 2 = 7-point Likert Scale. SC15033 Table 6. OLS model. Academic performance and authoritarian submission factor. Model 1 Model 2 Intercept 5.0733 6.8566 Standard error 1.1091 2.1300 p value <0.0001 0.002 Age 0.0260 0.0811 Standard error 0.0262 0.0504 p value 0.323 0.109 Female -0.8057 -0.5350 Standard error 0.3048 0.5857 p value 0.009 0.362 GPA 1.1622 1.8345 Standard error 0.3453 0.6631 p value 0.001 0.006 R2 0.0894 0.0681 Note. n = 183. Model 1 = 4-point Likert Scale. Model 2 = 7-point Likert Scale. Table 7. OLS model. Academic performance and authoritarian aggression factor. Model 1 Model 2 Intercept 11.1606 14.0975 Standard error 1.4740 2.8831 p value <0.0001 <0.0001 Age 0.0419 0.1047 Standard error 0.0348 0.0682 p value 0.231 0.127 Female -0.6378 -1.8877 Standard error 0.4053 0.7928 p value 0.117 0.018 GPA 0.0567 1.3516 Standard error 0.4589 0.8976 p value 0.902 0.134 R2 0.0188 0.0488 Note. n = 183. Model 1 = 4-point Likert Scale. Model 2 = 7-point Likert Scale.