Psychology Essay

Psychological Reports, 1970, 27, 326. @ Psychological Reports 1970

AUTHORITARIANISM, RIGIDITY, AND EYSENCK'S E A N D N DIMENSIONS IN A N AUTHORITARIAN CULTURE

A. H. MEHRYAR Pahlavi University, Shiraz, lran

Eysenck (1960) has identified authoritarianism with his attitudinal dimen- sion of tough-mindedness which he regards as "a projection into the field of attitudes of the extraverted personaliry cype." This would imply a positive cor- relation between extraversion and authoritarianism. On the other hand, the theoretical description of authoritarian personality includes a number of charac- teristics, e.g., rigid, repressing, projecting, etc., that suggest less than optimal psychological functioning or a high degree of neuroticism. A number of studies have in fact found positive correlations between authoritarianism and maladjust- ment (Byrne, 1966). The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship - between authoritarian attitudes and Eysenck's two dimensions of personality in a traditionally authoritarian non-western culture, Iran.

Ss were 108 first-year students attending Pahlavi University in southern Iran. They were all Persian-speaking Iranian Ss, over 95% being Muslims. There were 23 girls and 85 boys aged between 19 and 21 yr. who took the test battery which included a 29-item F scale and a 22-item Rigidity ( R ) scale given by Rokeach ( 1960) and the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). The tests, all adapted into Persian by the present author, have been used in a number of other studies and their psychometric properties are relatively well established (Mehryar, 1970b, 1 9 7 0 ~ ) .

Product-moment correlations were calculated among the five variables cov- ered by the test battery. The F scale did not correlate significantly with either extraversion or neuroticism but there was a small significant r of -.28 between Rigidity and extraversion ( 9 < .01). Rigidity also correlated significantly but not highly with the EPI Lie scale ( r = .28, p < .01) and the F scale ( 7 = .23, p < .05). These results do not support Eysenck's hypothesis linking extra- version and authoritarianism. Nor do they support the implicit association be- tween authoritarianism and neuroticism. The findings are in accord with the negative results reported by Siegman ( 1963 ) and Mehryar ( 1970a).

REFERENCES BYRNE, D. A n introduction to personality. Englewood Cliffs, N . J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966. EYSENCK, H. J. T h e structure of human personality. London: Methuen, 1960. MEHRYAR, A. H. A cross-cultural investigation of Eysenck's hypothesis regarding the

relationship between personaliry and attitudes. Brit. 1. soc. clin. Psychol., 1970, in press. ( a )

MBHRYAR, A. H. Some correlates of the California F scale given under two different motivational conditions in Iran. I . J O C . Psychol., 1970, In press. (b )

MEHRYAR, A. H. Some data on the Persian translation of the EPI. Brit. 1, soc. clin. P~ychol . , 1970, in press. (c)

ROKEACH, M. T h e open and closed mind. New York: Basic Books, 1960. SIEGMAN, A. W. A cross-cultural investigation of the relationship between introversion-

extraversion, social attitudes, and anti-social behaviour. Brit. ]. soc. clin. Psychol., 1963, 2, 196-208.

Accepted July 9, 1970.