Various authors have argued that the more threatening an individual's environment is, the more authoritarian he is likely to be. This hypothesis was investigated in two separate experiments. In both, Ss were pretested for authoritarianism and then were exposed to one of two conditions. In the first condition, S S were threatened by failure at two experimental tasks; in the second, they were presumably encouraged by success at these tasks. In both studies, failure increased and success decreased the Ss' levels of authoritarianism. In both studies, these changes in authoritarianism were greater for individuals who attributed their performance to internal causes. In addition, data from the second investigation indicated that these manipulations affected Ss' tendencies to conform to the judgments of an authority figure. The findings appear to support the contention that personality is an open system.
FXT,
UTHORITARIANISM (or its sister trait,
A dogmatism) is probably the most studied of all personality variables. The original Ca1ilorni:t F scale (Adorno, lhnkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) arid Rokeach's dogmatism scale (Rokeach, 1960) have been employed in thousands of investigations. These scales have often been revised, and the revisions have likewise been used in vast numbers of studies.
This extensive research effort has includcd some attention to the determinants of authoritarian tendencies. Research workers, employing primarily clinical data, have agreed that threat is a basic cause of authoritarianism. Presumably, the more threatening a person's environment, the more autocratic and dogmatic he is likely to be. This hypothesis is basic to The Authoritayian Personality (Adorno et al., 1950) and to later analyses by Sanford (1966); it is perhaps most clearly stated by Rolteach (1960).
Various data support this notion. For instance, Rokeach (1960) observed a positive relationship between dogmatism and MRIPI