Age, gender and occupation as predictors of extremist attitudes in early adulthood

Abstract

This paper focuses on the empirical study of objective predictors (age, gender and occupation) of extremist attitudes in early adulthood. The participants of the study were 355 subjects (from 15 to 30 years, 176 males and 179 females), 148 schoolchildren, 82 students of colleges, 72 students of universities, and 53 working people. The data were collected by the Zlokazov’s test of investigation extremist destructive personality settings: fanaticism, nationalism, xenophobia, authoritarianism. The difference between groups was found through the use of Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H test. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between extremist attitudes and demographic characteristics of participants (age, gender and occupation). As a result of the research, authoritarianism is independent on age, gender and occupation of participants. The study showed that males are characterized by a higher level of nationalism and xenophobia, than females. The least of extremist attitude’s level was registered at schoolchildren, the highest one was found at working people, students of colleges and universities had the intermediate position. Nationalism, xenophobia, and fanaticism were increased by age. Multiple regression analysis indicates that age significantly predicts fanaticism, gender significantly predicts xenophobia. Nationalism can be explained by age, gender and occupation of young people.