Authoritarianism in personality traits structure

Abstract

The relationship of authoritarianism and personality traits was examined on a sample of 401 people (18–78 years (M = 26,58, SD = 12,91); 55,9 % – women). For the assessment of authoritarianism it was used a shortened questionnaire of right-wing authoritarianism of B.Altermeyer (RWA), adapted by the authors of the study. The questionnaire allows to measure three characteristics: authoritarian submission and aggression, conventionalism and general authoritarianism. For the assessment of dispositional personality traits there was used Russian version of the HEXACO-PI-R questionary, having 6 scales - Honesty / Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. Authoritarianism varies nonlinearly with age and reaches the highest score in the group 60+ years. Authoritarianism in men is higher than in women, the effect size (Cohen's d) is in the range of 0,30 and 0,43 for different characteristics. Authoritarianism is associated with the position of the respondent in the parents family: single children have a lower authoritarianism than those who have siblings. However, neither the number of children in the family nor birth order are related with authoritarianism. The analysis of the relationship of authoritarianism and dispositional personality traits shows that the authoritarian submission and aggression have significant relationships with low Openness to experience (r = –0,25), low Emotionality (r = –0,22), Extraversion (r = 0,23), Agreeableness, (r = 0,19) and Conscientiousness (r = 0,13); conventionalism - with Consciousness (r = 0,24), Extraversion (r = 0,18) and the Honesty / Humility (r = 0,12).