Are authoritarians extraverted

In spite of much past criticism, Eysenck & Wilson (1978) restate Eysenck's earlier theory concerning the structure of social attitudes with only minor changes. A third dimension of ‘economic conservatism’ has been added and psychoticism as well as extraversion has been implicated in the explanation of tough-mindedness. Good evidence for the proposed relationship between extraversion and tough-mindedness still, however, seems to be lacking. Eysenck (1954), of course, proposes his tough-mindedness dimension as a ‘pure’ measure of authoritarianism — unlike the Rightist authoritarianism of the F scale. Extraversion, then, is supposed to make both Rightists and Leftists authoritarian. One trouble in testing this theory, however, is the general rejection of Eysenck's own ‘T’ scale (see, for example, Christie, 1956). Since Eysenck & Wilson (1978) identify as measuring ‘tough-mindedness’ items which are almost entirely concerned with religion and morality, this is perhaps understandable. Inadequacies in Eysenck's empirical work do not however amount to a disproof of his theory and it is this theory that the present paper sets out to test in a hopefully more rigorous way.