Authoritarianism and Ethnocentrism: A South African Sample

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which authoritarianism and ethnocentrism are evident among a sample of White Afrikaansspeaking students in South Africa. Form 60 of the authoritarianism scale together with the minority and patriotism subscales of the ethnocentrism scale were administered to 207 female and 27 male first-year students in psychology at the University of the Orange Free State. Because the males formed such a small part of the group it was decided to disregard their data in the statistical analysis. The testing formed part of normal class activity. The average age of the female respondents was 19.2 yr. Reliability coefficients were determined for the authoritarianism and total ethnocentrism scales. The values obtained by the split-half method were 0.78 and 0.64, raised by the Spearman-Brown formula to 0.88 and 0.78 respectively. These values compare favorably to those obtained in the original study by Adorno, et dl., namely, 0.87 and 0.90 respectively.