Dogmatism, Locus of Control of Reinforcement, Importance of Issues, and Relationships to Political Activity

This study examined the cumulative and interaction effects of dogmatism, I-E, and issue salience on political activity. Indexes of the variables were developed from factor-analytic results based on personal, group, and mail interviews with 212 adults in the Detroit area. The three psychological variables were then dichotomized at the median and related to political activity, utilizing multiple regression and a step-wise interaction procedure. The multiple r was .41 ( p <.01) with issue salience contributing the greatest amount of variance. Comparisons to multiple-regression predictions indicated interaction effects with low-issue importance reducing political activity and high-issue importance increasing political activity. Split-half analyses indicated substantial stability in the findings. A broader conceptualization for relating psychological variables to political activity was discussed.