Authoritarian personalities, 1950-1973

This study concerns a comparison of American college graduates of the post Kent State era with those of the post Hitler era as to authoritarian type personality. A short 17-item scale for authoritarian personality traits was devised and found to correlate with the F Scale. This was administered to 314 college graduates in 1950. It was again administered to 400 graduates of the same college in 1973. The results show that the 1973 group is less authoritarian than the 1950 group.