Abstract

ETCHEZAHAR, Edgardo. Dimensions of Authoritarianism: an analysis of the scale of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) in a college students sample of Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Rev. psicol. polít. [online]. 2012, vol.12, n.25, pp. 591-603. ISSN 1519-549X.

There is a broad consensus on the conceptualization of the phenomenon of authoritarianism in the terms proposed by Altemeyer (1981, 1996) as the covariation of three attitudinal clusters: authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission and conventionalism. Recent studies indicate an inconsistency between this theoretical proposal to define the construct and its empirical counterpart, because if authoritarianism is composed of three different dimensions its oppose to the original RWA scale as unique dimension. The aim of this research was to explore the dimensionality of the RWA scale in the Argentine context. We worked with a sample of 449 college students (36.2% men and 63.8% women). The age range of participants was 18 to 42 years. The main results indicate adequate psychometric properties for a two-dimensional scale, consisting of authoritarian Aggression and Submission one hand and Conventionalism on the other. From these results and convergence with previous studies, we conclude that it is necessary to review the theoretical conceptualization of authoritarianism

Keywords : RWA; Authoritarianism; Dimensionality; Validation; Scale.

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