Psychological Bulletin 1964, Vol. 62, No. 4, 248-256

PREDICTING GROUP TASK EFFECTIVENESS FROM MEMBER CHARACTERISTICS

RICHARD HESLIN1

University of Colorado

Studies relating premeasures of member characteristics to small-group task performance are reviewed. The individual traits used to predict per- formance are grouped into 6 categories: ability, adjustment, extraver- sion, dominance, authoritarianism, and "other characteristics." 2 mem- ber characteristics have been used as predictors in a sufficient number of studies to permit a tentative conclusion, namely, that member ability (both specific and general) and member adjustment are significantly related to group effectiveness. It is less clear however, whether extra- version, dominance, and authoritarianism would be useful for predict- ing group task performance. Both the requirements of the situation and social structural constraints must be taken into account when predicting group effectiveness from member traits. Specifically the type of group task and the organization of the group are seen to have a decided in- fluence on the relationship.

The major determinants of group effec- tiveness have traditionally been sought from among situational demands and factors stemming from the prevailing social system both within and outside the particular group under study. Al- though the personal characteristics of individual members have received much less attention, it is becoming increas- ingly apparent that the external and so- cial variables interact with personality characteristics of the participants, and that the group product is at least partly determined by factors the members bring to the task. This review is aimed at examining to what extent group ef- fectiveness is determined by personality characteristics of the members.

This question has significant practical utility since many organizations meas- ure various personality characteristics of their new members and are inter- ested in the performance of their com- mittees and work teams. If they can use some of the information they have

11 would like to thank 0. J. Harvey, Rich- ard deCharms, and Keith Davis for their criti- cal reading of the manuscript.

248

available on the personality of their members to construct more effective groups, a large stride toward rational and efficient use of people will have been made.

Small group member characteristics are usually measured either by rating or categorizing individual behavior in ongoing groups, or by completing ques- tionnaires on group-tied characteristics such as satisfaction with the meeting. All of these measures require that the members either are interacting or have already interacted. The question to- ward which this paper is directed is whether a measure of individual mem- bers taken before the group is formed can be used to predict its task effective- ness.

The studies reviewed are grouped under the following rubrics that typi- cally appear (as factors) in factor ana- lytic studies of interpersonal behavior: ability, adjustment, extraversion, domi- nance, authoritarianism, and other char- acteristics.

Other characteristics was included to group a number of studies that meet

PREDICTING GROUP EFFECTIVENESS 249

the criteria for inclusion in the review but the personality variables of which do not belong under one of the other five categories. It includes such things as general personality profile, self-per- ception, tendency to differentiate peo- ple sharply, and the desire to be close and intimate with others.

The dependent variable in this re- view is group performance. In the kinds of studies reviewed in this paper, situa- tional demands are so strong that mem- ber definition of group goals is not as necessary as in less-structured small groups. Therefore, definition of the task and evaluation of the final product by an agency outside the group has been taken as a valid measure of the per- formance of the group.

To those interested in the application of research, the performance of a small group is more central to their interests than its internal workings. But the rela- tion between predictor and performance is often understandable only in terms of some mediating variable. Therefore, two analyses of the problem will be made. The simple relation between group performance and each person- ality variable will be reviewed in de- tail, and then the influence of situa- tional and social variables will be noted. Let us turn now to the analysis of the personality predictor variables.

Ability (General)

Leaders of effective army squads have a significantly higher mean intelligence score than leaders of ineffective squads (Greet, Galanter, & Nordlie, 1954), ef- fectiveness here defined as squad per- formance as rated by judges using de- tailed performance rating forms. (The studies of army-squad effectiveness usu- ally use a small scale, standardized field maneuver of 6-8 hours with umpires rating the performance of the groups.) The relation between leader intelligence

and performance is supported by Hav- ron and McGrath (1961), who found that the correlation between unit effec- tiveness and leader intelligence ranged between .35 and .50 in their series of studies. Leader intelligence, with job knowledge, shared the position of the best leader trait for predicting group effectiveness.

The relationship of intelligence to group performance is susceptible to in- fluence from other variables. For exam- ple, it appears that the organization of the members can modify it. Permissive group organization can facilitate prob- lem-solving performance of groups com- posed of high-intelligence members but inhibit the performance of groups com- posed of low-intelligence members, while directive group leadership seems to re- sult in the opposite relation (Calvin, Hoffman, & Harden, 1957). Although only one of the six relationships was significant, beyond the .05 level, the re- sults were all in the same direction.

An early study by Gurnee (1937) compared 42 individuals with 12 groups on a more limited and specific task, learning the correct pathway of a maze. The groups proceeded by plurality vote, voting by acclamation, with a show of hands in case of a tie. Results of inter- est here were that the number of errors in learning the maze were negatively re- lated to college grades (r = — .54) and the chemistry aptitude scores (r = — .68) of the group members.

A series of three studies result in a statement (in the third study) on the relation between group performance and the variability of intelligence among the members. First Pelz (1956) re- ported a study of factors influencing the performance of scientists in a re- search organization. He found that fre- quent contact with other scientists was positively related to an individual's per- formance level only if the contacts were

250 RICHARD HESLIN

with scientists unlike him in kinds of motivation and experience. An analo- gous phenomenon was discovered under more controlled conditions by Hoffman (1959) and by Hoffman and Maier (1961). Only the first study will be dis- cussed. Hoffman administered the Guil- ford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey to subjects and later formed them into four-member groups on the basis of their scores. Some groups were com- posed of members whose personality profiles were very similar, others of members whose personality profiles were quite different. The heterogeneous groups produced significantly superior solutions to the multisolution, mined- road problem (p < .05) and showed a tendency to produce more inventive solutions to a human-relations problem (x2 = 2.88, not significant). Hoffman (19S9) stated "Pelz's findings suggest that the results reported in the present study are probably generalizable well beyond the limited population of col- lege students who supplied the data [p. 31]." However, according to Shaw (I960), the superiority of heterogene- ous groups is not generalizable to all situations and specifically not to mem- ber intelligence in communication-net situations. In two studies, he found group effectiveness was unrelated to group heterogeneity in intelligence.

Shaw's use of the communication-net design reduces the generality of his criticism since communication among the members in this situation is so artificially restrained. Furthermore, his group tasks did not unduly tax the in- telligence of his sample (university stu- dents). Once a subject had received the necessary information from the other members, he had to perform a series of computations requiring about a fifth- grade knowledge of arithmetic.

The relationship between members' general ability and group performance

is not univocal. For example, Spector and Suttell (1957) found no significant relation between average intelligence of three-man groups and performance. However, since (a) the performance measure was taken only on the last of four tasks, and since (b) the manipula- tion of leadership style, a second ex- perimental variable, did not produce differences in performance either, it is not clear whether the measures were too gross to expose differences or whether there were no differences to measure.

In general, group task performance was related positively to general ability in three studies and was unrelated in one study; in groups with more formal structure the leader's intelligence in- creased in importance as a factor in- fluencing performance. In no study was a negative relationship found between the two variables.

Ability (Specific)

McKeachie (1954), in his review of the literature on the success of student- centered methods of instruction, con- cluded that the success of this method of teaching may well depend on whether or not the students possess the specific skills necessary to move the group to- ward its goal. Group performance is limited by the members' ability both on the task and in organizing themselves effectively.

An experiment to measure the rela- tion between specific ability and group performance was conducted using the Purdue Pegboard Test (Comrey, 1953). Each subject was first tested on his in- dividual pegboard and later participated as a member of a group performing a similar task. The "group" was a dyad working on a common pegboard; that is, Member A placed a peg, B placed a washer on the peg, A covered the washer with a collar, and B placed a final washer on the assembly while

PREDICTING GROUP EFFECTIVENESS 251

simultaneously inserting a new peg di- agonally across from the old assembly. Thus they zig-zagged down the board alternating their activities as they went. The performance of the group was re- lated to the individual performance of the less-able member, .59, and the more able member, .56. Using the perform- ance of both members as predictor yielded a multiple correlation of .66. If Comrey had measured for test-retest in- stead of split-half reliability, he could have had an index of the effect of such things as change of set and practice during the time interval between the in- dividual and group measures. The dif- ference between this reliability coeffi- cient and the correlation between indi- vidual and group conditions would then indicate the influence of group-related factors. Since this was not done, the above correlations reflect the influence of both time- and group-related factors.

Another investigator whose individual and group measures were similar to those of Comrey was Rohde (1958). Subjects were pretested on a maze task before being assigned a similar prob- lem in three-man groups consisting of one appointed leader and two followers. Group performance scores were signifi- cantly related to the individual scores of the most qualified members (r = .63), all individuals (r = .63), and fol- lowers (r = .60), but not with the in- dividual scores of the least qualified subjects ( r = . 3 9 ) . Regarding the last relation, when a subject knows the cor- rect turn he will show more self-confi- dence and be more forceful in his argu- ments than when he is unsure of it; thus the more able subjects will have more influence on the group product than the less qualified. This is in con- trast with Comrey's (1953) findings with dyads that the less proficient mem- ber's score was an equally good pre- dictor of group performance as the bet-

ter member's. In Comrey's study there was no self or group weighting of the amount contributed by the less-able worker.

It has been found in army-squad re- search (Havron, 1952) that the squad leader's military knowledge relates posi- tively to ratings of squad performance. The combined ratings of leader and squad performance were also positively related to leader physical ability. The importance of physical ability in army- squad performance was supported by Greer (1955) whose measures were of squad members rather than the squad leader.

On a task having a strong mental rather than physical emphasis (a de- ceptive horse-trading problem), Thomas and Fink (1961) found the diversity of the members' initial information to be a factor positively influencing quality of group performance. Unfortunately, the relation could not be tested for sig- nificance.

Measures of both general and spe- cific ability of individuals have been used to predict small-group task per- formance. None of the 11 studies re- viewed showed a negative relation be- tween member ability and group per- formance.

Adjustment

Five of the studies in this sample deal with variables relating to adjust- ment (Cattell, Saunders, & Stice, 1953; Greer, 1955; Havron, 1952; Havron & McGrath, 1961; Haythorn, 1953).

Cattell et al. obtained 15 factors from a 93-variable matrix that included per- sonality measures, observer ratings of member behavior in a group, and group- performance scores. Three of these fac- tors were strongly loaded with adjust- ment measures. Unfortunately, these factors had few substantial loading-per- formance variables, although there is a

252 RICHARD HESLIN

weak indication that homogeneity in adjustment is conducive to high group productivity. Nothing can be said about the effect of level of adjustment from these factors.

However, Haythorn has used Cat- tell's Sixteen Personality Factor Ques- tionnaire as a predictor of, among other things, group productivity. He found CattelFs "Emotional Stability vs. Gen- eral Neuroticism" personality factor to be positively related to group effective- ness, r = .48. This personality factor was also related to rating of job com- pletion (r = .43). In army rifle squads the combined ratings given to the leader and his squad on performance were sig- nificantly related to the leader's adjust- ment to the Army (Havron, 1952). In another squad study, performance rat- ings were related to the adjustment of the squad members to the Army (Greer, 19S5). Paranoid tendencies of squad members and nervousness were nega- tively related to these performance rat- ings. In summing up a series of studies on leader and squad effectiveness, Hav- ron and McGrath (1961) stated that the leader's general army adjustment and low peripheral nervousness and hy- pertension correlated on the average .25 with squad effectiveness.

Thus, five clear relationships between adjustment measures and group task ef- fectiveness were discernible, and all five of these were positive.

Extraversion

Cattell, Saunders, and Stice (1953) have three personality factors relevant to extraversion in their factor-analytic study of the small group. Again, how- ever, the factors had few performance measures with strong loadings, but these few indicate a positive association be- tween extraversion and high group per- formance.

The study by Gurnee (1937) cited

earlier, in which groups and individuals were compared in ability to learn a maze, is relevant. Using the Bernreuter B2 scale, he found a positive tendency for groups composed of members who "rarely ask for sympathy or encourage- ment and tend to ignore the advice of others" to make more errors (r — .26). Similarly, using the Bernreuter F2 scale he found a tendency for groups com- posed of "nonsocial, solitary and inde- pendent" persons to make more errors (r = .34). Thus there is some evidence that groups composed of extraverted rather than introverted members per- form more effectively.

Dominance

Ghiselli and Lodahl (1958) found that on a cooperative task, groups that contained one subject who tended to be active, reckless, and full of ideas, that is, a dominant person, and two or three average or low dominant subjects were most effective. The more groups ap- proached this "skewed" kind of distri- bution the better was their perform- ance (r = .82). Although the degree of skewness in dominance distribution ap- pears to be related to high group per- formance, another study has shown the simple variability of the group with re- spect to individual prominence to be unrelated to group effectiveness (Shaw, 1960). The same cautions mentioned earlier regarding extrapolation from communication-net research are rele- vant here. (It has, for example, been found by Berkowitz, 1956, that the communication-net design is so con- straining that subjects very high and very low in ascendance are indistin- guishable when placed in the central position of a wheel-net design.) In sum- mary, two studies dealt with the rela- tion between member dominance and group performance. The results suggest that the way that a group "bunches"

PREDICTING GROUP EFFECTIVENESS 253

in member dominance may be more im- portant than either the average or the variability of the group's dominance scores.

A uthoritarianism

High scorers on this variable tend to seek rules and some form of hierarchi- cal organization in their interpersonal relations. Four studies deal with the relationship between authoritarianism and performance. McCurdy and Eber (1953) constructed groups that were homogeneous in attitude, either all au- thoritarian or all "democratic." (Au- thoritarianism was measured by the California F Scale.) They organized some of the groups cooperatively with- out a leader and some with one of the subjects as absolute leader. Of the groups organized cooperatively, those containing subjects with democratic at- titudes made fewer errors in learning patterns of switches to turn on a light than those with authoritarian members (p < .05). Apparently a strong group organization acts to suppress differ- ences due to personality, since in the groups with leaders, the members' atti- tudes did not relate to group effective- ness. Work on other strongly organized groups supports this conclusion. For ex- ample, authoritarian attitudes of either the leader or members of groups at- tempting to write a script for a human- relations film were found to bear little relation to ratings of group competence, productivity, and communication effec- tiveness (Haythorn, Couch, Haefner, Langham, & Carter, 1956). Similarly, Havron and McGrath (1961) reported that measures of authoritarianism con- sistently did not relate to army-squad effectiveness.

Finally, CattelPs Personality Factor M, "Bohemianism vs. Practical Con- cernedness," was found by Haythorn (1953) to relate to rating of group pro-

ductivity (r = — .61) and to rated job completion (r = — .43); that is, con- servatism of group members was posi- sively related to productivity. In sum- mary, four studies indicate that au- thoritaranism, as a unitary concept, is unrelated to small group productivity, especially under conditions of high or- ganization where little latitude exists for personality variation to have a great influence on performance procedures.

Other Characteristics

A number of studies deal with the re- lation between group performance and an aspect of personality that is not categorizable in the previous five groups.

For example, Grace (1954) related the performance of 14 high-school bas- ketball teams with the homogeneity of the members' self-description. The meas- ure was acquired by having each mem- ber choose the statement most descrip- tive of himself and the statement least descriptive of himself from sets of four statements. The degree of conformance (the extent to which members described themselves the way their teammates de- scribed themselves) was positively re- lated to number of games won (rank- order correlation = .61).

A series of studies by Fiedler (1960) related group effectiveness to a person- ality characteristic best described as propensity to discriminate one's work acquaintances. Two of these six studies will be described here. Fiedler had bas- ketball-team members (the same sub- jects used by Grace) fill out a self-de- scription questionnaire three ways: as the items described them, as they thought their most preferred co-worker would respond, and as they thought their least preferred co-worker would respond. For the group as a whole, members of good teams had signifi- cantly greater discrepancy between their ratings of best and worst co-workers

254 RICHARD HESLIN

than did members of poor teams. Of the players most chosen as "best co- worker," those on effective teams showed significantly less similarity in their rat- ings of themselves and their positive choices, and of their positive and nega- tive choices, than did those on less ef- fective teams.

In another study, this time using air- craft crews, the results were in general substantiated, although only for those groups that manifested certain rather specific sociometric characteristics. Al- though Fiedler was mainly concerned with the influence of the interpersonal warmth or distance of the leader in a group as a determinant of task effec- tiveness, as he studied more formally organized groups he was forced to con- trol for an increasing number of social determinants, both in the organization in which the group was imbedded and within the group itself.

Another personality trait that does not fit easily into the initial categoriza- tion is Schutz's (1958) personal-coun- terpersonal dimension of his FIRO (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation) test. An individual is per- sonal to the extent that he will ascribe to such statements as "I like groups where people get personal" and "I like to talk about myself in a group." Using scores on the test, Schutz constructed three types of groups: all were counter- personal members, all were personal members, or a combination of both counterpersonal and personal members. The counterpersonal groups performed as well as the personal groups on a wide variety of tasks ranging from building a structure to making a group decision about moving chess pieces. However, both the personal and coun- terpersonal groups performed better than the heterogeneous groups.

Thus, there is a suggestion that three kinds of personality characteristics are

related to group performance: The ho- mogeneity of members' self-description, the tendency of the keyman in a group to discriminate sharply his able and less able co-workers or subordinates, and homogeneity among the members in their preferred degree of interpersonal closeness.

The relations of six different person- ality categories to group performance have been reviewed. The direction of the relationships has usually been clearly indicated, but these relationships are weak for predictive purposes. This weakness in predicting group effective- ness from member characteristics has also been found by McGrath (1962) in his more general review of small- group variables.

To what are we to attribute this gen- eral weakness? Social and situational variables interact with personality char- acteristics and increase "random error" over studies. The influence of one so- cial variable, group organization, has been seen in a number of studies; now an analysis of the task will be used to illustrate the influence of situational demands.

In the Ghiselli and Lodahl experiment (1958) mentioned earlier, the Decision- Making Approach (DMA) scale was administered to student subjects. (This scale had earlier differentiated top ex- ecutives from middle managers.) The subjects were formed into groups of two, three, or four men to operate two model railroad trains around one track (with sidings) in opposite directions as many times as possible. As noted in the section on Dominance, positive skew- ness of the group scores on the DMA scale was significantly related to group performance (r = .82).

The general design of Ghiselli and Lodahl's experiment was replicated by Porter and Kaufman (1959) and by the author. The two later experiments,

PREDICTING GROUP EFFECTIVENESS 255

however, used a different task—a fiber- board construction task. In these stud- ies, groups which were positively skewed on the DMA scale were not superior on task performance.

Ghiselli and Lodahl (19S8) discov- ered that groups skewed in DMA scores made few organizational or method changes (r = — .47; r = — .60); and that groups that made few organizational or method changes per- formed well on the train task (r = — .64; r— — .55). It can be inferred that skewness in DMA, by establish- ing a clear leader who early decided on a course and unwaveringly held to it, resulted in high performance on the task. Ghiselli and Lodahl noted that performance depended less on which of two common solutions was chosen than that one method was chosen and ad- hered to tenaciously throughout the task.

However, on a task presenting more alternative methods of solution and re- quiring flexibility, such as building a structure with boards, a tendency to re- main with an initial approach would not give the best performance. Thus, a given pattern of scores on an individual char- acteristic measure was conducive to high group performance on one type of task but unrelated to performance on an- other type.

The results of these studies and those reviewed earlier in the paper support the continually growing feeling among small-group researchers that some kind of multivariate approach must be used in order to predict either group behav- ior or behavior in groups. Such a model must be able to account for (a) varia- tions in the individuals along relevant personality dimensions at different lev- els of self-awareness and ego involve- ment; (b) variations in the group's so- cial characteristics such as freedom of interpersonal communication, size, and

average attraction toward the group; and (c) variations in situational demands on group members, especially task. Task requirements may be predominantly mental, for example, member-usable in- formation, reasoning ability, or immedi- ate memory span; predominantly physi- cal, for example, member strength, fine muscle control, or speed; or predomi- nantly motivational, for example, mem- ber resistance to fatigue under condi- tions of monotony or stress. Moreover, tasks may also vary in the amount of interpersonal cooperation they require of the members.

In conclusion, this review has made clear the fact that within the con- straints imposed by situational and so- cial variables, personality characteris- tics do influence group processes, even those as far removed from the indi- vidual member as group task perform- ance.

Specifically, two personality charac- teristics, ability and adjustment, ap- pear to be fairly consistently related to performance measures. We may con- clude that if research on small group performance is to be undertaken, the investigator would be wise to measure both the subjects' general ability and their personality adjustment whether he is interested in their place in a multi- variate model or whether he merely wants to be able to control variance due to their influence on some experimental variable.

REFERENCES

BERKOWITZ, L. Personality and group posi- tion. Sociometry, 1956, 19, 210-222.

CALVIN, A. D., HOFFMAN, F. K., & HARDEN, E. C. The effect of intelligence and social atmosphere on group problem solving be- havior. J. soc. Psychol., 19S7, 45, 61-74.

CATTEIX, R. B., SAUNDERS, D. R,, & STICE, G. F. The dimensions of syntality in small groups: I. The neonate group. Hum. Relat., 19S3, 6, 331-3S6.

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COMREY, A. L. Group performance in a manual dexterity task. /. appl. Psychol., 1953, 37, 207-210.

FIEDLER, F. E. The leaders' psychological dis- tance and group effectiveness. In D. Cart- wright & A. Zander (Eds.), Group dy- namics. Evanston, 111.: Row, Peterson, 1960.

GHISELLI, E. E., & LODAHL, T. M. Patterns of managerial traits and group effective- ness. /. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1958, 57, 61-66.

GRACE, H. A. Conformance and performance. J. soc. Psychol., 19S4, 40, 333-335.

GREEK, F. L. Small group effectiveness. Insti- tute Report No. 6, 1955, Institute for Re- search on Human Relations, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

GREEK, F. L., GALANTER, E. H., & NORDLIE, P. G. Interpersonal knowledge and indi- vidual and group effectiveness. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1954, 49, 411-414.

GURNEE, H. Maze learning in the collective situation. J. Psychol., 1937, 3, 437-443.

HAVRON, M. D. The effectiveness of small military units. Personnel Research Section Report No. 980, 1952, Adjutant General's Office, Washington, D. C.

HAVRON, M. D., & McGRATH, J. E. The con- tribution of the leader to the effectiveness of small military groups. In L. Petrullo & B. M. Bass (Eds.), Leadership and inter- personal behavior. New York: Holt, 1961. Ch. 10.

HAYTHORN, W. The influence of individual members on the characteristics of small groups. /. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1953, 48, 276-284.

HAYTHORN, W., COUCH, A. S., HAEFNER, D., LANGHAM, P., & CARTER, L. F. The behav- ior of authoritarian and equalitarian per- sonalities in groups. Hum. Relat., 1956, 9, 57-74.

HOFFMAN, L. R. Homogeneity of member personality and its effect on group problem solving. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1959, 58, 27-32.

HOFFMAN, L. R., & MAIER, N. R. F. Quality and acceptance of problem solutions by members of homogeneous and heterogene- ous groups. /. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1961, 62, 401-407.

MCCURDY, H. G., & EBER, H. W. Democratic vs. authoritarian: A further investigation of group problem-solving. J. Pers., 1953, 22, 258-269.

McGRATH, J. E. A summary of small group research studies. (AFOSR Document No. 2709) Arlington, Va.: Human Sciences Re- search, 1962.

McKEACHiE, W. J. Student centered versus instructor centered instruction. J. educ. Psy- chol, 1954, 45, 143-150.

PEI.Z, D. C. Some social factors related to per- formance in a research organization. Admin. Sci. Quart., 1956, 1, 310-325.

PORTER, L. W., & KAUFMAN, R. A. Relation- ships between a top-middle management self-description scale and behavior in a group situation. /. appl. Psychol., 1959, 43, 345-348.

ROHDE, K. J. Theoretical and experimental analysis of leadership ability. Psychol. Rep., 1958, 4, 243-278.

SCHUTZ, W. C. FIRO: A three dimensional theory of interpersonal behavior. New York: Holt, 1958.

SHAW, M. E. A note concerning homogeneity of membership and group problem solving. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1960, 60, 448-450.

SPECTOR, P., & SUTTEIX, B. J. An experi- mental comparison of the effectiveness of three patterns of leadership behavior. Tech- nical Report No. AIR-196-57-FR-164, 1957, American Institute for Research, Washing- ton, D. C.

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(Received December 6, 1963)

Psychological Reports, 1970, 27, 326. @ Psychological Reports 1970

AUTHORITARIANISM, RIGIDITY, AND EYSENCK'S E A N D N DIMENSIONS IN A N AUTHORITARIAN CULTURE

A. H. MEHRYAR Pahlavi University, Shiraz, lran

Eysenck (1960) has identified authoritarianism with his attitudinal dimen- sion of tough-mindedness which he regards as "a projection into the field of attitudes of the extraverted personaliry cype." This would imply a positive cor- relation between extraversion and authoritarianism. On the other hand, the theoretical description of authoritarian personality includes a number of charac- teristics, e.g., rigid, repressing, projecting, etc., that suggest less than optimal psychological functioning or a high degree of neuroticism. A number of studies have in fact found positive correlations between authoritarianism and maladjust- ment (Byrne, 1966). The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship - between authoritarian attitudes and Eysenck's two dimensions of personality in a traditionally authoritarian non-western culture, Iran.

Ss were 108 first-year students attending Pahlavi University in southern Iran. They were all Persian-speaking Iranian Ss, over 95% being Muslims. There were 23 girls and 85 boys aged between 19 and 21 yr. who took the test battery which included a 29-item F scale and a 22-item Rigidity ( R ) scale given by Rokeach ( 1960) and the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). The tests, all adapted into Persian by the present author, have been used in a number of other studies and their psychometric properties are relatively well established (Mehryar, 1970b, 1 9 7 0 ~ ) .

Product-moment correlations were calculated among the five variables cov- ered by the test battery. The F scale did not correlate significantly with either extraversion or neuroticism but there was a small significant r of -.28 between Rigidity and extraversion ( 9 < .01). Rigidity also correlated significantly but not highly with the EPI Lie scale ( r = .28, p < .01) and the F scale ( 7 = .23, p < .05). These results do not support Eysenck's hypothesis linking extra- version and authoritarianism. Nor do they support the implicit association be- tween authoritarianism and neuroticism. The findings are in accord with the negative results reported by Siegman ( 1963 ) and Mehryar ( 1970a).

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relationship between personaliry and attitudes. Brit. 1. soc. clin. Psychol., 1970, in press. ( a )

MBHRYAR, A. H. Some correlates of the California F scale given under two different motivational conditions in Iran. I . J O C . Psychol., 1970, In press. (b )

MEHRYAR, A. H. Some data on the Persian translation of the EPI. Brit. 1, soc. clin. P~ychol . , 1970, in press. (c)

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extraversion, social attitudes, and anti-social behaviour. Brit. ]. soc. clin. Psychol., 1963, 2, 196-208.

Accepted July 9, 1970.