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"Authoritarianism: South African studies"
 

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John J. Ray p

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Previous work on the relationship between need for achievement and

authoritarianism was found on balance slightly to favour such a relationship
but to be inconclusive because of defects in the measuring instruments. A
conceptual analysis led to a simplified definition of each of the two concepts
as a necessary prelude to examination of their relationship. The simplified
definitions were operationalized in personality scales. These were the Ray-
Lynn "AO" scale and the Ray (1976) Directiveness scale. Using door-to-door
cluster samples of 95 Australians, 100 Englishmen, 100 Scotsmen, 100 South
Africans and 101 Californians, correlations of .331, .395, .489, .305 and .465
between the two scales were observed. In five separate studies using more
traditional attitude-type measures of authoritarianism, the relationship with
achievement motivation was found to be present in two samples only. It was
concluded that achievement motivation rather than the need to vent hostility to
one's father was the better supported explanation for observed authoritarian
behaviour - particularly in South Africa. p

   

Authoritarianism and need for achievement (n-Ach) have, without a doubt,
been two of the most popular constructs in social psychology. It might be
thought to be a matter of some interest, therefore, to know what the
relationship between them is. The theories underlying these two constructs
are, however, at least at first sight, quite disparate and it is no doubt for this
reason that the relationship between the two has in fact not often been
considered in the literature.
½onetheless, there is variety of reasons for expecting a positive relationship.
Both the authoritarian and the need achiever appear to be individuals who do
not give their first priority to people. Both appear to have goals in which care
for the happiness of their fellows does not figure. ½either is humanitarian in
any sense. In fact, it is quite possible that in the "dog eat dog" world of the
business community, only the authoritarian can "get on" (achieve). To seek
the goal of personal success, one may have to be willing to sacrifice humane
or idealistic values and be willing to trample on others. From another point of
view, it may also be true that, in our society, dominance or "being boss" of
others is in itself a popular form of achievement. In this case again, then, we
would have authoritarian behaviour purely as an outcome of achievement
motivation.

The possibility of such a relationship has been explored in the past -- but with
contradictory results. Without giving any detailed reasoning, DeCharms,
Morrison, Reitman & McClelland (1955) say: "The general hypothesis is that
subjects with high  achievement will be more easily influenced by expert
authority." With a group of 30 subjects, these authors found a correlation
between  Ach (measured by a Likert scale) and various items of the
California F scale with a significance at the .04 level only. For n-Ach
(projectively measured) there was no relationship. On the other hand, Brown
(1953) found an inverse relationship between n-Ach and authoritarianism. The
picture is complicated by the later view taken by DeCharms et al. (1955) that
their  Ach measure has little or no validity. Moving on, we come to the finding
by Friis & Knox (1972) that need achievement (measured by a questionnaire)
and adherence to authority (measured by the Borgatta (1967) scale) correlate
only .059. Contradicting this, Lorr, Suziedelis & Tonesk (1973) find two
positive correlations of .31 and .30 between their two authoritarianism factors
and an achievement value scale. In summary, then, two studies have reported
positive relationships, one has reported no relationship and a fourth has
reported an inverse relationship. This quite unclear picture is made even more
unclear by the fact that most of the indices used in producing the results
mentioned leave much to be desired. If it is true that the Likert measure used
by DeCharms et al. (1955) had no validity, it is also well-known (Weinstein,
1969; Entwisle, 1972) that projectively measured n-Ach is generally lacking in
reliability. The Friis & Knox scale also has a very low reliability of only .53 and
no known predictive validity. Finally, the Lorr et al. (1973) work also relies on
unvalidated factors of rather eclectic composition. As with all factors, deciding
what they measure is a rather impressionistic affair (For a fuller treatment of
this point see Ray, 1973b). While there is therefore some support in the
literature for the hypothesis put forward above, it is support that is much in
need of clarification and reinforcement before any firm conclusions can be
drawn.

Perhaps too, part of the clarification that is required is in fact conceptual.

Authoritarianism has become a catch-all phrase for a whole host of generally
undesirable attributes and there are also various proposals for how
achievement motivation is made up.

In Ray (1976) it is proposed that the one basic or essential element in all
concepts of authoritarianism is "the tendency or desire to impose one's own
will on others". Whether such a tendency also correlates with rigidity,
conservatism, dogmatism, ethnic prejudice or the tendency to behave
submissively towards one's own superiors is surely an empirical matter, not a
matter of definition. It is also there shown that many of these attributes do not
covary in the expected way and that the F scale and related scales are almost
totally insensitive to this one basic element of directiveness or dominance.
Insofar as they have any power to predict behaviour at all, they show
occasional low correlations with submissive behaviour only. The need for a
scale which will predict this one most basic element of authoritarianism was
met in Ray (1976) by the construction of the Directiveness scale. It is this
scale that will be most heavily relied on in the present work. Since the F scale
does not predict authoritarian behaviour, all the explanations for
authoritarianism built around that scale become suspect and must in fact be
regarded as at best untried theories. In fact, using the new behaviourally-
relevant scale, Ray (1976) found many of these theories clearly contra-
indicated. It is into this explanatory vacuum for authoritarian behaviour, then,
that this present study is hopefully injected. It is proposed that achievement
motivation is at least one precursor of such behaviour.

Achievement motivation, also, has been broken down in various ways.

Perhaps the two most widely used subdivisions are into success-seeking
versus fear of failure and into intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation (also
sometimes called task versus success orientation). Furthermore there is the
very potent issue of how achievement motivation should be measured --
whether projectively or by self-report questionnaire. There seems to have
been developed in recent years a strong suspicion of projective measures by
reasons of their characteristic unreliability. This suspicion is so strong and so
widespread that it has reached the point of what can only be called derision
(See Entwisle, 1972). In such circumstances, we again find ourselves in the
position where much of the prior work in the field must be regarded with grave
suspicion because of defects in the measuring instruments used. McClelland
(19b1), for instance worked almost entirely with projective tests. His
conclusions about the nature of achievement motivation must then be
regarded as theoretical proposals only -- not as empirically delineated
definitions. The available evidence from non-projective tests is in fact harsh on
what is probably McClelland's favourite subdivision of achievement motivation
-- into success-seeking versus fear of failure. McReynolds & Guevara (1967)
devised separate Likert scales to measure these two concepts but found that
the correlation between the two scales was limited only by the reliabilities of
the two scales. It seems then that we have here a distinction without a
corresponding empirical difference. In general, then, it seems safest to work
with a simple but quite global and orthodox definition of achievement
motivation as: "the desire or tendency to reach difficult and socially approved
material goals." Whether such goals include or entail the domination of others
in our society is the subject of the present study. Obviously, non-material
goals and non-socially approved goals may also be objects for achievement
but it seems closest to the general tenor of previous research to exclude them
here. It should also be noted that whether the goal is sought for one's own
satisfaction or for public acclaim is not stipulated by this definition.

Scales that fit this definition are not hard to find. The Ray-Lynn "AO" scale
was written with such a definition in mind and the achievement scale of the
Jackson Personality Inventory also seems quite suitable. In fact it is from the
manual of this inventory that the first evidence comes in support of the
relationship proposed here. This is because the same inventory also includes
a "Dominance" scale which answers very closely to what has been conceived
of here as the essential element in authoritarianism. On its norming sample of
1,029 males, then, the Jackson (1967) PRF showed a correlation of .34
between the two sub-scales mentioned. This is, of course, highly significant. It
is the purpose of the research described hereunder to see whether a similar
relationship holds in other English-speaking countries using other measuring
instruments.



This study was carried out in the Sydney metropolitan area of Australia using
door-to-door cluster sampling. This is the same method that is used in most
British and Australian public opinion polls and it gives there generally very
accurate results. The sample n planned for was 100 though in the end five of
these had to be discarded due to incompleteness of answers. An n of 100 was
chosen because the gains in significance beyond 100 are very small.

In addition to the Ray (1976) Directiveness scale, it was felt politic to include
also some more traditional measure of authoritarianism. To this end the Ray
(1972) balanced F scale (or BF scale) was used. To measure achievement
motivation, a slightly-modified version of the Ray-Lynn "AO" scale (Ray, 1970,
1975) was used. In this version the scale was brought up to complete balance
against acquiescent response set by deleting the six weakest items and
replacing them by the first four negative items of Costello's (1967) scale I. This
scale had been shown in Ray (1979) to be highly related to the Ray-Lynn
scale and to have similar validity properties to it. The resultant scale was then
known to be valid, balanced, reliable and widely usable.

Two short scales were also included to test neuroticism (the short form of
Eysenck's Maudsley Personality Inventory) and Social Desirability (the eight
strongest items of the Marlow-Crowne scale according to Greenwald & Satow
(1970)}. The ½euroticism scale was included because of the assertion by
Adorno et al (1950) that authoritarianism is psychopathological. This seemed
a hypothesis of some interest to test on the relatively new "Directiveness"
scale. It could also be true that authoritarians are neurotic but achievement-
motivated people are not. If this were true, neuroticism could be acting as a
suppressor variable in need of statistical removal from any observed
relationships. The Social Desirability scale was included simply as a usual
control.

All scales showed satisfactory reliability. The coefficients "alpha" for each
scale were: Directiveness .78, Achievement Orientation .79, ½euroticism .73,
Social Desirability .77, Balanced 'F' .87. The relationships prior to reversal
between the positive and negative halves of the three major scales were:
Directiveness -.50, AO -.54 and BF -.65.

The major findings of the study were that Achievement motivation related .331
to authoritarianism as dominance and .262 to authoritarianism as BF score.
Both coefficients are significant at the < .01 level.

Other correlations of interest are a relationship of .217 (p < .05) between the
Directiveness and BF scales and a relationship between Directiveness and
sex (Maleness) of .234 (p < .05). This means that there is only a weak
tendency for highly directive people to have authoritarian attitudes and that
there is also a slightly greater likelihood of their being males rather than
females.

The three correlations with ½euroticism were Directiveness -.177, "AO" -.356
and "BF" -.109. The first is significant at the < .05 level on a one-tailed test
only and indicates that behavioural authoritarians are slightly less neurotic
than others (cf. Martin & Ray, 1972). Similarly, people with high achievement
motivation are less neurotic, only much more markedly so. The -.356 is of
significance at the < .005 level. Authoritarianism of attitudes is not significantly
related to neuroticism, though the correlation is in the opposite direction to
that inferred from Adorno et al (1950). A partial correlation to remove the
common influence of low neuroticism from the relationship between
directiveness and achievement motivation reduced the coefficient from .331 to
.291 - which is still significant at the < .01 level.

The correlation between the AO scale and social desirability was non-
significant at .062. The correlations between the SD scale and the two
authoritarianism scales were similar to those observed in Ray (1976) - a
correlation of -.252 for Directiveness and .209 for 'BF'.
One methodological question that does arise in the present study which has
not so far been alluded to concerns the Rosenthal effect. The present author
had a hand in the construction of all three of the major scales used. Could he
have built his expectations into them? On
 grounds there is some
reason to expect not: The Ray-Lynn "AO" scale had its items almost entirely
written by Richard Lynn and the items finally used from his item pool were
simply those that empirically correlated most highly with the scale total. See
Ray (1975). The balanced F scale had no items whatever written by the
present author and the selection of what items were used was again based
simply on maximizing empirical correlations. See Ray (1972). The
Directiveness scale did have half of its items written by the present author but
the other half were written by students.

½onetheless this does seem an occasion when some empirical form of

structure analysis should be applied to all the items of the battery. Do
empirical factors emerge which correspond to the scales and concepts
originally used? If so, do they relate to one another in the same way as the

 scales?

The structure analytic method chosen was cluster analysis rather than factor
analysis. This was for the reasons set out at some length in Ray (1973b). The
particular method chosen to carry out the cluster analysis was one due to
McQuitty (1961).

The second order clusters which emerged well justified by their clarity the
decision to use cluster analysis. There clearly emerged an F scale factor, a
Directiveness scale factor, a social desirability factor and a bipolar
achievement motivation /neuroticism factor. The first had 25 F scale items, 5
achievement motivation items and 7 Directiveness items. The second had 14
Directiveness items and 5 Achievement motivation items. The third had all
eight Social Desirability items plus 4 Directiveness items. The fourth had 18
Achievement motivation items, one directiveness item and all six ½euroticism
items reverse-scored. The implication of the bipolarity in this final cluster is
that high achievement motivation goes with low ½euroticism.

The correlations between these empirical clusters were very similar to the
correlations between the original scales. The achievement motivation cluster
correlated significantly with both the Directiveness cluster (r = .367) and the F
scale cluster (r = .210). The F and Directiveness clusters themselves
correlated .253.

Interesting or even impressive though this confirmation may be, it does

contain some element of artifact still. A small number of items that are one
day said to measure achievement motivation are now being used to measure
the two forms of authoritarianism. ½o wonder the two forms of
authoritarianism are shown to relate to the remaining achievement motivation
items!

To overcome this objection, an even more rigorous test of the relationships

involved was carried out. In this procedure, all items whatever which had
"migrated" from their original scales in the course of cluster analysis were
"purged" or eliminated from further consideration. This left scales which were
composed of items which could be demonstrated to belong only there and not
somewhere else. The scales so produced were obviously shorter but did not
show any reductions in reliability. Coefficients "alpha" for the various scales
were "AO" .79, "BF" .87 and Directiveness .78. The correlations with the AO
scale were: Directiveness .249, BF .221. The BF and Directiveness scales
themselves correlated .193. Against the critical value of .200 for the
correlation at the .05 level of probability, it may be seen that both forms of
authoritarianism still relate significantly to achievement motivation even
though they themselves are not significantly related.

As final form of data summary, some simple multiple regression analyses

were also carried out. There were attempts to predict reported authoritarian
behaviour (Directiveness score) based on firstly the original scales, secondly
the empirical clusters and thirdly the "purged" scales. In both cases,
demographic variables were also included. The multiple Rs obtained on the
three occasions were respectively .52, .55 and .47. All associated 'F' ratios
were significant at the < .05 level. Table 1 gives further details.

` 
CORRELATIO½S WITH DIRECTIVE½ESS A½D OTHER SUMMARY
STATISTICS FROM STUDY I. ½ = 95

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Variable .....................Mean.........SD........CO......Beta.....CP........Beta

Achiev. Motivation......62.074......9.183.... .331.... .282.... .261..... .162

½euroticism................12.,632.....3.593....-.177....-.101....-.290.....-.260
Social Desirability.......16.011......4.495....-.252....-.310...-.154.....-.234
Balanced 'F'................72.179....14.295.... .217.... .214.... .196..... .175
Sex (F = 1; M = 2)........1.547....... .500.... .234.... .150.... .195..... .109
Age...............................2.474......1.201.... .068.....-.013... .080.....-.021
Education.....................3.126...... .866.....-.015....-.014....-.038....-.038
Occupation...................1.789...... .410.....-.095....-.060....-.129....-.093
Political Preference......3.074...... .959.....-.008....-.110....-.008....-.080
Directiveness.............54./884.....8.797



Study II is little more than an addendum to Study I. It employed the same

questionnaire as Study I but applied it to a group comprising all but two of the
Royal Australian ½avy officer trainees enrolled for courses at the University of
½ew South Wales. These comprised only 41 subjects in all. The interest was
to see if the relationships observed earlier would hold up when investigated on
an institutionally authoritarian sample. They clearly did. The correlations
between the AO scale and the two authoritarianism scales were:
Directiveness .573 and "BF" .265. The scale correlating most highly with
neuroticism was the BF scale. The correlation -- at -.256 -- was just significant
on a one-tailed test but in the opposite direction to that generally expected
from Adorno et al (1950). Among potential ½avy Officers, to be low on
authoritarian attitudes is -- not surprisingly -- a sign of neuroticism. Study II
also offered further important validation to the Directiveness scale in that
scores by these subjects were -- as predicted -- significantly higher than those
obtained in Study I. The means (S.D.s in brackets) for the two groups were:
Study I 54.88 (8.79), Study II 59.63 (6.68). The t for this comparison is 2.94,
which is significant at the < .005 level.



In this study a sample was taken of people in and around the London
metropolitan area of England. Again cluster sampling was used but this time
non-students were used as interviewers. This eliminated the previous problem
of middle-class over-representation and also led to the full target n of 100
being achieved. To economize on interview time, both the Ray-Lynn "AO"
scale and the Directiveness scale were on this occasion used in shortened
forms. The items of each are given in the appendix. For the same reason, it
was also not possible to include any version of the F scale. The reliabilities
observed were .66 for the Directiveness scale and .73 for the AO scale. This
does represent a drop but such a drop is a normal outcome of using
shortened scales. The correlation between them however was quite similar to
that previously observed in Australia and the U.S.A. - .395. Again the theory
stands supported.



This study was identical to the preceding one except in that it was carried out
in the Strathclyde region, centred on the city of Glasgow, Scotland. Glasgow
is a depressed industrial city and the Strathclyde region contains half of
Scotland's population. Unlike London, which has very low unemployment by
current standards, Glasgow has chronically high unemployment. To check on
the traditional claims that Scots and English are very different people, a small
body of items on current social issues were included in both the Glasgow and
London questionnaires. On no less than eight out of eleven of these there was
a significant difference between the two cities. That the two samples were
similarly drawn, however, was shown by the fact that there were no significant
differences on demographic variables.

The reliabilities observed for the two scales were .71 for Directiveness and .72
for the AO scale. At .489 the correlation between them was the highest yet
observed. On four quite different national populations, then, the postulated
relationship has now been observed.

A more elaborate analysis of the results for Studies III and IV could be carried
out along the lines of that done for Study I but it was felt that this would be
supererogatory in view of the similarity of the overall relationship.



In this study it was desired to return to the relatively unexpected finding that
achievement motivation was related not only to authoritarianism of behaviour
or personality as measured by the Directiveness scale but was also related to
authoritarianism of attitudes as measured by the balanced F scale (see Study
I). This was seen as surprising because Ray (1976) and Heaven (1977) had
both found that the two sorts of authoritarianism themselves were unrelated.
By contrast, the correlation between the two was, at .217, significant in Study I
above. Since many correlations with the F scale vary widely from study to
study, however, it was felt of interest to see if further confirmation of the
relationship between authoritarian attitudes and achievement motivation could
be found. It was found that an examination of this could be made by a re-
analysis of the data collected for Ray (1973a). It is this re-analysis that is
reported here as Study V.

The scales used were the original form of the Ray-Lynn AO scale and the
"AA" or "attitude to authority" scale (Ray, 1971). This latter scale was one
specifically developed to overcome many of the faults of the F scale. ½ot only
is it completely balanced against acquiescent response set but it also
endeavours to steer clear of the psychodynamic assumptions and inbuilt
correlation with conservatism that are characteristic of the F scale.
Additionally, it has a stronger relationship to behaviour though in fact it is the
submissiveness side of the authoritarianism melange that it taps. To the
extent that it has any relation to behaviour at all, this is also true of the F scale
(See Titus, 1968). In spite of their conceptual differences, the AA and
balanced F scales do, as would be expected, correlate substantially (Ray,
1971).
As described in Ray (1973a), the sample was a community one with an n of
70. The correlation between the two scales was .392 (p < .01). It appears then
that authoritarian attitudes also go with achievement motivation. It is
interesting, however, that this study also made available peer ratings of each
subject in the survey and against the two general ratings "authoritarian in
attitudes" and "authoritarian in behaviour", the AA scale correlated
respectively .321 and .239. Unfortunately the terms of these ratings are a little
vague and the raters could have used submissiveness, dominance or both as
evidence of authoritarian behaviour. It might be suggested, however, that the
AA scale was sensitive on this occasion to directive behaviour and that this is
what accounts for the correlation with achievement motivation.



Since the excursion into use of the AA scale seemed to have raised at least
as many questions as it answered, it was felt desirable in this study to return
to the BF scale. It was felt that the relationship between this scale and
achievement motivation might be further elucidated if achievement motivation
were itself broken down into more molecular components. The components so
chosen were intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Unlike the breakdown into
fear of failure versus success-seeking (see McReynolds & Guevara, 1967),
the breakdown into intrinsic versus extrinsic achievement motivation is fairly
well attested to in the literature based on non-projective tests. Both Costello
(1967) and Featherman (1971) have shown that separate measures of these
components do in fact correlate very little. The scales adopted to measure
these two components were those produced in Ray (1977). These had been
factorially produced and validated on Australian data and were hence more
suitable to Australian use than better-known ones of overseas origin.

These two scales were then included with the BF scale in a commercial poll
carried out by an Australian market research organization. The poll was a mail
survey with over 4,600 respondents from all Australian states and localities.
The sample used was in fact a sample of a sample. It was comprised of
people contacted and previously surveyed for the purposes of the Morgan
Gallup poll and was hence based on a cluster sample of stratified
Commonwealth electoral sub-divisions.
The BF scale was used in a shortened form but the reliability observed was
still .80. The reliability of the Task orientation (intrinsic) scale was .86 and the
reliability of the Success orientation (extrinsic) scale was .76. ½either
achievement motivation scale showed any meaningful correlation with the BF
scale. The coefficients obtained were .055 and .066. The task and success
orientation scales themselves correlated .463 - confirming that although there
might be two factors of achievement motivation, it is still realistic to speak of a
single overall trait. This finding is despite the origin of the two scales in two
almost orthogonal clusters.



In this study it was desired to check the conclusions so far on a population

more like that used by Adorno et al (1950) in their seminal work on
authoritarianism. Their work was of course carried out in California, and,
within the United States, Californians have something of a reputation for
oddity. What is true of California need not be equally true elsewhere. A
random cluster sample of the greater Los Angeles area was therefore drawn
and 101 Californians were thus interviewed. Again they received short forms
of the Ray (1976) Directiveness scale, the Ray-Lynn "AO" scale (Ray, 1970,
1975 & 1979) and the balanced "F" scale (Ray, 1972). Achievement
motivation was found to correlate .465 with Directiveness and -.009 with
scores on the balanced F scale. The former is of course highly significant and
the latter is non-significant.

The results of this study do then leave the relationship between achievement
motivation and authoritarian personality uncontroversial but make any
connection between achievement motivation and authoritarian attitudes highly
questionable.



One further country with particular claims to attention from authoritarianism

researchers seemed to be the Republic of South Africa. As a country
notorious for authoritarianism in its political life, South Africa seemed, in fact,
something of a test case. If achievement motivation is the cause of
authoritarian acts, achievement motivation ought to be at an all-time high in
this country. A clearly falsifiable prediction in the best tradition of the
hypothetico-deductive method seemed possible.

A random cluster sample of 100 whites in the Johannesburg Greater

Metropolitan Area was therefore contacted on their doorsteps by the
researcher personally. They received a test battery virtually identical to that
used in the previous study.

The correlation observed between the achievement motivation scale and

authoritarian personality was .305. The correlation of the "AO" scale and
authoritarian attitudes (Balanced F scale) was .005. Only the first of the two is,
of course, significant. Thus far, then, the results very much mirror those
obtained in California. The mean score obtained by this sample on the "AO"
scale, however, was 35.20 (4.74 S.D.). This compares with 33.83 (5.27) for
California, 31.44 (5.83) for Australia (Study I), 32.45 (5.70) for England and
31.33 (5.64) for Scotland. Clearly, South Africans were the most highly
achievement motivated of the five samples. The 't' for the comparison
between the Californians and the South Africans (1,92) was significant on a
one-tailed test only but when compared with the English (and
 the
Scots and the Australians) the South Africans obtained scores that were
significantly higher at less than the .01 level (two-tailed). The 't' was 3.69.
Since America's history of authoritarian treatment of blacks is well-known,
greater similarity of their results to those of the South Africans was of course
to be expected on the present hypothesis.

As far as authoritarian attitudes are concerned, the present study again failed
to show any connection with achievement motivation. In general, then, we
must conclude that any such relationship is at best evanescent.




 

The above studies allow the conclusion that when behaviourally valid and
reliable scales of authoritarianism and achievement motivation are used, the
two correlate substantially, significantly and reliably across cultures. It is also
shown that there is on some occasion a relationship between achievement
motivation and more traditional measures of authoritarian attitudes. This
relationship however is not reliable from sample to sample and probably tells
us more about the uncertain implications of F scale type items to people than
it does about the real world. The fact is that on the largest sample employed --
of over 4,600 people -- such a relationship disappeared entirely. Against this,
however, must be set the fact that a mail survey is generally less
representative than a door-to-door survey. Study VI also had the useful
function of giving some confirmation to the implicit assumption in the five
previous studies that achievement motivation could validly be measured as a
single global entity.

The correlations above between achievement motivation and behaviour

inventories of authoritarianism are high enough on at least some occasions to
suggest that in everyday life when we encounter someone who tends to
behave in an authoritarian way, we should entertain the hypothesis that he
does so, not because he is in any way psychologically sick (the consistently
negative correlations with neuroticism effectively counterindicate that) but
because he is achievement motivated.

In saying this, one is, of course, making a causal inference from correlational
data. Such inferences concerning the direction of causation can only be
justified on the basis of theory. The very basic theory being appealed to here
then is that motivation should precede behaviour. In part at least however this
is a rather verbal distinction and any theory claiming to show that
authoritarianism also causes achievement motivation could not be entirely
ruled out of court. It is of course customary at the present time to say that
although causal theories cannot be tested by correlational data, causal
models can be. The mechanism proposed for this is causal path analysis in
one of its many forms. If this claim does seem meaningful, the beta weights
from the regression analyses reported in Table 1 could be used as path
coefficients.

This paper then comprises a further step in the program suggested in Ray
(1976a). In that paper, grounds were given for believing that when
authoritarianism is measured by instruments that are valid in predicting actual
behaviour, none of the things are true of authoritarians that Adorno et al
(1950) and their successors assert. We were left at the conclusion of that
paper with no surviving )

 for authoritarianism. ½ew explanations
seemed called for. At least one such explanation has now been provided.
Authoritarianism of behaviour may often be in our society an expression of
achievement motivation. We manage and downgrade others in order to
promote ourselves.

That this explanation extends even to an explanation of the institutional

authoritarianism of South Africa is perhaps the most surprising outcome of the
present paper. South Africa's authoritarian institutions are more readily seen
as a response by whites to the stress of being outnumbered 4 to 1 by a less
developed people. Authoritarianism as a response to stress has been studied
at some length by Sales (1972 & 1973). Interestingly, the psychological
differences shown among South Africans do  extend to their having a more
authoritarian personality (Ray, 1980). As far as personality is concerned, it is
achievement motivation, not authoritarianism that gives rise to South African
authoritarian practices. It is now a commonplace that a direct relationship
between attitudes and behaviour is too much to expect. The present results
suggest that a direct relationship between personality and the type of social
institution chosen may also be too simplistic. The behaviour of dominating
others may not necessarily stem from wanting to dominate others. It may
simply be a means to an end -- an end of material achievement.

On this account, then, rather than being the twisted souls that a
psychodynamic theory of prejudice would lead us to expect, South Africans
may in fact be just the sort of person that American businessmen most admire
-- hard-driving, go-getting people who know the value of a dollar. Many people
around the world are paying McClelland and others good money to become
the sort of people that South Africans tend to be already (McClelland, 1976).
Far from being twisted deviants, South Africans may be indistinguishable from
the All-American boy.

All this, then, leads us back to the complex relationship that exists between
attitudes, personality, motivation and environment. In the South African
environment, although achievement motivation does lead to authoritarian
interpersonal behaviour in general, the higher general levels of achievement
motivation do not lead to higher general levels of authoritarian interpersonal
behaviour because the authoritarian preferences of achievement motivated
people are realized in an institutional rather than an interpersonal way. You do
not have to work yourself at putting people in the place you prefer for them if
the government is willing to do it for you. But the government in turn is only
prepared to make this effort if it sees much larger issues at stake than the
prosperity of a few. It is only where the very survival of the few seems
threatened by the many that the repression of the many by the few is
attempted. It can be seen then that a combination of psychological and
sociological variables is needed if the South African situation is to be
explained. What the present paper has suggested is that the particular
variables required for this explanation may be rather different from the
conceptions of the past.

It is proposed, then, that an important part of the enforced role differentiation

between blacks and whites in South African society may be traceable to the
high levels of achievement motivation among the whites. Without a strong
motive to achieve, South African whites might never have developed any
dispute with the blacks. ½or is the assumption of black-white differences of
this kind entirely theoretical. In a study of differences between white and
coloured employees using an only slightly modified version of the Ray-Lynn
"AO" scale, Beezhold (1975) reported differences in the expected direction
between the two groups that give rise to a 't' of 4.10 with 713 degrees of
freedom (p <.001). Coloureds are of course only half African in origin so it is
the direction of the difference rather than its magnitude that is of interest here.
Strongly motivated people dominating more weakly motivated people would
seem to have some validity as a description of the South African scene.

Both by way of correlations between scales and by way of the mean

differences in motivation between societies, then, it has now been shown that
if we see a person behaving in an authoritarian way, he may well be doing so
simply out of a desire to achieve. It may well be that instead of being the sort
of irrationally motivated person Adorno et al (1950) describe, the person who
behaves in an authoritarian way towards others may instead simply be one of
those go-getting people whom our society only faintly deplores and often
admires. Authoritarianism may be only one step along the road to
achievement. The desire to achieve does perhaps seem a more creditable
motive than the desire to vent repressed hostility to one's father.

 

ADOR½O, T. W., FRE½KEL-BRU½SWIK, Else, LEVI½SO½, D. J. &

SA½FORD, R. ½.: The authoritarian personality ½.Y. : Harper, 1950.

ATKI½SO½, J. W.: An introduction to motivation Princeton, ½. J. : Van

½ostrand, 1964.

BEEZHOLD, M. A.: A study of job orientation and motivation in different

groups of white and coloured employees. Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Stellenbosch, 1975.

BORGATTA, E. F.: The work components study: A set of measures for work
motivation. J. Psychological Studies 1967, 16, 1-11.

BROW½, R. W.: A determinant of the relationship between rigidity and

authoritarianism. J. Abnorm. Soc. Psych. 1953, 48, 469-4-76.

COSTELLO, C. A.: Two scales to measure achievement motivation. J. Psych,

1967, 66, 231-235.

DE CHARMS, R., MORRISO½, H. W., REITMA½, R. 8G MCCLELLA½D, D.

C.: Behavioural correlates of directly and indirectly measured achievement
motivation. In D. C. McClelland (Ed.) Studies in motivation. ½.Y. : Appleton
Century, 1955.

E½TWISLE, D. R.: To dispel fantasies about fantasy-based measures of

achievement motivation. Psych. Bull. 1972, 77, 377-391.

FEATHERMA½, D. L.: The socio-economic achievement of white religio-

ethnic sub-groups: Social and psychological explanations. Amer. Sociolog.
Rev. 1971, 36, 207-222.
FRIIS, R. H. & K½OX, A. B.: A validity study of scales to measure need
achievement, need affiliation, impulsiveness and intellectuality. Ed. Psych.
Meas 1972, 32, 147-154.

GREE½WALD, H. J. & SATOW, Y.: A short social desirability scale. Psych.

Reports . 1970, 27,131-135.

HEAVE½, P. C. L.: Do authoritarians hold authoritarian attitudes? The case of

South Africa. Journal of Psychology 1977, 95, 169-171.

JACKSO½, D. ½.: Personality research form manual. ½.Y.: Research

Psychologists Press, 1967.

LORR, M., SUZIEDELIS, A. & TO½ESK, X.: The structure of values:

Conceptions of the desirable. J. Res. Pers. 1973, 7, 139-147.

MCCLELLA½D, D. C.: Power is the great motivator. Harvard Business Review

1976, March-April, 100-110.

MARTI½. J. & RAY, J. J.: Anti-authoritarianism: An indicator of pathology

Aust. J. Psychology, 1972, 24, 13-18.

MCREY½OLDS, P. & GUEVARA, C.: Attitudes of schizophrenics and normals

towards success and failure. J. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol 1967, 72, 303-310.

McQUITTY, L. C.: Elementary factor analysis. Psych. Reports 1961, 9, 71-75.

RAY, J.J. (1970) Christianism.... The Protestant ethic among unbelievers. Œ

c 
"$
, 13, 169-176.

RAY, J.J. (1971) An "Attitude to Authority" scale. *"



($ #, 6,
31-50.

RAY, J.J. (1972) A new balanced F scale -- And its relation to social class.
*"


($ # 7, 155-166.
RAY, J.J. (1973a) Task orientation and interaction orientation scales.


($ #( 26, 61-73.

RAY, J.J. (1973b) Factor analysis and attitude scales. *"

+,&

-

Œ"
.$#(9(3), 11-13.

RAY, J.J. (1974) c

 ( Sydney: A.½.Z. Book Co.

RAY, J.J. (1975) A behavior inventory to measure achievement motivation. Œ

.$

($ #( 95, 135-136.

RAY, J.J. (1976) Do authoritarians hold authoritarian attitudes? "


/
, 29, 307-325.

RAY, J.J. (1980a) The comparative validity of Likert, projective and forced-
choice indices of achievement motivation. Œ.$

($ #(, 111, 63-72.

RAY, J.J. (1980b) Authoritarianism in California 30 years later -- with some

cross-cultural comparisons. Œ"
.$

($ #(, 111, 9-17.

SALES, S. M.: Authoritarianism. Psychology Today 1972, 6, 94ff.

SALES, S. M.: Threat as a factor in authoritarianism. J. Personality & Social

Psychol. 1973, 28, 44-57.

TITUS, H. E.: F scale validity considered against peer nomination criteria.

Psychol. Record 1968, 18, 395-403.

WEI½STEI½, M. S.: Achievement motivation and risk preference. J. Pers. &

Social Psychol. 1969, 13, 153-172.

`

The items of the short form of the Ray-Lynn AO scale. Response options are
"yes" (scored 3), "?" (scored 2), "½o" (scored 1). Items marked "R" are to be
reverse-scored (e.g. "1" becomes "3") before addition to get the overall score.

1. Is being comfortable more important to you than getting ahead? R

2. Are you satisfied to be no better than most other people at your job? R
3. Do you like to make improvement to the way the organization you belong to
functions?
4. Do you take trouble to cultivate people who may be useful to you in your
career?
5. Do you get restless and annoyed when you feel you are wasting time?
6. Have you always worked hard in order to be among the best in your own
line? (school, organization, profession).
7. Would you prefer to work with a congenial but incompetent partner rather
than with a difficult but highly competent one? R
8. Do you tend to plan ahead for your job or career?
9. Is "getting on in life" important to you?
10. Are you an ambitious person?
11. Are you inclined to read of the successes of other rather than do the work
of making yourself a success? R
12. Would you describe yourself as being lazy? R
13. Will days often go by without your having done a thing? R
14. Are you inclined to take life as it comes without much planning?

`

The items of the Directiveness scale. Short form only as used in Study III and
Study IV. See Ray (1976) for full-length form. Response is "Yes" (scored 3)
"?" (scored 2) "½o" (scored 1) unless the item is marked "R" - in which case
the scoring is 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

1. Are you the sort of person who always likes to get their own way?
2. Do you tend to boss people around?
3. Do you like to have things "just so"?
4. Do you suffer fools gladly? R
5. Do you think one point of view is as good as another? R
6. Are you often critical of the way other people do things?
7. Do you like people to be definite when they say things?
8. Does incompetence irritate you?
9. Do you dislike having to tell others what to do? R
10. If you are told -to take charge of some situation does this make you feel
uncomfortable? R
11. Would you rather take orders than give them? R
12. Do you dislike standing out from the crowd? R
13. Do you find it difficult to make up your own mind about things? R.
14. If anyone is going to be Top Dog would you rather it be you?

-----------------

*This chapter was written especially for the volume.


  ` `

Later articles by J.J. Ray relevant to the matters discussed above are as
under:

Ray, J.J. (1984) The reliability of short social desirability scales. Œ"

.$

($ #(, 123, 133-134.

Ray, J.J. (1984) Achievement motivation as a source of racism, conservatism

and authoritarianism. Œ"
.$

($ #( 123, 21-28

Ray, J.J. (Unpublished) Perceptions of the authoritarian as achievement-

motivated

It may also be worth noting that later work by Burger (1985) also found similar
results. He found that a "desirability of for control" scale predicted various
measures of achievement motivation among a group of students.

 !" Burger, J.M. (1985) Desire for control and achievement-related
behaviors. Œ

(+.$

($ #(, 48 (6), 1520-1533.
Replication is one of the cornerstones of science. A new research result will
normally require replication by later researchers before the truth and accuracy
of the observation concerned is generally accepted. If a result is to be
replicated, however, careful specification of the original research procedure is
important.

In questionnaire research it has been my observation that the results are fairly
robust as to questionnaire format. It is the content of the question that matters
rather than how the question is presented (But see here and here). It is
nonetheless obviously desirable for an attempted replication to follow the
original procedure as closely as possible so I have given here samples of how
I presented my questionnaires in most of the research I did. On all occasions,
respondents were asked to circle a number to indicate their response.p