Moral judgment, personality, and attitudes toward authority.

Abstract

Two studies investigating attitudes toward authority using Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) clarify the dynamics of conformity. The SEA and a semantic differential were administered to 205 male and 275 female students at a Maryland community college. The subjects were asked to rate the concepts mother, father, police, and government on 10 evaluative adjective pairs. Persons endorsing the ethics of social responsibility held more favorable attitudes toward authority than did those endorsing the ethics of personal conscience. This result was replicated using 43 male and 46 female students at The Johns Hopkins University. The implications of these findings for research on social compliance are discussed.