ABSTRACT
Dogmatism was put forth by Rokeach (1954, 1960) as a generalized theory of authoritarianism (i.e., free of specific political, religious, and ideological beliefs) as opposed to a rightist form of authoritarianism hypothesized by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950). Rokeach (1960) conceived of dogmatism as being basically an organization of belief-disbelief systems de signed to “serve two powerful and conflicting sets of motives at the same time: the need for a cognitive framework to know and to understand and the need to ward off threatening aspects of reality [p. 67].”
