ABSTRACT
This book overlaps two major areas of psychology: social psychology, and personality. On the one hand it is about attitudes : their measurement, factorial structure, origins and functions. On the other, it is about a particular characteristic or “dimension” of personality that is inferred on the basis of the organization of such attitudes. “Conservatism” is conceived as a general factor underlying the entire field of social attitudes, much the same as intelligence is conceived as a general factor which partly determines abilities in different areas. This general factor is manifested as a largely positive pattern of group intercorrelations amongst different attitude areas, and is presumed to reflect a dimension of personality similar to that which has previously been described in the semi-scientific literature in terms of a variety of labels such as “fascism”, “authoritarianism”, “rigidity”, and “dogmatism”.
