ABSTRACT
Empirically, the limited available evidence confirms the complexity of relationships between authoritarianism and social behavior. Additional empirical study is needed before the considerations that govern the relationship between authoritarian dispositions and overt social behavior can be disentangled. The follow-up study of the Peace Corps teachers provides relevant data. For the volunteers tested in training, ratings of their subsequent performance overseas were obtained, and their experience as teachers in Ghana was explored in detail in long tape-recorded interviews conducted with them at their schools near the end of their first and second years of service. These voluminous materials can thus be brought to bear on two major questions: At the time of training, how were the volunteers who scored high in authoritarianism distinguished personologically from those who scored low? And in what respects was authoritarianism, as measured during training, related to performance overseas? The first issue pertains to the construct validity of the measures. The second bears on their predictive validity.
