Liberal-Conservative Attitudes: Implications for Personality Factors and Value Orientations

The first objective of this study is to investigate certain specified dimensions of personality, value orientations, and demographic background to determine what differences can be detected between the most liberal and most conservative groups of a selected sample of college students.In addition to this initial concern, a secondary objective will be related to the change element and will involve an investigation of certain specified dimensions of personality and value orientations which underlie liberalization or non-liberalization of attitudes in a selected group of college students. In addition to the two major objectives of this study, two ancillary objectives will also be pursued. The first ancillary objective is to determine what types of belief changes occur and to report the types of attitude patterns that result, in five specified areas, for the change group of students who indicate a liberalization of attitudes by the time they are juniors in college. The final ancillary objective will involve an overview of the findings relative to the liberal-conservative dimension, and a comparison with previous research findings on this topic.By this procedure the present writer hopes to further validate the Liberalism Scale (LS) as a useful instrument by which to measure the liberal-conservative dimension. Advisor: Jacqueline Vos