The Relationship of Dogmatism and Internal-External Control to Psychological Reactance

One hundred ninety-two Introductory Psychology students volunteered for credit to complete the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale and the Rotter I/E Scale. The students were also asked to fill out a questionnaire, obstensibly from the administration, asking them to rate the favorability of the first five periods of the day on a scale of 1-100. Two weeks later 94 of the above students, serving as controls, were asked to fill out the identical questionnaire again. They were told that the previous ones had been lost. The 98 remaining students, serving as experimental subjects, received additional information. E said that he had heard that the second period might be eliminated for the faculty\u27s benefit. The hypothesis that the experimentals would show more reactance than the controls to the threatened elimination of the second period was supported at the .01 level. It was also hypothesized that reactance scores would correlate significantly with feelings of internal control and with dogmatism scores among subjects who were anti-authority. The authority rating was measured by a four item administration scale. Neither of these hypotheses was supported. It was further hypothesized that reactance would be a function of the importance of the eliminated option and that reactance would be greater for the anti-authority groups than for the pro-authority group. These hypotheses were not supported