Conservative and Authoritarian Attitudes of Czech Adolescents

Overview

The article informs about authoritarian attitudes of Czech adolescents, in a group of 1,253 studentsof randomly chosen grammar schools, secondary schools and vocational schools in Pragueand České Budějovice (average age of the group was 16.4 years). The level of authoritarianism ismeasured by Adorno’s F-scale. The average F score of the whole group was 4.73; 63.1 per cent of allrespondents had an F score higher than 4.5, which strongly suggests that Czech society is onaverage relatively highly conservative, conventional and not very open towards the externalworld and towards social changes. Significantly lowest authoritarian tendencies were recorded instudents of secondary grammar schools, while 75.5 per cent of students of vocational schoolsidentified themselves with quite extremely authoritarian and conservative attitudes Prague studentsin comparison with the students from České Budějovice were showing on average lowerauthoritarian and conservative tendencies, a lower level of xenophobia and lower identificationwith attitudes of power in solving of social problems. No statistically significant relation betweenauthoritarian tendencies and the followed characteristics of the families of respondents werefound, with the exception of the education of parents. A positive correlation between the level ofF-score, level of anxiety and reservation towards oneself was found.

Key words:
authoritarianism, conservatism, ethnocentrism, self-esteem, anxiety, F-scale.