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Right‐Wing Authoritarianism, Party Identification, and Attitudes Toward Feminism in Student Evaluations of the Clinton‐Lewinsky Story
Author(s) -
Smith Allison G.,
Winter David G.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/0162-895x.00285
Subject(s) - authoritarianism , feminism , identification (biology) , psychology , social psychology , personality , scale (ratio) , social dominance orientation , morality , aggression , political science , law , politics , democracy , botany , physics , quantum mechanics , biology
This study explored the relationship among undergraduates' right‐wing authoritarianism (as measured by the RWA scale), attitudes toward feminism, party identification, gender, and attitudes about the Clinton‐Lewinsky relationship. Factor analysis yielded three subscales, reflecting participants' evaluations of Clinton's morality, the affair, and Kenneth Starr (the independent counsel). Republican identification was related to each subscale and also mediated the relationship between RWA and two subscales, which illustrates how party identification channels the expression of personality variables in partisan contexts. In addition, RWA—especially those items tapping aggression—was directly related to negative evaluations of Clinton, which suggests a punitiveness going beyond the mere channeling of opinions by party identification. Attitudes toward feminism were unrelated to the subscales, possibly because feminism supporters viewed Clinton's policies positively but his behavior negatively. However, females did give significantly lower evaluations of Clinton and the affair.