A short form of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale (RWA)

The paper presents a short version of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale. The results of two studies are described. In the first one, conducted on a sample of 363 university students, the short version is developed by means of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, which supported a two dimensions solution. The two dimensions have been labelled as ‘‘authoritarian aggression and submission’’ and ‘‘conservatism’’. Different issues concerning the factorial structure are tested and discussed. Subsequently, the relationships between authoritarianism, subtle and blatant prejudice towards Islamic immigrants in Italy, and participants’ political orientation are examined. Compared to conservatism the authoritarian aggression and submission dimension is more strongly associated to prejudice and right-wing political orientation. In the second study, carried out on a sample of 201 adults, the validity of the short version is successfully supported. Differences due to gender, age, and level of education are also examined.