Controlled experimental designs can isolate authoritarian memory and reasoning deficits

Evidence

Dr. Wegmann (1992) (to take the suspense out of the personal story) solicited volunteers from the student body at Peninsula College and from the recent jury pool in Clallam County, Washington, for a study of “ability of the general public to recall conflicting opinions.” Volunteers were screened by telephone for perceptual handicaps and reading difficulties and then given an appointment at a computer lab on the college campus. There they were helped to feel comfortable working at a terminal, and tested to make sure their reading comprehension and short-term memory were adequate for the experiment. Then they spent an hour or more, at their own pace, answering the RWA Scale via the computer and learning about the “conflicting opinions.” — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1198

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

• XREF: Illustrates the controlled experimental design approach to studying authoritarianism — worth remembering as a methodological template for replicating this line of research.

Related

• Wegmann studied recall of conflicting opinions using screened volunteers (similarity 0.85)