Rokeach’s dogmatism research was shaped by US Cold War and Civil Rights contexts
Evidence
Developed between 1951 and 1954 in the US, and to a lesser degree in London, Rokeach’s objective was to establish an authoritative typology to understand human psychological reasoning as regards beliefs and values. His goal was to achieve ‘a single set of concepts, a single language, that is equally appropriate to the analysis of personality, ideology and cognitive behaviour … to arrive at a conception of intolerance and prejudice which is also ahistorical’. In trying to locate and understand those who were ‘closed’ in their thought or belief using his Dogmatism Scale, his research became heavily influenced by the socio-political and geo-political context of the time. From the perspective of the US, this was one that was externally concerned with the Communist Other and internally with the first throes of the Civil Rights Movement. Rokeach’s work therefore seems to be indebted to these contextual factors to the extent that they determine much of his thinking and subsequent outcomes. For instance, throughout his pursuit of analysing the open and closed mind, he significantly differentiates between ‘Whites’ and ‘Negroes’ as indeed he does between Americans who have right and left wing political viewpoints, routinely describing those on the left as ‘Communists’. So skewed is his understanding that throughout his London-based research, he repeatedly and inappropriately described Labour Party supporters as Communists. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 359
Categorization
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: how much of Rokeach’s Cold War framing leaked into the Runnymede open/closed views typology.