Student authoritarianism rose from 1973 to 1987, then declined back to 1970s levels.

Evidence

The RWA Scale was first used at the end of this era, and its continuous employment at my university ever since lets us see how levels of student authoritarianism have changed over the years. We saw in Figure 2.1 that scores on the Continuing Twelve rose fairly steadily from 1973 until 1987. Then they started a gradual decline that has gotten us, by 1995, essentially back to the levels of the late 1970s and early 1980s. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1150

The RWA Scale was first used at the end of this era, and its continuous employment at my university ever since lets us see how levels of student authoritarianism have changed over the years. We saw in Figure 2.1 that scores on the Continuing Twelve rose fairly steadily from 1973 until 1987. Then they started a gradual decline that has gotten us, by 1995, essentially back to the levels of the late 1970s and early 1980s. How did these changes take place, and why? — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1152

Categorization

• QUESTION: Rise through the 1970s-80s (Cold War, crime wave, Reagan era) then fall — Altemeyer doesn’t fully explain the mechanism here; worth investigating the cohort correlates.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1150; Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1152