Authoritarianism, political ideology, and religiosity among students of different faculties

Weller and Nadler (1975) found Israeli students of biology, chemistry and engineering significantly more authoritarian than psychology and philosophy students; they therefore concluded that authoritarianism influences career choice. The present study replicated Weller and Nadler's study by means of Altemeyer's (1988) recently developed Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA). A sample of 708 Jewish Israeli undergraduate students (mean age 24; 42% men and 58% women) from various faculties at a number of universities around Israel completed the RWA and a demographic questionnaire. RWA scores of social sciences students were significantly lower than those of students in the humanities, life sciences, and hard sciences. Of all the students, those from the social sciences showed strongest support for left-wing parties. As in Weller and Nadler's study, social sciences students were the least authoritarian, but the humanities students in the present study had higher scores than those in the earlier study.