Dogmatism and related personality factors among Egyptian university students

The Dogmatism Scale and 13 personality tests measuring authoritarianism, rigidity, neuroticism,and extremeness were administered to 250 male and female students at the University of Cairo, Egypt, to investigate whether there are any differences in dogmatism and its underlying personality characteristics associated with the Egyptian culture in comparison with the American and English cultures. The Egyptian mean dogmatism score was larger than the comparable means obtained for American and English college students (p less than .001). However, with use of Hotelling factor analysis and the varimax orthogonal rotation method, dogmatism was found to be almost independent of the rigidity and extremeness scores, indicating that in cultures where strength of believing can be considered a part of the socially accepted norms (e.g., Arab Eastern cultures), dogmatism rests on different cognitive and personality processes than in the West.