Dogmatism, hostility, aggression, and gender roles

The relationships between dogmatism, hostility, and aggression for males and females were studied. Ss were 74 male and 109 female college students, who were administered the D Scale, Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory, Megargee Overcontrolled Hostility Inventory, Gough-Sanford Rigidity Scale, and Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Significant positive relationships were found between dogmatism and hostility for both males and females (p less than .001). This confirmed theoretical formulations that postulated the more dogmatic to be pervasively hostile, rather than limited to directed expressions of hostility such as prejudice. Only for males, however, was a significant negative relationship between dogmatism and the overcontrolling of hostility found (p less than .05). In this, and other relationships, males appeared to be more able to integrate aggressive behaviors into personality patterns. While dogmatism related to several personality patterns, it had no relationship to social desirability. Rigidity and dogmatism presented essentially different personality constellations. Feelings of guilt were related significantly to disaffected patterns such as dogmatism (p less than .001), hostility (p less than .001), and aggression (p less than .05), which suggests a turning inward of feelings of anger and disappointment in addition to their outward expression.