Self-Esteem and Conservatism among Female College Students

Abstract

In view of the previously reported relationship between self-esteem and authoritarianism as well as the promulgated kinship between authoritarianism and conservatism, this study used the Janis and Field Selfesteem Inventory and the Conservatism Scale to evaluate the relationship between self-esteem and conservatism for 93 white college women. R was .06 between the scales; older students were significantly less conservative than younger ones, Jews less conservative than both Catholics and Protestants, and students majoring in the social sciences were significantly less conservative than those majoring in either literature-arts or mathematics-natural sciences. There were no statistically significant differences for age, religion, or college major on the self-esteem inventory.