Anti-Intellectualism and Political Ideology in a Sample of Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Abstract

To estimate correlations for scores on a student anti-intellectualism scale with scores on a measure of political conservatism, 235 students were given a survey containing a student anti-intellectualism scale, a political conservatism scale, and a demographics questionnaire identifying the participants' sex, college classification, ethnicity, political party affiliation, and self-described political ideology. The political conservatism scale contained two factors, Religiosity and Economic Conservatism, both of which were scored separately in addition to an overall Conservatism score. Students' Anti-intellectualism scores were correlated with Political Conservatism scores (r = .37, p<.01), with Religiosity scores (r = .42, p<.01), and with Economic Conservatism scores (r = .17, p<.05). An analysis of variance indicated a significant difference in students' Anti-intellectualism scores based on college classification (F_4,233 = 2.27, p<.04). Specifically, freshman had significantly higher scores than graduate students.

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