EXTREMISM TENDENCIES, PERSONALITY TRAITS, SOCIAL AXIOMS, AND GENDER ROLE BELIEFS AMONG YOUNG ADULTS

Abstract

The present research aimed to assess extremism tendencies, personality traits, social axioms and gender role beliefs among graduating young adults. This research was completed in three independent studies. Study I aimed for translation, and cross language validation of the Social Axioms Survey Scale (Leung et al., 2002) into Urdu. Study II, the pilot study was done to assess psychometrics for the study variables and general trends in the data on a sample of 210 young adults. Results showed that Urdu Version of Social Axioms Survey Scale, Urdu version of Gender Role Beliefs Scale (Khan, 2006), Urdu Version of NEO PI-R (Chishti, 2002), and The Extremism Scale (Altaf, 2002) were internally consistent and can be used in the study. Study III: the main study was carried out to achieve the overall objectives of the study. Sample (N=1000) consisted of young adults with an age range of 18-24 years and mean age of 21.40 years. Alpha reliability coefficients were established on a large data set of adults for the Urdu versions of Social Axioms Survey Scale (, .81 - .92); Gender Role Beliefs Scale (, .90); NEO PI-R (, .87 - .92); and The Extremism Scale (, .76 - .88). Factorial structure of the study instruments was validated with 1st and 2nd order confirmatory factor analyses. All the Indices of model fit (GFI, AGFI, CFI, NFI) indicated a good fit for the Urdu versions of Social Axioms Survey Scale (.90 - .96); Gender Role Beliefs Scale (.95 - .97); NEO PI-R (.93 - .96); and The Extremism Scale (.92 - 98) with acceptable factor loadings. Norms for the domain scales (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) of the Urdu version of NEO PI-R (Chishti, 2002) on a data of adults in Pakistan were reported in the form of Percentiles, Z ix scores and T scores. Results showed that an individual with raw score of 120 on extraversion domain has 3 percentile score in present study. While at the same raw score, percentile score is 69 for the English man. These findings supported the idea of having the local norms for the NEO PI-R-Urdu version. The effects of personality domain scales on subscales of extremism tendencies were explored and it was found that neuroticism has negative impact on submission to authority and agreeableness has negative impact on hostility/intolerance and rigidity. Subscales of social axioms like social flexibility has negative impact on submission to authority; fate control has positive effect on rigidity; and religiosity also has significant positive impact on power and toughness. Gender role beliefs have no direct impact on extremism tendencies. Finally, the mediating role of gender role beliefs and social axioms on relationship between personality domain scales and extremism tendencies was tested through model fit indices. Results partially supported the mediating role of both the variables. Gender role beliefs fully mediated the relationship between extraversion, and power and toughness. Multivariate analyses revealed significant differences in hostility/intolerance where men had significantly higher mean score as compared to women. Adults with high income were high in intolerance while people with low income were high in submission to authority. Adults, with high level of education, have less traditional gender role beliefs as compared to adults with low level of education. Overall, findings of the study have highlighted the role of gender, age, monthly income, level of education, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, social axioms, and gender role beliefs to predict extremism tendencies.