AUTHORITARIANISM AND STUDENT REACTION TO AIRPLANE HIJACKING.

The article presents a paper that reports the successful prediction of attitudes toward an international incident on the basis of scores on the California F scale. Some 20 minutes after leaving Miami, Florida, one morning late in July 1961, the pilot of a commercial airplane was forced at gunpoint to alter course and fly to Havana, Cuba, with his crew and 32 passengers. News media reported the hijacking and indicated that a fully armed U.S. Air Force plane had intercepted the hijacked plane and had followed it but had turned back as the commercial plane approached Havana. The evening reports of news media in Miami headlined this story and featured a call by Florida's Senator for U.S. Military forces to be sent into Havana to recover the airplane. At this point it was predicted that persons favorable to this view would score higher on the California F scale than those unfavorable to it. It was hypothesized that an individual's attitude toward authoritarianism would play an important role in shaping his reaction to the recommendation that military force be used.