What is authoritarianism? The authors of the original research were concerned with the problem of discovering whether there is a type of personality which is predisposed to Fascism and ethnic prejudice, and by implication, a personality of what they describe as generally anti-democratic tendency. They did indeed find evidence that such a type of personality exists, and produced a test (the California F Scale) designed to measure this dimension. More recently, and closer to home, a study done in Jamaica last year comparing the effectiveness of teachers at remedial reading teaching, showed quite clearly that teachers with flexible, democratic attitudes, who were alive to the needs of their pupils for confidence and encouragement, achieved far better results than those with more authoritarian attitudes.