Author(s)

Adrian Furnham^1*, Viren Swami^2,3

¹Norwegian Business School (BI), Nydalveien, Olso, Norway.
²Department of Psychology, Angia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.
³Centre for Psychological Medicine, Perdana University, Serdang, Malaysia.

Two hundred and fifty adults completed a number of questionnaires about their attitudes to surveillance. They included measures of personality, paranoia, political cynicism, attitudes to authority, belief in conspiracy theories and the Big Five personality traits. The 25-item, surveillance scale, developed for this study, factored neatly into pro- and anti-surveillance attitudes. The strongest and most consistent correlates were attitudes to authority and political cynicism. Regressions indicated that the most powerful correlates of pro-surveillance attitudes were attitudes to authority, trait openness, conformity and right-wing authoritarianism. The most powerful anti-surveillance correlates were attitudes to authority, political cynicism, belief in conspiracy theories and paranoia. Implications and limitations of this study are considered.

Attitudes to Authority, Beliefs, Conformity, Personality, Surveillance, Conspiracy

Furnham, A. and Swami, V. (2019) Attitudes toward Surveillance: Personality, Belief and Value Correlates. Psychology, 10, 609-623. doi: 10.4236/psych.2019.105039.