Adorno and his colleagues made an attempt to describe the behavior of people in the pre-war era in Germany. Their research led to the introduction of F-scale which is used as a measurement for conservative and authoritarian attitudes.

By the use of F-scale, we tried to evaluate authoritarian traits in a group of Iranian medical students in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Socio-economic status of the present-day Iran is comparable to pre-war era in Germany.

80 medical students (40 men and 40 women) in different years of education were randomly selected and evaluated by the questionnaire. By statistical analysis, authoritarian traits were compared between male and female students and also in different years of education (First year, 3rd year and internship).

Female students showed a higher score than the male students. Also, we found a trend for male students to become more authoritarian over time. For the female students an opposite trends was found.

These results could be representative of different attitudes of male and female students toward authority related issues. Also, it could be in favor of different effects of education on authoritarian traits among the male and female.