Although the relationship between personality and social behavior has long been a matter of central concern to social psychologists, few studies have been made in this area. The investigation reported here examines the effect of certain personality characteristics on the resolution of conflicting obligations—obligation to friends and obligations to social roles. The results emphasize the complex yet systematic relationship of the authoritarian personality to behavior which is considered particularly appropriate in bureaucratic systems. The author is a Research Associate with the Organizational Behavior Project at Princeton University, and this paper, in its present form, was prepared during his membership on this project With some modifications it contains the substantive portion of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Social Psychology at the University of Michigan in 1951. A briefer version of the paper was read at the meetings of the American Psychological Association held in Atlantic City, N.J., in September 1952.