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Authoritarian Personality
T. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D. Levinson, R. Nevitt Sanford
1950
Nazi Movement
• Seeking authority• Prejudice• Anti-Semitism
Authoritarian
Personality
• Obedience to authority
Milgram experiment
Eichmann?
Authoritarian Personality:
Theory & Research
M Hetherington & J. Weiler (2009)Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics
Earlier Studies
• Jean-Paul Sartre: Anti-Semite & Jew
• Erich Fromm: Escape from Freedom
close link of valuing authority & strong leaders with ethnic prejudice
Authoritarian Parenting
• “Rigid” morality:– Absolute right and wrong– Intolerance of ambiguity, shades of gray
• Human nature: sinful, willful– Children must be taught obedience
• Society: struggle for survival of fittest– Children must be toughened to compete
• Fathers must inspire fear & “respect”– Threats & physical punishment
Status Anxiety
• Authoritarian parenting intensified by status anxiety
• Movement of rural people to lower levels of urban societies:
insecurity
norm ambiguity
upward mobility
Personality Syndrome
• Sense of insecurity & vulnerability
• Submission to & identification with threatening in-group authorities
• Source of threat shifted to out-group
• Projection of negative traits out-group
• Displacement of aggression out-group
Study Design
• Scales to measure facets of authoritarian syndrome
• Surveys of target groups
• Clinical-style interviews
• Projective tests
Survey Scales
• A-S: Anti-Semitism
• E: Ethnocentrism
• PEC: Political & Economic Conservatism
• F: potential for Fascism
A-S, E & PEC measure manifest attitudesF measures latent personality organization
Hypothesis
If A-S, E, PEC all positively correlated with F, then form syndrome
F – ScalePotential for Fascism Scale
9 Sub-Scales: Each measuring a facet of authoritarian syndrome
Conventionalism
A rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values
• Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.
• The businessman and manufacturer are much more important to society than the artist and the professor
Authoritarian SubmissionA submissive, uncritical attitude toward
idealized moral authorities of the in-group.
• Young people sometimes get rebellious ideas, but as they grow up they ought to get over them and settle down.
• Science has its place, but there are many important things that can never possibly be understood by the human mind.
Authoritarian Aggression
A tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values
• Sex crimes, such as rape and attacks on children deserve more than mere imprisonment; such criminals ought to be publicly whipped, or worse.
• If people would talk less and work more, everybody would be better off.
ProjectivityA disposition to believe that wild and
dangerous things go on in the world; the projection of unconscious emotional impulses.
• Wars and social troubles may someday be ended by an earthquake or flood that will destroy the whole world.
• Nowadays when so many different kinds of people move around and mix together so much, a person has to protect himself especially carefully against catching an infection or disease from them.
SexExaggerated concern with sexual
“goings-on.”
• The wild sex life of the old Greeks and Romans was tame compared to some of the goings-on in this country, even in places where people might least expect it.
• Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished.
Power and Toughness
A preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures.
• People can be divided into two distinct classes: the weak and the strong.
• Most people don’t realize how much our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places.
Destructiveness & Cynicism
A generalized hostility & vilification of the human
• Human nature being what it is, there will always be war and conflict.
• Familiarity breeds contempt.
Superstition & Stereotypy
The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate, the disposition to think in rigid categories.
• Some day it will probably be shown that astrology can explain a lot of things.
• Some people are born with an urge to jump from high places.
Anti-IntroceptionAn opposition to the subjective, the
imaginative, the tender-minded.
• When a person has a problem or worry, it is best for him not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.
• Nowadays more and more people are prying into matters that should remain personal and private.
Evidence for Syndrome
• Factor analysis of F-scale items found one factor– No evidence sub-scales form separate
factors
• F-scale items have high reliability (inter-item correlations)
Evidence for Syndrome
• A-S with F: r = .53
• E with F: r = .65
• PEC with F: r = .57
TheoryParents’ status anxiety
authoritarian parenting (rigid & harsh)
identification with aggressor
projection of bad qualities & displacement of hostility
toward out-groups
Authoritarianism, SES & Education
• Strong correlation of F-scale score with education
“Authoritarianism may be the world-view of the uneducated in western industrial societies.”
Or product of “status anxiety”?
Critique
• Sampling: purposive samples of people in organizations
“joiners” differ from non-joiners
• Item wording: all positively-phrased
“Yea-sayers” vs. “Nay-sayers”
• Interviewers & coders knew study hypotheses