Authoritarian Personality

1. Authoritarian Personality T. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D. Levinson, R. Nevitt Sanford 1950

2. Seeking authority Prejudice Anti-Semitism Authoritarian Personality Obedience to authority Milgram experiment Eichmann? Nazi Movement

3. Authoritarian Personality:Theory & Research

4. M Hetherington & J. Weiler (2009)Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics

5. Earlier Studies • Jean-Paul Sartre: Anti-Semite & Jew • Erich Fromm: Escape from Freedom  close link of valuing authority & strong leaders with ethnic prejudice

6. 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

7. Status Anxiety • Authoritarian parenting intensified by status anxiety • Movement of rural people to lower levels of urban societies: insecurity norm ambiguity upward mobility

8. 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

9. Study Design • Scales to measure facets of authoritarian syndrome • Surveys of target groups • Clinical-style interviews • Projective tests

10. Survey Scales • A-S: Anti-Semitism • E: Ethnocentrism • PEC: Political & Economic Conservatism • F: potential for Fascism A-S, E & PEC measure manifest attitudes F measures latent personality organization

11. Hypothesis If A-S, E, PEC all positively correlated with F, then form syndrome

12. F – ScalePotential for Fascism Scale 9 Sub-Scales: Each measuring a facet of authoritarian syndrome

13. 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

14. Authoritarian Submission A 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.

15. 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.

16. Projectivity A 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.

17. Sex Exaggerated 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. Anti-Introception An 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.

22. 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)

23. Evidence for Syndrome • A-S with F: r = .53 • E with F: r = .65 • PEC with F: r = .57

24. Theory Parents’ status anxiety authoritarian parenting (rigid & harsh) identification with aggressor projection of bad qualities & displacement of hostility toward out-groups

25. 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”?

26. 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