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:

insecuritynorm ambiguityupward 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 ToughnessA 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 & StereotypyThe 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