The authoritarian personality is a personality type characterized by a disposition to treat authority figures with unquestioning obedience and respect. Conceptually, the term authoritarian personality originated from the writings of Erich Fromm, and usually is applied to people who exhibit a strict and oppressive personality towards their subordinates. [1] Regardless of whether authoritarianism is more of a personality, attitude, ideology or disposition, scholars find it has significant influence on public opinion and political behavior. [2]
In his 1941 book Fear of Freedom , a psychological exploration of modern politics, Erich Fromm described authoritarianism as a defence mechanism.
In The Authoritarian Personality (1950), Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford proposed a personality type that involved the "potentially fascistic individual". [3] The historical background that influenced the theoretical development of the authoritarian personality included the rise of fascism in the 1930s, World War II (1939–1945), and The Holocaust, which indicated that the fascistic individual was psychologically susceptible to the ideology of antisemitism and to the emotional appeal of anti-democratic politics. Known as the Berkeley studies, the researches of Adorno and Frenkel-Brunswik, and of Levinson and Sanford concentrated upon prejudice, which they studied within psychoanalytic and psychosocial frameworks of Freudian and Frommian theories. The book was described as a landmark work in social science that generated significant criticism of certain methods and results [4] but also confirmation of many of the findings in independent studies. [5] Following its publication was an extensive debate on the merits of the work, with many of the themes of this debate persisting in authoritarianism research today. [6] The authoritarian person also presents a cynical and disdainful view of humanity, and a need to wield power and be tough, which arise from the anxieties produced by the perceived lapses of people who do not abide by the conventions and social norms of society (destructiveness and cynicism); a general tendency to focus upon people who violate the value system, and to act oppressively against them (authoritarian aggression); anti-intellectualism, a general opposition to the subjective and imaginative tendencies of the mind (anti-intraception); and an exaggerated concern with sexual promiscuity, especially when concerning women. [7] The f-scale fell into disrepute as being unreliable after about 10 years. [8] Other criticisms of the sociologic theory presented in The Authoritarian Personality are the validity of the psychoanalytic interpretation of personality and bias that authoritarianism exists only in the right wing of the political spectrum.[ citation needed ]
In human psychological development, the formation of the authoritarian personality occurs within the first years of a child's life, strongly influenced and shaped by the parents' personalities and the organizational structure of the child's family; thus, parent-child relations that are "hierarchical, authoritarian, [and] exploitative" can result in a child developing an authoritarian personality. [9] Authoritarian-personality characteristics are fostered by parents who have a psychological need for domination, and who harshly threaten their child to compel obedience to conventional behaviors. Moreover, such domineering parents also are preoccupied with social status, a concern they communicate by having the child follow rigid, external rules. In consequence of such domination, the child suffers emotionally from the suppression of his or her feelings of aggression and resentment towards the domineering parents, whom the child reverently idealizes, but does not criticize. Such personalities may also be related to studies in preschool children of personality and political views as reported by scientists in 2006 which concluded that some children described as being "somewhat dominating" were later found, as adults, to be "relatively liberal", and those described as "relatively over-controlled" were later found, as adults, to be "relatively conservative"; in the words of the researchers, [10]
Preschool children who 20 years later were relatively liberal were characterized as: developing close relationships, self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled, and resilient. Preschool children subsequently relatively conservative at age 23 were described as: feeling easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable.
Hetherington and Weiler argue that perceived threat is a crucial variable in activating an authoritarian disposition. They suggest this helps to explain higher rates of authoritarianism in developing countries, after social or economic crises, as well as security crises like September 11th. The authors believe that some people, who tend to be more pessimistic and experience higher levels of stress and must rely more on instinct than cognition for decision-making, while those who under normal circumstances are more optimistic and at-ease, will also respond in a more authoritarian way when feeling threatened. [11]
According to a study by Brandt and Henry, there is a direct correlation between the rates of gender inequality and the levels of authoritarian ideas in the male and female populations. It was found that in countries with less gender equality where individualism was encouraged and men occupied the dominant societal roles, women were more likely to support traits such as obedience which would allow them to survive in an authoritarian environment and less likely to encourage ideas such as independence and imagination. In countries with higher levels of gender equality, men held less authoritarian views. It is theorized that this occurs due to the stigma attached to individuals who question the cultural norms set by the dominant individuals and establishments in an authoritarian society as a way to prevent the psychological stress caused by the active ostracizing of the stigmatized individuals. [12]
C.G. Sibley and J. Duckitt reported that more recent research has produced two more effective scales of measurement for predicting prejudice and other characteristics associated with authoritarian personalities. The first scale is called the Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and the second is called the social dominance orientation (SDO). [13]
Bob Altemeyer used the right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) scale, to identify, measure, and quantify the personality traits of authoritarian people. [14] The political personality type identified with the RWA scale indicates the existence of three psychological tendencies and attitudinal clusters characteristic of the authoritarian personality: (i) Submission to legitimate authorities; (ii) Aggression towards minority groups whom authorities identified as targets for sanctioned political violence; and (iii) Adherence to cultural values and political beliefs endorsed by the authorities. [15] As measured with the NEO-PI-R Openness scale, the research indicates a negative correlation (r = 0.57) between the personality trait of "openness to experience", of the Five Factor Model of the human personality.
The research of Jost, Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Sulloway (2003) indicates that authoritarianism and right-wing authoritarianism are ideological constructs for social cognition, by which political conservatives view people who are the Other who is not the Self. That the authoritarian personality and the conservative personality share two, core traits: (i) resistance to change (social, political. economic), and (ii) justification for social inequality among the members of society. Conservatives have a psychological need to manage existential uncertainty and threats with situational motives (striving for dominance in social hierarchies) and with dispositional motives (self-esteem and the management of fear).
The research on ideology, politics, and racist prejudice, by John Duckitt and Chris Sibley, identified two types of authoritarian worldview: (i) that the social world is dangerous, which leads to right-wing authoritarianism; and (ii) that the world is a ruthlessly competitive jungle, which leads to social dominance orientation. [16] In a meta-analysis of the research, Sibley and Duckitt explained that the social-dominance orientation scale helps to measure the generalization of prejudice and other authoritarian attitudes that can exist within social groups. Although both the right-wing authoritarianism scale and the social-dominance orientation scale can accurately measure authoritarian personalities, the scales usually are not correlated. [13]
Hetherington and Weiler describe the authoritarian personality as one that has a greater need for order, and less willingness to tolerate ambiguity as well as a tendency to rely on established authorities to provide that order. They acknowledge that while everyone seeks to bring some semblance of order to their world, non-authoritarian personalities are more likely to use concepts like fairness and equality, instead of the time-honored texts, conventions or leaders that are more common among authoritarian personalities. They also note that almost everyone becomes more authoritarian when they feel threat, anxiety or fatigue, as the emotional, reactive parts of the brain crowd out cognitive abilities. They also assert that scholars do not know whether to consider authoritarianism a personality trait, an attitude or an ideology. [2]
In 2021, Morning Consult (an American data intelligence company) published the results of a survey measuring the levels of authoritarianism in adults in America and seven other Western countries. The study used Bob Altemeyer's right-wing authoritarianism scale, but they omitted the following two statements from Altemeyer's scale: (1) "The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just "loud mouths" showing off their ignorance"; and (2) "Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married." Morning Consult's scale thus had just 20 items, with a score range of 20 to 180 points. Morning Consult found that 25.6% of American adults qualify as "high RWA" (scoring between 111 and 180 points), while 13.4% of American adults qualify as "low RWA" (scoring 20 to 63 points). [17]
| Low RWA | High RWA | |
|---|---|---|
| US | 13.4% | 25.6% |
| UK | 13.6% | 10.4% |
| Germany | 17.4% | 6.7% |
| France | 10.2% | 10.7% |
| Spain | 17.9% | 9.2% |
| Italy | 17.9% | 12.9% |
| Australia | 17.1% | 12.9% |
| Canada | 21.3% | 13.4% |
In a 2009 book, Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler identified evangelical Protestants as the most authoritarian of voting blocs in the United States. Furthermore, the former Confederate states (i.e. "the South") showed higher levels of authoritarianism than the rest. Rural populations tend to be more authoritarian than urban ones. People who preferred simple problems to complex ones, had less formal education, and those scoring lower in political knowledge also tended to score higher in authoritarianism. The authoritarianism levels of these demographics were assessed with four items that appeared in the 2004 American National Election Studies survey: [8]
These questions were designed to force a choice, not unlike in politics, when voters are forced to choose between competing values. Some respondents chose both responses to some of the questions, and the four questions are averaged together, with a score of 1 meaning they answered all four questions with a more authoritarian response and 0 with a less authoritarian response. Half of the americans surveyed scored .75 or higher, indicating that the average American had a more authoritarian disposition in 2004. [8]
| Group | Mean authoritarianism (2004 data) [8] |
|---|---|
| Religion | |
| Evangelical Protestant | 0.709 |
| Catholic | 0.571 |
| Mainline Protestant | 0.530 |
| Secular | 0.481 |
| Jewish | 0.383 |
| Church Attendance | |
| Weekly or More | 0.689 |
| Less than Weekly | 0.549 |
| Region | |
| South [lower-alpha 1] | 0.657 |
| Non-south | 0.547 |
| Population density | |
| Rural | 0.603 |
| Small town | 0.584 |
| Suburb | 0.524 |
| Large City | 0.502 |
| Inner City | 0.549 |
| Education | |
| Less than High School | 0.754 |
| High School Degree | 0.657 |
| Some College | 0.590 |
| College Degree | 0.505 |
| Graduate Degree | 0.373 |
A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more geometric axes that represent independent political dimensions. The expressions political compass and political map are used to refer to the political spectrum as well, especially to popular two-dimensional models of it.
Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's perceived personal characteristics, such as political affiliation, sex, gender, gender identity, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, nationality, culture, complexion, beauty, height, body weight, occupation, wealth, education, criminality, sport-team affiliation, music tastes or other perceived characteristics.
Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field, dedicated to understanding politics, politicians and political behavior from a psychological perspective, and psychological processes using socio-political perspectives. The relationship between politics and psychology is considered bidirectional, with psychology being used as a lens for understanding politics and politics being used as a lens for understanding psychology. As an interdisciplinary field, political psychology borrows from a wide range of disciplines, including: anthropology, economics, history, international relations, journalism, media, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology.
The California F-scale is a 1947 personality test, designed by German Theodor W. Adorno and others to measure the "authoritarian personality". The "F" stands for "fascist". The F-scale measures responses on several different components of authoritarianism, such as conventionalism, authoritarian aggression, superstition and stereotypy, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and sex. Scores acquired from the F-scale could be directly associated with background components, educational level, and intellectual capacity. It is an indirect type of test that ensures the result would not be due to the individual's fake responses; this is possible because the purpose of the measurement and which attitude is being measured are initially concealed from the participants. The existence of this correlation could possibly affect the way in which the F-scale accurately measures the authoritarian personality syndrome. The F-scale has two principal purposes: it aims to measure prejudice and anti-democratic tendencies at the personality level.
Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a personality trait measuring an individual's support for social hierarchy and the extent to which they desire their in-group be superior to out-groups. SDO is conceptualized under social dominance theory as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination; that is, it is a measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any social system and the domination over lower-status groups. It is a predisposition toward anti-egalitarianism within and between groups.
In psychology, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a set of attitudes, describing somebody who is highly submissive to their authority figures, acts aggressively in the name of said authorities, and is conformist in thought and behavior. The prevalence of this attitude in a population varies from culture to culture, as a person's upbringing and education play a strong role in determining whether somebody develops this sort of worldview.
Ambiguity tolerance–intolerance is a psychological construct that describes the relationship that individuals have with ambiguous stimuli or events. Individuals view these stimuli in a neutral and open way or as a threat.
The Authoritarian Personality is a 1950 sociology book by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, researchers working at the University of California, Berkeley, during and shortly after World War II.
Robert Anthony Altemeyer was a Canadian psychologist who was Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Altemeyer also produced the right-wing authoritarianism scale, or RWA Scale, as well as the related left-wing authoritarianism scale, or LWA Scale.
Else Frenkel-Brunswik was a Polish-born Austrian Jewish psychologist. She was forced to leave Poland and later Austria as a result of anti-Jewish persecution. She is best known for her contributions to The Authoritarian Personality (1950), her collaboration with Theodor W. Adorno, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford. It is considered a milestone work in personality theory and social psychology.
Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model. Openness involves six facets, or dimensions: active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety (adventurousness), intellectual curiosity, and challenging authority. A great deal of psychometric research has demonstrated that these facets or qualities are significantly correlated. Thus, openness can be viewed as a global personality trait consisting of a set of specific traits, habits, and tendencies that cluster together.
Social dominance theory (SDT) is a social psychological theory of intergroup relations that examines the caste-like features of group-based social hierarchies, and how these hierarchies remain stable and perpetuate themselves. According to the theory, group-based inequalities are maintained through three primary mechanisms: institutional discrimination, aggregated individual discrimination, and behavioral asymmetry. The theory proposes that widely shared cultural ideologies provide the moral and intellectual justification for these intergroup behaviors by serving to make privilege normal. For data collection and validation of predictions, the social dominance orientation (SDO) scale was composed to measure acceptance of and desire for group-based social hierarchy, which was assessed through two factors: support for group-based dominance and generalized opposition to equality, regardless of the ingroup's position in the power structure.
Daniel J. Levinson, a psychologist, was one of the founders of the field of positive adult development. Levinson is most well known for his theory of stage-crisis view, however he also made major contributions to the fields of behavioral, social, and developmental psychology. His interest in the social sciences began with studies on personality and authoritarianism, and eventually progressed to studies on development. Greatly influenced by the work of Erik Erikson, Elliott Jaques, and Bernice Neugarten, his stage-crisis view sought to incorporate all aspects of adult development in order to establish a more holistic approach to understanding the life cycle. In doing so, Levinson discussed the various developmental tasks and/or crises that one must address within each stage as well as how they contribute to the progression of development. Although much controversy surrounds his research methods, Levinson interviewed both men and women to uncover concrete patterns that occur within similar age ranges. Through these studies, he determined that men and women essentially progress through the same cycle of life, however they differentiate in what he refers to as "The Dream". He published his findings and theory within his two major books, The Seasons of a Man's Life and The Seasons of a Woman's Life; both of which remain as influential publications within the field of psychology. Being both simple in nature and open to further investigation, Daniel Levinson's legacy and lasting contributions are mainly to theory and entail profound implications for social as well as behavioral psychology.
The Global Change Game is a large-scale educational simulation devised in Winnipeg in December 1991 by a group of students from the University of Manitoba, including Rob Altemeyer. The game is played on "a colourful hand-painted world map the size of a basketball court". It is a simulation that involves exploring, understanding and solving some of the global issues of its time.
Nevitt Sanford was an American professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and later at Stanford University. A Harvard doctoral student of Gordon Allport, PhD in social psychology and Henry Murray, MD at the Harvard Clinic, as a young Cal professor Sanford studied ethnocentrism and antisemitism, and was the senior author along with Columbia University philosopher Theodor Adorno of The Authoritarian Personality, also known as "the Berkeley Study."
Angst und Vorurteil: AIDS-Ängste als Gegenstand der Vorurteilsforschung is a sociology book written by German sociologist, ethnologist, and sexologist Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg that was first published in 1989.
John Michael Steiner was a Czech-American Sociologist and Holocaust researcher.
Authoritarian conservatism is a political ideology that seeks to uphold order, tradition and hierarchy, often with forcible suppression of radical and revolutionary enemies such as communists, Nazis, and anarchists. Authoritarian conservative movements and regimes have included Chiangism in China, Metaxism in Greece, and Francoism in Spain.
The theory of regal and kungic societal structures, or regality theory, is a theory that seeks to explain certain cultural differences based on perceived collective danger and fear.
Karen Stenner is a political scientist specialising in political psychology. Stenner has studied the political activation of authoritarian personality types, and how that activation explains the contemporary success of some authoritarian political figures as well as enduring conflicts between some individuals and the broad tolerance that characterises liberal democracy.
| Similar personality concepts | |
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| In society | |
| Pathological narcissism | |
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