Nazi Movement
• Seeking authority
• Prejudice
• Anti-Semitism
• Obedience to
authority
Milgram experiment
Authoritarian
Personality
Eichmann?
The Scar of Race
Paul Sniderman &
Thomas Piazza
1993
Scar of Race
• Studied Americans’ attitudes about
ethnic minorities.
• Used data from several national surveys
in 1980s & 1990s.
Authoritarian Personality
T. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D.
Levinson, R. Nevitt Sanford
1950
Earlier Studies
• Jean-Paul Sartre: Anti-Semite & Jew
• Erich Fromm: Escape from Freedom
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 attitudes
F measures latent personality organization
Hypothesis
If A-S, E, PEC all positively
correlated with F, then form syndrome
F – Sacle
Potential 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 Submission
A submissive, uncritical attitude toward
idealized moral authorities of the ingroup.
• 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.
Projectivity
A disposition to believe that wile 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.
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.
Power and Toughness
A preoccupation with the dominancesubmission, strong-weak, leaderfollower 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 & Cynacism
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-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.
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: interitem correlations
Evidence for Syndrome
• A-S with F:
r = .53
• E with F:
r = .65
• PEC with F:
r = .57
Theory
Parents’ 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 worldview 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