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

• Seeking authority
• Prejudice
• Anti-Semitism
Authoritarian
Personality
• Obedience to authority
Milgram experiment
Eichmann?

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

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

• “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

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

• 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

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

• 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

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

Each measuring a facet of authoritarian syndrome

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A generalized hostility & vilification of the human
• Human nature being what it is, there will always be war and conflict.
• Familiarity breeds contempt.

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.

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.

• Factor analysis of F-scale items found one factor
– No evidence sub-scales form separate factors
• F-scale items have high reliability (interitem correlations)

• A-S with F:
• E with F:
• PEC with F: r = .53
r = .65
r = .57

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

• 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”?

• 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