the authoritarian personality

Question 1

ideology

Answer 1

• an organisation of opinions, attitudes, and values - a way of thinking about man and society

Question 2

cultural ideologies

Answer 2

• because they are represented and reproduced in culture (e.g., news, entertainment, propaganda, etc)
• “ideologies have an existence independent of any single individual”

Question 3

ideological attractiveness

Answer 3

• cultural “ideologies have for different individuals, different degrees of appeal, a matter that depends upon the individuals needs and the degree to which these needs are being satisfied or frustrated”

Question 4

individual ideologies

Answer 4

• “the political, economic, and social convictions of an individual often form a broad and coherent pattern… an expression of deep-lying trends in his personality”
• this is TAPs “major hypothesis”, i.e., that adult political ideologies and preferences stem from and express - and can therefore be used to reveal - underlying personality needs

Question 5

needs

Answer 5

• “The forces of personality are primarily needs (drives, wishes, emotional impulses) which vary from one individual to another in their quality, their intensity, their mode of gratification, and the objects of their attachment…
• There are primitive emotional needs, there are needs to avoid punishment and to keep the good will of the social group, there are needs to maintain harmony and integration within the self”

Question 6

dispositions

Answer 6

• what we are claiming is within us in different circumstances
• changing the stimulus in which we react
• personality is largely latent, becoming manifest in particular ways in particular contexts
• “personality is mainly a potential; it is a readiness for behaviour rather than behaviour itself; although it consists in dispositions to behave in certain ways, the behaviour that actually occurs will always depend on the objective situation”

Question 7

experience affects personality

Answer 7

• what is around us may develop our personality and it may create a pattern to our manifested development
• “Far from being something which is given in the beginning, which remains fixed and acts upon the surrounding world, personality evolves under the impact of the social environment and can never be isolated from the social totality within which it occurs”

Question 8

impressionable youths

Answer 8

• presents childhood experience and how we react to things in the future
• “The effects of environmental forces in moulding the personality are, in general, the more profound the earlier in the life history of the individual they are brought to bear. The major influences upon personality development arise in the course of child training as carried forward in a setting of family life”

Question 9

society affects personalities

Answer 9

• fashions within society can change, what one society may find acceptable other may frown upon it
• “It is not only that each family in trying to rear its children proceeds according to the ways of the social, ethnic, and religious groups in which it has membership, but crude economic factors affect directly the parents’ behaviour toward the child. This means that broad changes in social conditions and institutions will have a direct bearing upon the kinds of personalities that develop within a society”

Question 10

social psychological ideology

Answer 10

• it will happen to a large group of people - if you change an ideology,it will affect others
• “When the opinions, attitudes, and values of numerous individuals are examined, common patterns will be discovered” that additionally bear similarities to cultural ideologies, e.g., fascism.

Question 11

comprehensive analysis

Answer 11

• “The present research… focuses attention… upon… the individual for whom the propaganda is designed. In so doing, it attempts to take into account not only the psychological structure of the individual but the total objective situation in which he lives”

Question 12

individual approach

Answer 12

• if we change ideologies, we can control individuals
• The “general approach” was “to consider personality as an agency through which sociological influences upon ideology are mediated. If the role of personality can be made clear, it should be possible better to understand which sociological factors are the most crucial ones and in what ways they achieve their effects”

Question 13

when authoritarian appeals

Answer 13

• authoritarian ideology is appealing when people’s psychological needs feel met by ‘blowing up while kicking down’, i.e., obeying ‘father figures’ and dealing firmly with perceived threats to the status quo

Question 14

the TAP sample

Answer 14

• over 2000 white, non-Jewish, native-born non-fascist Americans: predominantly middle-class, relatively well-educated, and youngish
• deliberate exclusion of minority groups
• recruited via formal organisations

Question 15

scale development

Answer 15

• anti-semitic (AS) scale
• ethnocentrism (E) scale
• political and economic conservatism (PEC) scale
• qualitative comparison of Low and High E people
  
  • Interviews and projective techniques
  • Seeking key (subtle) differentiating factors - found lots.
    
    • Used to inform subsequent questionnaires
• potential for Fascism (F) scale

Question 16

validity

Answer 16

• “The general trends to which the scales pertained were conceived very broadly, as complex systems of thought about wide areas of social living. To define these trends empirically it was necessary to obtain responses to many specific issues – enough to [1] ‘cover’ the area mapped out conceptually – and to [2] show that each of them bore some relation to the whole” (Adorno et al, 1950, p. 14)

Question 17

masked concept capture

Answer 17

• “care was taken to allow the subject ‘a way out,’ that is to say, to make it possible for him to agree with such a statement while maintaining that he was not ‘prejudiced’ or ‘undemocratic.’” (Adorno et al, 1950, p. 15)
• E.g., “the trouble with letting Jews into a nice neighbourhood is that they gradually give it a typically Jewish atmosphere” (AS)
• the “trouble”?

Question 18

the anti-semitic (A-S) personality

Answer 18

• readiness to support or oppose anti-semitic ideology, a “broad system of ideas including”:
  
  • Negative opinions regarding Jews
  • Hostile attitudes towards them
    
    • ‘moral’ values which permeate the opinions and justify the attitudes.

Question 19

A-S sub-scales

Answer 19

• offensive
• threatening
• attitudes - about what should be done to or against Jews
• seclusion
• intrusive

Question 20

the ethnocentric (E) personality

Answer 20

• readiness to support or oppose ideologies incorporating in-group/out-group hostility
  1) anti-black
  2) anti-minorities
  3) ‘patriotic’ - ingroup favouring and out-group derogatory

Question 21

political and economic conservatism

Answer 21

• an attachment to “things as they are”; a resistance to social change
• also elements of individual liberty and personal responsibility (and opposition to state ‘interface’ with such things)

Question 22

method: recursive triangulation

Answer 22

• “In order to study potentially antidemocratic individuals it was necessary first to identify them. Hence a start was made by constructing a questionnaire and having it filled out anonymously by a large number of people… A number of individuals who showed the greatest amount of agreement with these [antidemocratic] statements [in the questionnaire] – and, by way of contrast, some who showed the most disagreement or, in some instances, were most neutral – were then studied by means of interviews and other clinical techniques. On the basis of these individual studies the questionnaire was revised, and the whole procedure repeated”
  (Adorno et al, 1950, pp. 12-13)

Question 23

the f-scale

Answer 23

• potential for “fascism”
• target-neutral items
• ideologically-neutral items
• based on ethnocentrism differentiations
• all pro-trait
• nine (or 10) clusters

Question 24

F-scale ‘clusters’

Answer 24

• conventionalism
• authoritarian submission
• authoritarian aggression
• others

Question 25

F-scale: final analysis

Answer 25

• good reliability
• single factor
• very strong correlation (.75) with E-sclae
• strong correlation (.57) with PEC

Question 26

my conclusions

Answer 26

• relatively:
  1) excellent samples - huge and varied
  2) excellent methods - breadth and dept, multi-method, multi-revised
  3) excellent focus - not ‘benign’ in-group preference but ‘genuine’ prejudice
  4) excellent results - A-S, E, PEC, and F always covary, prediction of real behaviour
• problems of over 50 years ago do not merit wholesale rejection:
  1) Any more than finding a fault with any theory before the currently most fashionable one is a compelling reason to reject the former theory, or accept the fashionable one.

Question 27

right-wing authoritarians

Answer 27

• submissions to the established, legitimate authorities in their society
• aggression in the name of those authorities
• conventionalism

Question 28

make ____ great again

Answer 28

• 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
• our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us
• what our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path

Question 29

social dominance orientation

Answer 29

• “the extent to which one desires that one’s in-group dominate and be superior to out-groups”

Question 30

the nature of SDO

Answer 30

• SDO shows several correlations where RWA shows little, none, or opposite correlations, particularly with respect to power (.43 vs. .09), psychoticism (.34 vs. -.01), lack of universalism (-.31 vs. –.17), gender (.29 vs. .09), and lack of benevolence (-.20 vs. .19)

Question 31

the nature of RWA

Answer 31

• RWA shows several correlations where SDO shows little, none, or opposite correlations, particularly with respect to religious fundamentalism (.77 vs. .04), self-righteousness (.63 vs. .13), traditionalism (.51 vs. .04), dangerous world beliefs (.49 vs. .00), conformity (.40 vs. .00), and need for structure (.34 vs. .06)

Question 32

thus….

Answer 32

• “In… threat-control-driven prejudice, outgroups are disliked and feared because they are seen as threatening… bad, dangerous, immoral, and deviant…”
• “In… competitive-dominance-driven prejudice, outgroups are despised and derogated because they are believed to be inferior, worthless, and inadequate…” (p. 88)

Question 33

so…

Answer 33

• “if you want to explain… many kinds of prejudice… they are largely matters of personality. And only two kinds of personality are basically involved: the social dominator and the right-wing authoritarian” (p. 60)

Question 34

SDO-D: dominance

Answer 34

• an ideal society requires some groups to be on top and others to be on the bottom
• some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups
• no one group should dominate in society
• groups at the bottom are just as deserving as groups at the top

Question 35

SDO-E: anti-egalitarianism

Answer 35

• group equality should not be our primary goal
• it is unjust to try to make groups equal
• we should do what we can to equalise conditions for different groups
• we should work to give all groups an equal chance to succeed

Question 36

conclusions

Answer 36

• need to differentiate Authoritarianism (dogmatism, fundamentalism, zealousness) and authority (which could be left or right; in power or seeking it) RWA is authoritarianism to right-wing authorities (whether or not in power) SDO and LWA are a mess