The Authoritarian Personality in the st 21 Century. Gareth Norris This thesis is submitted to Bond University in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. This thesis represents my own work and contains no material which has previously been submitted for a degree or diploma at this or any other institution, except where due acknowledgement is made. Signed:…Gareth Norris…… Date:…28/07/2005…… Acknowledgments: Firstly, I would like to thank Bond University for providing me with the opportunity to conduct this research, and all the staff there who have provided me with advice and support; colleagues from the library, the Humanities and Social Science Faculty, and in particular the Criminology department. Secondly, credit must also go to my family and friends and my wife Heather, who have not only endured the final preparations of this manuscript but have provided me with the inspiration to succeed in completing this project. My sincerest debt of gratitude must go to Professor Paul Wilson who has nurtured my academic career, and without his experience and expertise in the field, this thesis would have not been possible. Contents: List of Tables and Figures Introduction. Chapter One – The Authoritarian Personality. Page No. 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Early Psychological Studies in Relation to Political Ideology 2 1.3 Adorno et al’s Approach 11 1.4 Early beginings - Anti-Semitism 14 1.5 Ethnocentric Ideology 22 1.6 Antidemocratic Trends 29 1.7 Political and Economic Conservatism 42 1.8 Conclusion and Rationale for the Current Study 53 Chapter Two – Post Adorno et al. 2.1 Introduction 5 2.2 Post-Adorno et al. 55 2.3 Response-set Issues 57 2.4 Alternatives and Related Constructs 61 2.5 Altemeyer and Right-wing Authoritarianism 73 2.6 In-group/Out-Group Concepts 85 2.7 Authoritarianism of the left and right 93 2.8 Conclusion 14 Chapter Three – Conceptualising the Authoritarian Personality. 3.1 Introduction 115 3.2 Defining and Conceptualising the Authoritarian Personality 115 3.3 Authoritarianism: Social Conformity and Obedience 122 3.4 Obedience and authoritarianism 127 3.5 The authoritarian as a conformist 137 3.6 Experimental and Actuarial Evidence 145 3.7 Authoritarian Model 150 3.8 Conclusion 165 Chapter Four – Method and Results. 4.1 Introduction 16 4.2 Instruments 167 4.3 Selecting a sample 178 4.4 Statistical Analysis 192 4.5 Sample Descriptives 195 4.6 Correlations of Instruments 197 4.7 Comparisons between groups 200 4.8 High vs. Low Authoritarians 211 4.9 Item Analyses – RWA validity 215 4.10 Summary of Results 218 4.1 Conclusion 20 Chapter Five – Discussion. 5.1 Introduction 221 5.2 Interpretation of results 222 5.3 Limitations and Implications 235 5.4 Introduction –Part Two 245 5.5 Social Conformity and Obedience as Authoritarianism. 245 5.6 Prejudice and Authoritarianism 253 5.7 The Resurgence of Authoritarian Explanation. 256 5.8 Reducing Authoritarianism. 263 5.9 Conclusion 269 References 270 Other Works Consulted 290 Appendix 1 – Instruments Appendix 2 – Statistical Analyses Tables and Figures: Chapter Two: Figure 2.1: Range of political ideologies (Adapted from Eysenck, 1954) – p.63 Figure 2.2: Relationship between political ideologies on democratic dimension (Adapted from Eysenck, 1954) – p.63 Figure 2.3: Two-dimensional representation of political ideologies (Adapted from Eysenck, 1954) – p.64 Figure 2.4: Overlap between Communist, Fascist, Totalitarian Ideology – p.109 Chapter Three: Table 3.1: Correlations among social conformity-Autonomy Measures and Authoritarianism (Adapted from Feldman, 2003) – p.121 Figure 3.1: Judgment lines in Asch’s conformity experiment (Adapted from Asch, 1956) – p.192 Figure 3.2: Egalitarian-Totalitarian Model of Authoritarianism – p.153 Chapter Four: Figure 4.1: C-Score and stage preference correlations (Lind, 2003) – p.174 Table 4.1: Descriptive Statistics of Sample – p.196 Table 4.2: Scale correlations for whole sample – p.197 Table 4.3: Scale correlations for the students – p.199 Table 4.4: Scale correlations for the non-students – p.199 Table 4.5: Descriptive table of MCSD totals –p. 200 Table 4.6: Means and Standard Deviations of MJT C-Index – p.205 Table 4.7: Descriptive analysis of RWA totals – p.207 st The Authoritarian Personality in the 21 Century Introduction. This thesis began largely as an exploration into right-wing political ideology and its relationship to The Authoritarian Personality proposed by Adorno, Frenkel- Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford (1950). It had initially been envisaged that contemporary examples would manifest themselves within many neo-Fascist or ‘White Pride’ style organisations and as an adage to their supposed historical underpinnings, would therefore be representative of modern day authoritarianism. As previously discovered by Eysenck and Coulter (1974) in their examination of British Fascists and Communists, the authoritarian syndrome is somewhat more complex to explain by way of reference to a number of radical semi-political organisations. Subsequently, the thesis was to take on a deeper and more philosophical direction as various parts of the literature were analysed and critiqued. And indeed to some extent the original proposal was abandoned in favour of a richer and more conceptual approach to our understanding of authoritarianism. This was discovered to be distinctly missing from the majority of the current literature in the field. From the outset the reliance on political ideology is apparent. However the concept is not merely a discussion on the psychology of political persuasion. One of the main arguments concerning political ideology and authoritarianism is concerned with whether there is an authoritarian of the ‘left’. Many dispute this fact and insist that authoritarianism is exclusively a right-wing phenomenon (see Christie, 1990; Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996). Original measures of authoritarianism have often made specific reference to political groups and are used to differentiate subjects in relation to their political persuasion. It has therefore been assumed that the notion of the authoritarian extends beyond that of personality and is also deeply rooted in ones Introduction Page i st The Authoritarian Personality in the 21 Century political affiliation, with those of the right being significantly more authoritarian than those of the left. The differences between these two schools of thought sees the conservative right at one end and the liberal left at the other. Therefore the traditional and rigid nature of the former being regarded as more authoritarian than the tolerant and open-minded views of the latter. Despite these apparently taken for granted assumptions, there have been attempts to identify the authoritarian in a less value-laden manner, and in particular, Rokeach’s Dogmatism scale was an early attempt to address this bias (Rokeach, 1960). Others have also challenged the widely accepted notion of right-wing authoritarianism and constructed scales with reversed scored and ‘value free’ items. These have been met with limited success and none have been able to establish to any acceptable degree that there is a universal concept of authoritarian behaviour that is present regardless of the political climate in which it is nurtured. It is still regarded by many that the authoritarian personality is best defined with reference to the Fascist regime advocated by Hitler in the early Twentieth Century. For some, the understanding of how this doctrine was able to engulf nearly an entire nation provides the support for their argument as to the authoritarian personality being distinctly right-wing in orientation. It should be recalled however, that the first main theories developed around authoritarianism were constructed in response to the emergence of Fascism throughout many parts of Europe and Germany in particular. Seldom before had such destructive regimes achieved such seemingly universal acceptance amongst the masses. It was partly assumed that it could be some personality defect in the German Introduction Page i st The Authoritarian Personality in the 21 Century race that allowed the Nazi party to rise to power. Even before the end of WWII, social scientists had begun to utilise newly developed psychometric instruments in the race to identify and quantitatively measure the Fascist personality (see Stagner, 1936; Maslow, 1943). However these somewhat crude attempts lacked any real theoretical underpinning, and it wasn’t until a group of psychologists were assembled at the University of California that our understanding of the Fascist character took on a new direction. As part of a series of studies into the nature of prejudice, The Authoritarian Personality was to become both a controversial and much referenced text even some five decades later. It would be seemingly difficult for the authors of The Authoritarian Personality to ignore the political climate under which they were working, and indeed two of the four contributors were refugees from the holocaust. In addition, support from a grant by the American Jewish Council explicitly sought answers as to what basis the atrocities in Europe had been founded upon and in particular, was it possible that there could be a re-surfacing of Fascism in other western countries. The book was to be the third volume in a five part series that intended to provide a complete picture of the nature of prejudice, encompassing what they regarded as the whole spectrum of antecedents, such as economic and historical issues. Aside from the Adorno et al. text, seldom is reference made to the remaining monographs indicating the entire project may have unsuccessfully fulfilled its ambitious aim. The Authoritarian Personality has endured some years of intense scrutiny and criticism, and aside from the competing theories that have developed in its wake, but so original was this study that it is still a feature in many psychology texts published today. Meloen (1993) has Introduction Page i st The Authoritarian Personality in the 21 Century documented there to be over 2,000 studies on authoritarianism and its related constructs in the period 1950-1990. Careful examination of the thousand pages that constitute The Authoritarian Personality indicates that the basis for their examination relies distinctly on the notion that the authoritarian is the Nazi Fascist. This archetypal individual has distinct features that make the acceptance of the ideology particularly attractive and it was hypothesised that early childhood was of particular importance in nurturing these tendencies. The German family structure was regarded to be a breeding ground for authoritarian personalities that could be later mobilized by the Third Reich. Chapter One is concerned with detailing just how this concept emerged. In particular the development of the F-scale (anti-Democratic or Fascism) is often cited as a measure of authoritarianism despite the fact that it constitutes but a small part of the whole examination. Nevertheless it is the logical outcome to the empirical section of the study and is therefore deserved of much of the theoretical and methodological criticism directed at it. The original endeavours into anti-Semitism and ethnocentrism also serve to highlight just how their ideas of what constitute the authoritarian personality actually developed. It is difficult to deny that there does appear to be an element of authoritarian style behaviour in the leaders and followers of the Nazi party, however it would be to simplistic to presuppose that this is the only solitary example of it. The authors seemingly ignored a huge portion of the literature that already existed on the concept of authoritarianism, which becomes apparent when a meticulous review of the methodology they employed is pursued. In addition, the scant bibliography is Introduction Page iv