Authoritarian personality theory

SIGNIFICANCE: The authoritarian personality theory proposes that some people are psychologically predisposed to prefer social structures characterized by strong authority, whether that authority is themself or an external figure. As developed by sociologist Theodor Adorno and colleagues in the 1950s, the theory gained popularity as a potential way to account for the rise of fascism and the perpetration of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Adorno developed detailed criteria indicating an authoritarian personality and suggested that such people are prone to harbor prejudices. However, other researchers have critiqued the theory.

The idea of the authoritarian personality was conceived by a group of social scientists and was developed to try to explain behavior of extraordinary social importance. That behavior—a widespread German willingness, prior to World War II, to embrace an extreme form of fascism—was of intensely personal importance to two of the researchers: Theodor Adorno and Else Frenkel-Brunswik, who had fled Germany and German-annexed Austria, respectively, and come to the United States to save their lives.

The personality that Adorno and his colleagues, including Frenkel-Brunswik, described in The Authoritarian Personality (1950) was a prefascist personality. Their choice of the label “authoritarian” could arguably have been better made, since a dictionary definition of the term covers only a small part of the personality syndrome (collection of characteristics) they proposed. Through questionnaires and scales, Adorno’s group studied their subjects’ anti-Semitic ideology, politico-economic ideology, ethnocentrism, religious attitudes and practices, and other related topics. Through clinical interviews and projective testing, they evaluated their subjects’ personalities in considerable depth. The personality type they came to call authoritarian is a complex one, and their theory has proven both influential and controversial among later psychologists and sociologists.

F-Scale

Adorno and his colleagues developed the F-scale, where “F” stands for “fascist,” to measure the degree to which respondents display authoritarianism. The person who measures high on the scale is extreme in many, if not all, of the following characteristics. The person may exhibit conventionalism, a rigid adherence to conventional middle-class values. The person may show both authoritarian submission, a submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the in-group, and authoritarian aggression, a tendency to look for and condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values. Anti-intraception is opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, and the tender-minded. Superstition is the belief in mystical determinants of an individual’s fate, and stereotyping is a disposition to think in rigid categories. Power and toughness refers to a preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension. This aspect of the authoritarian personality includes identification with power figures and an exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness. Destructiveness and cynicism means a generalized hostility and vilification of the human. Projectivity is the disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; it represents the projection of unconscious emotional impulses. Finally, the authoritarian personality may show an exaggerated concern with the sexual activities of others. The high authoritarian is an anxious, often confused person who sees threats where others would see only minor concerns and who favors drastic actions to protect against those perceived threats.

Researchers investigating the authoritarian personality in the 1950s found people in the United States who displayed the same authoritarian characteristics that were found among Nazis, a situation that prompted considerable concern. Individuals who test high on the authoritarian scale, in fact, can be found in virtually every society. It was the Jewish population that was the prime target of high authoritarians in Nazi Germany. Some researchers have suggested that in the United States, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and any other racial or ethnic minority group that can be identified may be the target of the high authoritarian.

Dogmatism

The syndrome labeled “the authoritarian personality” was identified originally as a basis for the development of fascism, but it soon became evident that political ideology was a coincidental factor. Racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and other fanatical forms of behavior can flourish within almost any political framework. Milton Rokeach proposed a more general, apolitical variation of authoritarianism, which he called “dogmatism,” to address this issue.

Rokeach had noticed that members of Communist Party cells in the United States, at a time when communism was seen as the ultimate evil, scored low on authoritarianism. Seeking a reason for this counterintuitive finding, Rokeach concluded that because the communist political system was in many ways opposed to the fascist system, the extremism of the US communists was concealed. Political references on the F-scale had pushed respondents toward nonauthoritarian choices. Rokeach developed a test, the D-scale, to measure dogmatism. He found, as he expected, that communist extremists scored high.

An interesting question within authoritarianism theory remained unanswered: Do high authoritarians’ dysfunctional personalities influence all that they do, or are they capable of dealing with some topics with average rationality? For example, is a racist whose actions are heavily influenced by authoritarianism capable of political or religious rationality? Research that correlates average F-scale or D-scale scores with measures of racism conceals individual differences of this sort. Anecdotal accounts and informal observation often suggest that some people can display strongly authoritarian characteristics in one circumstance and virtually none in another. The fanatical racist may have moderate religious views, the political fanatic may show no animosity toward minorities, and so on.

Criticism

Critics of the related concepts of authoritarianism and dogmatism have called attention to a seemingly simpler concept that may explain the behaviors of those who score high on the F-scale. Most, perhaps all, of the characteristics identified in the early research on the authoritarian personality can be found in highly anxious people. Two of the characteristics or aspects of them— projectivity and identification—are identical to the ego defense mechanisms that, according to Sigmund Freud, people use to combat anxiety. Although the terminology is a bit different, several of the other characteristics also accomplish the basic purpose of Freudian defense mechanisms.

One way to relate anxiety to authoritarianism is to suggest that developing these personally protective but societally damaging characteristics is but one of several ways people may cope with anxiety. Some resolve anxiety-producing conflicts directly; this is presumed by most psychologists to be the healthiest approach. Some develop neurotic, perhaps even psychotic, patterns of behavior. Probably a few withdraw from society or from life itself as suicides. Developing an authoritarian personality protects a person well, but at a high and often hidden cost to society.

Ultimately, authoritarian personality theory offers an interesting explanation of racism to complement the many other explanations that the behavioral sciences have offered. Unfortunately, it provides few suggestions of how racism may be reduced or eliminated; those that have been proposed work in conjunction with other explanations of the phenomenon. The theory can offer few suggestions because, at least in its original form, it indicates that individuals who can be identified as high authoritarians have developed their dysfunctional personalities over a lifetime. They are very unlikely to change, even with extended counseling. Further, they are unlikely to feel a need to change; their barely rational beliefs protect them to a much greater degree than they cause them discomfort. It is other people who experience the discomfort.

Many researchers have criticized the original conception of authoritarian personality theory as misguided or even unscientific. Critics have taken issue with virtually every aspect of the theory, including the F-scale, noting that it combines many otherwise disparate personality characteristics in order to satisfy a preconceived narrative. Many observers note that the theory has been used as a form of propaganda.

Stress and High Authoritarians

Despite much controversy around the authoritarian personality theory, it has remained popular. Later researchers have refined it in various ways, adding new elements or expanding on certain aspects. One notable connection that has earned attention is the apparent link between authoritarian personality characteristics and stress. Most of the identified characteristics of high authoritarianism become more extreme under stress, and researchers suggest that high authoritarians are likely to be seriously stressed by many circumstances that other people can tolerate. Some of the ways in which an understanding of the nature of the authoritarian personality can be used to moderate racism rely on minimizing stress in the potential racist. Too often, however, nothing can be done about the sources of the stress; at best, behavioral scientists can suggest ways to limit its consequences.

Because people displaying high authoritarian tendencies think in rigid categories, theorists argue that they especially need reassurance and rational direction by strong leaders during unsettling times to minimize the likelihood of their becoming involved in extreme actions. For example, during bad economic times for which there are no easy-to-understand causes, leaders ideally should state that the bad times will not last forever, that they are caused by factors that the nation can discover and correct, and that no villains are responsible—no one should be sought out and attacked. Such statements would theoretically offer some stress reduction and discourage people from seeking scapegoats. However, agitation or irrational, emotional direction can potentially prompt those identified as high authoritarians to extreme action. According to the authoritarian personality theory, some leaders, including Adolf Hitler, have gained considerable power by taking advantage of such vulnerabilities in a population.

While the concept of the authoritarian personality is most often used to describe the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been applied to other social settings as well. Some studies have linked the phenomenon to broad social trends such as gender inequality, though such findings have often been controversial. Researchers have continued to be particularly interested in times of social and economic upheaval that see leaders with authoritarian tendencies rise to power. During the 2016 US presidential campaign, for example, Matthew C. MacWilliams, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, interviewed 1,800 supporters of then-candidate Donald Trump. MacWilliams found that an authoritarian disposition was the single variable that was most likely to indicate an individual’s support for Trump, outweighing other factors such as income, educational level, and race. Trump's presidency subsequently showed many signs of nascent authoritarianism, and many of his followers maintained dedicated support despite his frequent disregard for democratic norms, so the issue of authoritarian personality once again attracted considerable attention as experts attempted to explain the situation. In other research, a 2020 study provided statistical evidence backing up a long-proposed connection between belief in determinism—the idea that all events are predetermined—and authoritarian personality traits. Individuals who express a belief in determinism often also exhibit traits like adhering rigidly to rules and preferring a social structure based on a hierarchy.

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