authoritarian personalities

n. In an ordinary dictionary - not a fine one like this - you will see that authoritarian has two main meanings. First, it means believing in submitting to authority. Second, it means being dictatorial or tyrannical. So people who strongly believe in submitting to authority could be called authoritarians. And so could tyrants who insist that everyone obey them - which is the sort of thing you usually get from tyrants.

Psychology is hot on the trail of understanding these two kinds of authoritarians. The submitters are called authoritarian followers, and we know a lot about them because researchers have been studying them since the Second World War. The aspiring tyrants are called social dominators and we do not know very much about them yet. You may wonder why. After all, a number of authoritarian dictators strutted across the global stage during World War II. Why didn’t social scientists study their lot too? Mainly because, oddly enough, they aren’t seen as being the basic problem. There will always be people around who lust after absolute power, and it is not hard to figure out why they want it. But these wannabes amount to nothing in a democracy unless a huge wave of supporters lifts them to power. That is why researchers have concentrated on the followers.

So who’s out there doing the wave, and why would anybody want to elect a dictator?

Authoritarian followers have the psychological characteristic known as right-wing authoritarianism. This personality trait consists of authoritarian submission, a high degree of submission to the established authorities in one’s society; authoritarian aggression, aggression directed against various persons in the name of those authorities; and conventionalism, a strong adherence to the social conventions endorsed by those authorities.

Why do psychologists call authoritarian followers “right-wing” authoritarians? Are they all members of a conservative political party? No. Right-wing is used here in a psychological sense, meaning wanting to please established authority.One of the original meanings of the adjective right (riht in Old English) was “lawful, proper, correct,” which in those long- ago days meant doing what your local lord and the king wanted. Conversely, you could have left-wing authoritarians who submit to a revolutionary authority, as Maoists in Western countries did in the 1970s. But you’d end up pretty lonely if you tried to organize a Maoist get-together in London or Washington these days.

Right-wing authoritarians, however, abound. Scientifically, they are identified by their scores on a personality test called (naturally enough) the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. Here is a sample item from this measure: “ ‘ 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.’ Do you agree or disagree with this statement?” Can you see that someone who strongly agrees with it is showing authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism? The other items on the RWA scale also try to assess these three inclinations in various ways.

What has the RWA scale shown us about authoritarian followers? In North America, where this research has mainly been done, persons who get high RWA scale scores quite readily submit to the established authorities in their lives and trust them far more than most people do. They supported Richard Nixon to the bitter end during the Watergate crisis. High RWAs also believed George W. Bush when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and they supported the war in that country long after others had signed off. High RWAs also are relatively willing to let authorities run roughshod over civil liberties and constitutional guarantees of personal freedom. They seem to think that authorities are above the law. They also hold authorities relatively blameless when the latter unjustly attack someone.

Speaking of attacks, right-wing authoritarians show a chilling inclination, compared to most people, to help the government persecute any group it targets. Also, if asked to play the role ofjudge, they will sentence convicted defendants to longer prison terms than most people will - unless the defendant is an

authority or has attacked someone the authoritarian follower would like to see attacked. High RWAs favor capital punishment. As well, they deliver stronger electric shocks in “punishment” learning experiments. In general they believe that a good thrashing “works.” But they also admit they get personal pleasure from punishing others and seeing wrongdoers get “what’s coming to them.” Finally, right-wing authoritarians tend to be highly prejudiced against most racial groups, feminists, homosexuals, people with different language backgrounds, and those with different religious views. Speaking of religion, the authoritarian follower’s family religion produces a lot of his/her conventionalism. High RWAs tend to be fundamentalists in whatever religion they belong to, and fundamentalist churches are not shy about insisting everyone follow their beliefs about what is right, wrong, and normal. Those who walk other paths are often considered immoral and repugnant. Right-wing authoritarians also absorb the beliefs and teachings of the nonreligious authorities in their lives. This was well illustrated by a study that found high RWA American students in the late 1980s strongly believed America was the “Good Guy” during the ongoing Cold War, while high RWA Russian students thought the opposite. The authoritarians in both countries thus accepted, more than most of their fellow citizens did, the version of world events that their leaders presented.

Authoritarian followers thus appear to be, indeed, submissive, aggressive, and conventional. Further research with the RWA scale has uncovered a lot more about them, such as that they have weak reasoning skills and are gullible when people tell them what they want to hear; they fall back on dogmatism and social support when challenged, since they have little else to back up their beliefs; they are profoundly ethnocentric, identifying with their narrow in-groups, to which they give strong loyalty and in which they expect great cohesiveness; they are zealous in their causes and given to proselytizing; and they tend to be political and economic conservatives. “Deeper down,” they use a lot of double standards in their judgments and often behave hypocritically; they are fearful and self-righteous, defensive, and unaware of themselves. Deep, deep down inside they seem to harbor secret doubts about the things they say they believe in most. So the picture of authoritarian followers after all these years of research is far from flattering - unless you are a potential dictator. If you are, these narrow-minded, closed-minded, easily fooled, zealous bigots looking for a man on horseback are exactly the kind of people you’re looking for. Who are the potential dictators? Most of all, they seem to be power-hungry individuals who live their lives according to the law of the jungle.

They believe either you dominate others or you will be dominated instead. Thus they score high on the Social Dominance Orientation scale, which is the main way of identifying them. High dominators purposely make others afraid of them, believe in vengeance and using power however they must to get their way, and will try to crush whoever opposes them. They also tend to be believe that right and wrong do not matter at all, that people are objects to be manipulated, and that deceit and treachery are justified if they get you to the top. Authoritarian leaders have some traits in common with authoritarian followers. They too are highly prejudiced and favor conservative political parties and economic philosophies. But most social dominators are not really religious, and their amorality would turn off most high RWAs. However, a nonreligious but skilled social dominator has little difficulty persuading authoritarian followers that he/she shares their beliefs, and some social dominators are in fact religious and seem to have an especially good chance of heading an authoritarian movement. Experiments have found that when social dominators become leaders of groups of right-wing authoritarians, this “lethal union” produces aggression and exploitation in laboratory settings - just as it does in the real world.

-BA