Authoritarian Personality

The term authoritarian personality was first coined during the early 1940s as a means of describing such individuals as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini—that is, a specific set of behavioral characteristics was mapped out for people with political beliefs that were both extremist and antidemocratic. Abraham Maslow, the famed humanistic psychologist, first used the term, but Erich Fromm, the German psychoanalyst, wrote about the “authoritarian character.” However, the seminal The Authoritarian Personality, by Theodor W. Adorno and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley, put the term into the lexicon of everyday use.

In 1950, the Nazi Holocaust had only been public knowledge for 5 years, and many in academia and government wanted to understand how such a tragedy could have occurred. Many felt that if one could quantify the psychological basis for anti-Semitism, it might be possible to prevent the same thing from ever happening again. Freudian psychoanalysis was, during that era, the primary [Page 33]tool used in explaining the dynamics of the human personality. Some of the key qualities of the authoritarian personality included the following:

• 1.
  Conventionalism—a personality construct where one tended to accept and obey all social norms, especially the rules of authority figures.
• 2.
  Aggression—the exhibition of aggression toward groups or individuals the state did not like. This is especially true for specific groups that threatened the state's values and morals. In addition, it is an aggressive attitude toward people or organizations that the state finds particularly noxious.
• 3.
  Submission—when one submits to those in authority.
• 4.
  Anti-Intraception—when an individual thinks that subjective attitudes are bad, and “public” and “objective” are exalted.
• 5.
  Substitution—instead of rational beliefs, superstition and fatalistic determinism are the norm.
• 6.
  Power and Toughness—a heavy identification with those in power, as well as an excessive emphasis on citizens acting in a “tough” manner.
• 7.
  Destructiveness and Cynicism—one should not feel compassion or empathy toward individuals or groups considered enemies by the state.
• 8.
  Projection—the tendency to believe in the existence of evil in the world and to project unconscious emotional impulses outward, especially to individuals demonized by the state, for example, the Jews in Germany, the intellectuals in China, or the Kulaks in the Soviet Union.
• 9.
  Excessive Conformity—the belief that one should comport oneself in a manner that never diverges from the socially accepted norm.
• 10.
  Insecurity—the fear that if one ever shows any “weakness,” then one is compromised; thus, one must remain strong at all times.
• 11.
  Sex—exaggerated concerns regarding “appropriate” sexuality.

According to Adorno, individuals who admire fascist ideologies tend to think and act in a manner highlighting their dysfunctional views. This often results in a close match between thought and behavior, with anti-Semitism and ethnocentrism standing in close connection with this particular personality structure. For instance, Nazis saw Jews as subhuman, and thus, Jews were treated as beneath contempt and, though not to the same extent, so were homosexuals, Slavs, and Gypsies and those regarded as “enemies” of the state. If this theory is accepted, then fascistic behavior is nothing more than the expression of personality structure; that is, if an individual with authoritarian personality lives in a “right-wing” society, then the government usually supports his or her racist behavior. Generally speaking, authoritarian personality has usually referred to right-wing thought and behavior; however, after the fall of communism in 1991, the term was also used to encompass such individuals as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tsetung. Their absolute lack of empathy for others, and their cruelty and spite toward anyone not agreeing with their political views were strikingly similar to the behavior exhibited by Hitler. On average, authoritarian personality is still used primarily for ultraconservatives such as religious fundamentalists, military dictators, theocrats, and so on.

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