http://www.anesi.com/fscale.htmThose with an authoritarian personality tended to be:
• Hostile to those who are of inferior status, but obedient of people with high status
• Fairly rigid in their opinions and beliefs
• Conventional, upholding traditional valuesRight Wing Authoritarianism: What Is the Allure in Being a Follower?
The right wing authoritarian personality has less to do with a political view than it does with a psychological personality structure.
Yale social psychologist Stanley Milgram defined obedience as the "the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purposes", and called it "the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority." A decade before Milgram produced his findings, which dealt with the conflict arising between obedience to authority and moral conscience, a study on the "Authoritarian Personality" was undertaken at UC Berkeley as part of a an effort by leading social scientists to understand how, in a culture of law, order and reason..."a vast majority of people could and actually did tolerate the mass extermination of fellow citizens." That question had some urgency after the horrors of World War II.
During the past half century, this understanding of authoritarianism has been greatly increased through the efforts of social psychologist Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba. Altemeyer found authoritarianism to be consistently associated with right wing rather then left wing ideology. It refers to people that overtly submit to the established authorities in their lives, who could be of any political stripe. They are the people that march in "lock-step" as opposed to those that march to "the beat of a different drummer."
http://cognitive-psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/right_wing_authoritarianismThe Perils of Obedience
by Stanley Milgramhttp://home.swbell.net/revscat/perilsOfObedience.html Conventionalism – submission to conventional, middle-class values: "what would the neighbors say" type of behavior, as well as emphasis on hard work as opposed to creativity and different ways of thinking when attaining goals.
Authoritarian submission – submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the in-group. During discussions about politics, some of these people refused to acknowledge the responsibility for corruption of the high government officials, such as president or prime-minister, on the grounds that they "represent the country, so if you talk bad about them, you talk bad about the country". Also, these people expressed deep devotion to the parental figures, even when their influence was not constructive.
Authoritarian aggression – tendency to be on the lookout for, to condemn and punish people who violate conventional values. This variable was mostly expressed in the fear from members of other ethnic groups, such as Albanians, or people with unconventional sexual orientation: the promiscuous and homosexuals. When quarreling, most insults referred to some of these categories.
Anti-interception – opposition to people who try to see their reality more in terms of feelings, fantasies and by use of imagination, than by adherence to strict rules. The anti-interceptive person is described as afraid to think about this side of human nature in order to prevent oneself to think "wrong thoughts". Thus, the attempts to talk about inner feelings, as well as their initiators, were met with opposition starting from a seemingly carefree attitude ("I do not come here to talk about hard stuff. I come here to have fun."), and ending in breakdown of communication with introspective people.
Superstition and Stereotype – it is acute how some of the most extreme cases of suspected authoritarian personality that I met like to deal with subjects such as horoscope, former lives, numerology, sometimes to the extreme point of fear from black cats. The tendency to enclose one’s thinking by imposing "beliefs of mystical determinants of the individual’s fate," was often paired with use of stereotypes, such as ethnic or cultural. For example, westerners were described as sophisticated and cultured, while members of their own community as rude or uneducated. This went to extremes such as attributing the courteous traits to common U.N. soldiers stationed in Macedonia, and saying that gas stoves and some basic parts of a car mechanism that are used in America do not exist in Macedonia.
Power and "toughness" – preoccupation with a world view in terms of power and dominance-submission, strength, and identification with power figures. Examples include the following: "The lover I choose will be my slave", defending a obviously wrong point in an argument just to prove oneself right, or "I had dinner at the same place as the president. I should have walked to him and shake his hand."
Destructiveness and cynicism – generalized hostility towards humans. A classical example used in the F-scale was often encountered "No matter how they act on the surface, men are interested in women for only one reason." The theory goes that such an individual, harboring perfectly human impulses suppressed by external restrictions, turns the frustration into aggression.
Projectivity – defined as a disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things (projected emotional impulses), are committed by others. This also includes putting the blame of one’s own failures to communicate to others, as well as projecting ones own insecurities, such as "You are so stupid!".
Sex – concern for sexual activity, and result of interaction of other variables. Usually a supplement (reaction formation) for unsatisfied, sometimes willfully denied, personal needs.
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