John Dean has been talking about the American right in terms of Theodor Adorno's research on authoritarian personalities. Adorno's research aimed at explaining why the so-called "Good Germans" went along with the Nazis. Along the way, Adorno found similar traits in a large percentage of his fellow Americans: compliance with authority; conformity; and aggressiveness toward others when it is believed to be sanctioned by authority. Authoritarian personality theory may go some distance toward explaining what's up with the GOP bitter enders, i.e., how someone can continue to support the president in light of everything we know now. However, I don't think it's enterely helpful to medicalize the problem. Ultimately, one's politics are a moral rather than a psychological question. Below the fold you'll find a short reveiw of some scholarly literature regarding authoritarianism that I wrote for a college course a few years ago. I'm putting it up because somebody might find the references useful.
Authoritarianism is a personality trait commonly operationally defined in terms of: a high degree of compliance with socially-accepted authorities; aggressiveness toward persons that is believed to be sanctioned by established authorities; and a high degree of adherence to social conventions believed to be favored by society and established authority (Altemeyer, 1996).
In this literature review I will: (1) outline two research orientations regarding authoritarianism arising, respectively, from the work of T.W. Adorno and his colleagues (often referred to as the Berkeley group) and the work of Bob Altemeyer and (2) summarize some of the findings of researchers working in the respective traditions. Some characteristics of the authoritarian personality should emerge along the way.
The two primary instruments for measuring authoritarianism are the F-scale (Adorno et al., 1950) and the RWA-scale (Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996). Operating within a psychoanalytic framework Adorno and his colleagues pursued the twofold objective of showing that punitive child-rearing practices produced authoritarian adults and that these adults tended to hold socially conservative and discriminatory views. (The "F" in the F-scale stands for fascism.) The F-scale sorted subjects according to nine variables including: conventionalism (conformity to approved social practices): authoritarian submission (compliance with authority), authoritarian aggression (behavioral or attitudinal aggression directed at out-groups), superstition and stereotypy (the tendency to believe in mystical determinants of one's fate and the disposition to think in rigid categories); preoccupation with power and toughness (identification with power figures, exaggerated assertion of strength); and exaggerated concern with sexual "goings on." While Adorno and his fellow researchers at Berkeley had difficulty showing a correlation between parenting practices and social beliefs, they were able to demonstrate a correlation between higher F-scale scores and both social and political conservatism and discriminatory beliefs. Interestingly, Stanley Milgram (1974) reported that the more compliant subjects in his famous series of experiments on obedience tended to score higher on an F-scale administered by a colleague (Elms, 1972).
Working at the University of Manitoba, Bob Altemeyer confirmed the connection between authoritarianism and conservative and discriminatory beliefs but was again unable to demonstrate a correlation between punitive parenting and authoritarianism. Altemeyer's RWA-scale (Right-Wing Authoritarianism) scale is a pared-down version of the F-scale that focuses on authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, and conventionalism as expressed in behavior and stated opinions. It should be noted that Altemeyer's use of "right wing" in this context tends to denote identification with the status quo rather than any particular set of social or political opinions. In this sense of the term, Stalinists can be as "right wing" as McCarthyites.
Additionally, some research (Pratto, 1999, Van Heil and Mervielde, 2002) deploys the SDO (Social Dominance Orientation) scale. However, the SDO-scale aims at identifying preferences for equal versus hierarchical intergroup relations, and, consequently, such research is not necessarily germane to the current discussion.
Given that a correlation between punitive parenting styles and authoritarianism has yet to be established after more than fifty years, it is hardly surprising that there is a dearth of recent research following directly in the Berkeley group's tradition. In 1993 W.F. Stone, et al. edited an anthology entitled Strength and Weakness: The Authoritarian Personality Today. Although the essays in Strength and Weakness do a good job recapitulating the work of the Berkeley group, no new research is offered to establish a correlation between authoritarianism and punitive parenting. The same difficulty is evident in Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad's The Politics of Denial. While adopting the psychodynamic claim that punitive parenting produces authoritarian results, the authors offer no new data confirm that claim. However, Milburn and Conrad have demonstrated a correlation between higher RWA scores and both support for military intervention and capital punishment and opposition to abortion. However, it should be noted that Altemeyer crafted the RWA to test for general identification with and support for the status quo. Consequently, Milburn and Conrad's data may simply show that certain conservative causes are currently well entrenched in the country and that the authoritarians have aligned themselves accordingly.
Finally, Bob Altemeyer's RWA-scale has become a staple of social research, and, as a result, a vivid composite portrait of the authoritarian personality is emerging. Authoritarians are less likely than most people to demonstrate self-awareness (Altemeyer, 1999) and are more likely to favor religious beliefs over scientific data when the two appear to be in conflict (Westman et al., 2000). Authoritarians exhibit more self-reported fear than the general population (Eigenberger, 1999), but tend to be prepared to cut low-status offenders more slack than high status offenders (Feather, 2002). Authoritarianism correlates with security values such as national strength and order, religiosity, and propriety in dress and manners (Heaven, 2001), and the RWA-scale tends to be a better indicator of negative attitudes toward homosexuality than the SDO-scale (Whitley, et al., 2001). Finally, individuals with high RWA scores may have greater trouble remembering what they read and making correct inferences (Wegmann, M.F. 1992).
References
Adorno, T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.,& Sanford, R.N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row Publishers.
Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Manitoba: The University of Manitoba Press.
Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Altemeyer, B. (2000). To thine own self be untrue: Self-awareness in authoritarians. North American journal of psychology, 12, 157-164.
Eigenburger, M.E. (1999). Fear as a correlate of authoritarianism. Psychological reports, 83, 1395-1409.
Elms, A.C. (1972). Acts of submission. Chapter 4 of Social psychology and social relevance. Boston, MA: Little Brown.
Feather, N.T. (2002). Reactions to supporters and opponents of uranium mining in relation to status, attitude, similarity, and right-wing authoritarianism. Journal of applied social psychology, 32, 1464-1487.
Heaven, P.C. & Conners, J.R. (2001). A note on the value correlates of social dominanceorientation and right-wing authoritarianism. Personality and individual differences, 31, 925-930.
Milburn, M.A. & Conrad, S.D. (1996). The politics of Denial. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority. New York: Harper and Row Publishers.
Pratto, F. (1999). The puzzle of continuing group inequality: Piecing together psychological, social, and cultural forces in social dominance theory. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 31, pp. 191-263). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Stone, W.F., Lederer, G., Christie, R., Eds. (1992). Strength and weakness: The authoritarian personality today. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Van Hiel, A. & Mervielde, I. (2002). Explaining conservative beliefs and political preferences: A comparison of social dominance orientation and authoritarianism.
Journal of applied social psychology, 32, 965-976.
Wegmann, M.F. (1992). Informaion processing deficits of the authoritarian mind. Ph.D. dissertation, Fielding Institute, Santa Barbera, CA.
Westman, A.S., Willink, J. & McHoskey J.W. (2000). On perceived conflicts between religion and science: The role of fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism. Psychological reports, 86, 379-385.
Whitley, B.E. & Lee, S.E. (2001). The relationship of authoritarianism and related constructs to attitudes toward homosexuality. Journal of applied social psychology, 30, 144-170.