Moral Cowardness Obedience and the Rise of Authoritarianism (original) (raw)

On Authoritarianism and More

Johannes Kieding Eng. 101 Informational Essay 2008 On "The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power" by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad

Fruits of Fear, Seeds of Terror: The Political Implications of Psychological Authoritarianism

Fruits of Fear, Seeds of Terror: The Political Implications of Psychological Authoritarianism, 2005

This dissertation answers the question: “What is psychological authoritarianism?” It examines over eighty years of research on psychological authoritarianism, with special emphasis on Adomo et al.’s The Authoritarian Personality and Robert Altemeyer’s work on “right-wing authoritarianism”. It explains why Adomo et al. developed the theoretical framework underlying the F Scale, and how it undergirds Altemeyer’s much more recent and methodologically sophisticated work on the RWA Scale. Both Adomo et al. and Altemeyer understand psychological authoritarianism as the commonalty of three dimensions: authoritarian aggression, conventionality, and authoritarian submission. The dissertation argues that their data indicate that “authoritarian aggression” constitutes the central dimension of “general” psychological authoritarianism, independent of specific ideological leanings. It concludes that psychological authoritarian is authoritarian aggression, nothing more, nothing less. The dissertation rebuts the claim that psychological authoritarianism and conservatism are the same phenomenon. Wilson et al.’s C Scale is the most influential measure of conservatism. Their formulation of “psychological conservatism” parallels key features of Adomo et al.’s theory. Measures of “authoritarianism” relate well to “conservatism” because they are conceptualized and operationalized in similar ways. However, sixty years of empirical findings strongly suggest that these are related but different phenomena. Jost et al.’s efforts to “explain” “revolutionary conservatism” highlight the intellectual contradictions that arise when the two are conflated. The work identifies their common characteristics, and also why they are different. It also provides detailed arguments for why they should be conceptualized as related but distinct attitudes. This dissertation is an exercise in “conceptual clarification” via “psychometrical hermeneutics”. This entails evaluating the degree to which attitudinal phenomena measured by scales correspond to the concepts being operationalized via the careful examination of scale attributes and item wordings. “Psychometrical hermeneutics” also constructs reconceptualizations where the measured phenomenon and concept diverge. This work argues that, in many instances, discrepancies between the conceptualizations underlying scales and the psychometric implications of their operationalizations resulted in conceptual confusion that prevented scholars from properly understanding psychological authoritarianism for much of the past half century.

Authoritarianism: Psychological Reflections and Theological Implications

2001

The end of World War II as well as the defeat of Nazism and Fascism in Europe spurred western psychologists to investigate the phenomenon of authoritarianism prevalent in the culture of the 1930s and 40s. It was a dark period of brutal and irrational behaviours on the part of some leaders and their followers. Questions like: why did people elect and follow enthusiastically authoritarian and non-democratic leaders, why were the Jews particularly targeted as the object of prejudice and elimination, what were the characteristics of authoritarian personalities, what was the role of obedience in such a society is propelled

An Unholy Alliance Between Religion Authoritarianism

WordPress, 2022

Authoritarian leaders who play the religious card are not mere hypocrites. There’s something far more troubling going on. Authoritarian leaders who play the religious card are not mere hypocrites. There’s something far more troubling going on Viktor Orbán reportedly does not attend church. Benjamin Netanyahu eats at non-kosher restaurants. New York Donald Trump lacks all manner of evident religious virtue. Yet it is a fact that today’s crop of aspiring authoritarians invokes religious themes and symbols, despite not being strict adherents to their respective traditions. Of course, there is nothing new about the opportunistic use of religion by politicians. The scholars Garret Martin and Carolyn Gallaher have remarked that ‘Orbán’s use of religion is no different from Ronald Reagan’s embrace of Christian evangelicals in the late 1970s.’

Authoritarianism and Resistance

The Society of the Selfie: Social Media and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy, 2021

We tie together and explicate the political implications of the trends discussed in previous chapters. For Fromm, sadomasochistic desires are bred from modern alienation, and these desires can fuel authoritarian social movements. For Foucault, modern authoritarianism (and genocide) is fed by the idea that the state needs to protect the normal majority from the abnormal minority (biopolitics). Giddens says in ‘late modernity’ people distrust experts, long for authenticity, lose concern with morality and fixate on avoiding risk. With the rise of global social networks, there is also a lot of reaction against globalisation. Facing porous national boundaries, many people push back against multiculturalism, seeing it as a threat to their social order. Providing examples from different countries, we describe how in other, more direct ways, social media plays into authoritarian populist ends that subvert liberal democracy. We suggest that when political leaders use Twitter and Facebook the...

The Authoritarian Temptation

This article examines the authoritarian features of the candidacy of Donald Trump for the Republican Party nomination and argues that his nomination puts at risk American democracy in a manner similar to other ideological threats described by Jean Francois Revel.

Authoritarianism and Fear of Deviance

Two studies (N = 217) examined the relation between right-wing authoritarianism and a battery of self-report measures of various fears. The results suggest that high authoritarians are no more fearful of most types of threats (e.g. animals, failure, interpersonal situations) than low authoritarians. High authoritarians are, however, more afraid of situations involving social deviance.

Authoritarianism

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition

Authoritarianism refers to a construct originally created to understand individual differences associated with intolerance, prejudice, and support of fascist ideology. Almost since its inception, the construct has been widely criticized, with shortcomings being identified in theory and measurement. A consensus, dominant in the literature of the last 30 years, distinguished authoritarians’ submission to authority, adherence to in-group norms, and aggression toward deviants. However, with new approaches challenging this consensus, recent research focused on the dynamic aspects of authoritarianism, and the contextual circumstances under which it is aroused, and the process by which it shapes social and political attitudes.