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Heralding the Authoritarian? Orientation Toward Authority in Early Childhood
Psychological Science, 2014
In the research reported here, we examined whether individual differences in authoritarianism have expressions in early childhood. We expected that young children would be more responsive to cues of deviance and status to the extent that their parents endorsed authoritarian values. Using a sample of 43 preschoolers and their parents, we found support for both expectations. Children of parents high in authoritarianism trusted adults who adhered to convention (vs. adults who did not) more than did children of parents low in authoritarianism. Furthermore, compared with children of parents low in authoritarianism, children of parents high in authoritarianism gave greater weight to a statusbased "adult = reliable" heuristic in trusting an ambiguously conventional adult. Findings were consistent using two different measures of parents' authoritarian values. These findings demonstrate that children's trust-related behaviors vary reliably with their parents' orientations toward authority and convention, and suggest that individual differences in authoritarianism express themselves well before early adulthood.
This study examined the intergenerational transmission of adolescent authoritarian submission (Right-Wing Authoritarianism or RWA) and authoritarian dominance (Social Dominance Orientation or SDO). It was hypothesized that the type of goals that parents promote (i.e., conservation versus openness to change and extrinsic versus intrinsic goal promotion) would mediate any direct association between parents' and adolescents' authoritarian attitudes. This hypothesis was examined in a sample of middle adolescents and their parents. First, a significant parent-child concordance was found for RWA and SDO. Second, whereas parental RWA predicted parental promotion of conservation goals (rather than openness to change goals) as well as the promotion of extrinsic goals (rather than intrinsic goals), parental SDO predicted parental promotion of extrinsic goals only. Third, process analyses showed that, whereas parental conservation goal promotion mediates the relationship between parent and child RWA, parental extrinsic goal promotion mediates the relationship between parent and child SDO.
Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 2001
Measures of authoritarianism, collectivism, warmth, anger, attributions for children's misbehavior, and parental feelings of control over failure were administered to Egyptian Canadian and Anglo-Canadian men and women living in Canada. The Egyptian Canadians were higher on authoritarianism, collectivism, anger, and the men were higher on perceived control over failure. The best predictor of authoritarian parenting for the Egyptian Canadian group was collectivism. For the Anglo-Canadian group, the best predictors were collectivism and lack of warmth. Differences in the meaning of authoritarianism in collectivist and individualist groups and their meaning for the transmission of values are discussed: Higher levels of authoritarianism are not necessarily accompanied by overall lower levels of warmth; more negative (dispositional) attributions about children; or more automatic, maladaptive, and inflexible processing of information. Thus, the conditions that promote transmission of values-warmth and benign ways of thinking-are just as likely to be present in groups using authoritarian parenting.
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2003
The author comments on an article by . The implications of authoritarianism to social phenomena are extended to the values and bullying behaviors of adolescent children of authoritarian fathers. Eighty-two authoritarian and 252 nonauthoritarian Israeli fathers participated with their adolescent children. Authoritarian fathers expected their children to give high importance to power, tradition, and conformity values and lower-than-average importance to benevolence, universalism, and self-direction values. In comparison with offspring of nonauthoritarian fathers, offspring of authoritarian fathers gave more importance to power values and less importance to universalism values. Offspring of authoritarian fathers also tended to associate more with bully friends. The combination of high adolescent power values and their fathers' authoritarian parenting was associated with the highest degrees of bullying by adolescents. The social implications of the findings are discussed.
European Journal of Personality, 2007
Although research drew attention to the importance of both parental goal promotion and parental rearing style in explaining adolescent authoritarian submission (Right-Wing Authoritarianism or RWA) and authoritarian dominance (Social Dominance Orientation or SDO), research failed to examine their combined effects. This study examines the relative contribution of parenting goals (i.e. extrinsic vs. intrinsic and conservation goals) and styles (i.e. need support and regulation) and their interactions in the prediction of adolescent RWA and SDO. Cross-sectional analyses show that, whereas parenting goals and styles and their interactions predict RWA, SDO is predicted by parental goals only. However, in a second, longitudinal study, changes in RWA and SDO were predicted by parenting goals only.
European Journal of Personality, 2009
Several personality constructs have been theorised to underlie right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). In samples from New Zealand and Germany (Ns ΒΌ 218, 259), we tested whether these constructs can account for specific variance in RWA. In both samples, social conformity and personal need for structure were independent predictors of RWA. In Sample 2, where also openness to experience was measured, social conformity and personal need for structure fully mediated the impact of the higher-order factor of openness on RWA. Our results contribute to the integration of current approaches to the personality basis of authoritarianism and suggest that two distinct personality processes contribute to RWA: An interpersonal process related to social conformity and an intrapersonal process related to rigid cognitive style.
Authoritarianism of Parents and Offspring: Intergenerational Politics and Adjustment to College
Journal of Research in Personality, 1999
The authoritarianism scores (RWA) of parents and their college-aged children were hypothesized to interact to affect the intergenerational transmission of political attitudes and offspring adjustment to college. Parent and offspring dyads who matched on RWA (both scored high or low) agreed about the importance of social events and on the mechanisms by which political attitudes were transmitted from parent to
The traditional and still dominant approach to authoritarianism measures it as a unidimensional construct. However, in the past few years some studies have assessed the three hypothesized authoritarianism components (i.e., authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism) separately. The aims of this study are to verify that the three-correlated-factor structure fits the data better than the one-factor model and to analyze the distinct effects of the three dimensions of authoritarianism on values and prejudice. A total of 169 Italian citizens responded to a questionnaire. As hypothesized, a structural equation model shows that the dimension of authoritarian submission is mainly related to the openness to change vs. conservation values opposition; the dimension of authoritarian aggression is more characterized on the self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement values opposition; conventionalism is mainly linked to traditional values. As concerns prejudice, this variable is predicted just by authoritarian aggression. Theoretical implications as concerns the conceptualization of authoritarianism are discussed.