POL_S 428 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Conventionalism, Fundamental Attribution Error, Authoritarianism
Document Summary
First efforts to use psychoanalytic ideas to examine political behavior was the authoritarian personality study conducted at. Interested in extreme anti-semitism, extreme right wing and fascist political ideology. The atrocities of the holocaust: is there a personality type predisposed toward fascist movements such as the nazi regime. Very attentive to authoritarian aggression: they found their subject had domineering fathers and punitive mothers, harsh child-rearing, threats, coercion, use of parental love and its withdrawal to promote obedience. Authoritarian of the right, center and left. Barker discovered that one cannot say precisely which political ideology one belongs to if person is an authoritarian. Divided people into extreme left, moderate left, center, moderate right and extreme right. Found no apparent relationship among authoritarianism and conservatism in the moderate ranges. When he extended his sample to include extreme leftist and extreme rightists, differences in general authoritarianism started to emerge. Dogmatism or authoritarianism of the extreme rightists went way up.
