I am 38 years old was born and raised in Missouri and have 6 siblings.  My father's son, whom I was not raised around, is a Democrat.  The entire rest of my family are all Republicans, but they call themselves "Independents" and are text book AWR with the exception of the religious zealousness.  I have actually looked into moving to Canada because I am so fearful of what I see going on here.  I have no idea why I did not get the gene to make me an AWR, but I do know it must be a gene because even my nieces and nephews have gotten it, I am apparently the only one in my world immune, and that includes most of my friends, some of which are social Democrats, but all of which have the religious zealot thing going on, and I might say I score pretty high on the religious thing too, but I chose to believe because I have felt the presence, even understanding all the logical arguments why I should not.  Anyway,  I have honestly felt like I have been loosing my mind the last few years.  Two books I would like to know if you have read or are familiar with and I would like to humbly encourage you to read them, because it will lend insight into the minds of the people you have studied so closely.  One is called "The Turner Diaries" it has been banned in the US, which I do not agree with, but it is a fictional account of white supremest taking over the country, and clearly most white supremacist must be AWR.  Second is "The Handmaids Tale" written by a fellow Canadian of yours.  Brilliant book, shows a true understanding of how and why this could happen.  If I had the $10,000 I would move to Canada.  I am a single mother with a 4 year old son, and believe me, my family would love nothing more then for laws to be made so I had to give him to one of them to be raised.  Which I will never do, because I honestly fear he will be turned in to one of them.  Until I read your entire book tonight I was really beginning to have serious doubts about my sanity, now I know I am probably an anarchist, but I really do understand my family and friends better and I truly thank you for that.  I will not say God Bless you, because I do not want to offend you, but I do want you to know that I really have been...well I do not know how to say it, except to say thank you very much for your book and if I had the money I would own every book you ever wrote.  Thank you.

To F.D. You sent me your comment privately, which means it will not appear here and also that I can’t give you my responses personally, since I didn’t get your email address. I shall summarize your point here, which I think is well worth noting. In general you said that if someone wants to find left-wing authoritarians, one only need go to Berkeley where lots of authoritarian liberals believed that 9/11 was an “inside job” pulled off by the Bush administration. And that left-wing authoritarians routinely gather for a protest in Berkeley, become energized by being in a crowd, and then go on rampages on Telegraph Ave. destroying property and doing far more damage than any Tea Partiers have done. (You also said, I should observe, that nevertheless right-wing authoritarianism in your opinion remains a bigger threat to democracy than left-wing authoritarianism.)

I’m no longer in the data-collecting business, but someone who wants to test for lwa might administer my LWA scale (see Chapter 9 in The Authoritarian Specter), the RWA scale, and other measures to a suitable Berkeley sample to see what happens.

 I myself haven’t seen any studies that found the “9/11 Conspiracy Theorists” tended to be low RWAs. My personal perception was they came from all over, and were inclined to believe a lot of other conspiracy theories as well, going back to “FDR knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and did nothing” and “Lee Harvey Osward was a CIA stooge.” I can readily accept that belief in a “Bush-9/11 conspiracy” took hold in various “far-left” groups. But I’d be surprised if these were low RWA groups, because in general low RWAs are pretty rational and make their judgments because of evidence, not because of the influence of the maddening crowd.

As for the occasional riots in Berkeley, I would bet that most of the participants are anarchists living in that community, and while anarchists are of course very opposed to the established authority, I’m not sure you can call someone who rejects all social authority an “authoritarian.” (“True believer,” yes.) I think low RWAs are more likely to protest legally, and if illegally, in acts of civil disobedience where they are openly confronting a law they consider unjust. Running up and down the street in a crowd setting cars on fire, smashing windows, and looting stores is pure cowardice.

I do hope someone out there does a good study of all this, if it hasn’t been done before. After all, Berkeley was the birthplace of research in The Authoritarian Personality.

To L.G. Same problem as above with private messages. Yes, John Dean has been on Keith Olbermann’s show a number of times, and he has said he thinks that authoritarianism is a great threat to the country and to the Republican Party in particular. But I do not know if Mr. Olbermann has read this book.

To Jack Tobin: Why did I say, on P. 69/70, that the Block and Block longitudinal study lent weight to genetic explanations of rwa? Because, in a backwards-thinking sort of way, the best predictor we have of adult levels of rwa is a person’s score on my Experiences Scale, which makes good predictions and is based on the “nurture” side of the nature-nurture debate. Yet the Block and Block study showed persistent personality traits among liberals and conservatives from a very early age to adulthood. Most people have tons of experiences over the years, which bend them this way and that. That’s what I’ve found in the effects of higher education studies, and the effects of becoming a parent. So if it really is all nurture, not nature, there should be a pretty strong disconnect between what one is like at age 3 and what one is like as an adult. The correlations, admittedly low, imply there are some enduring influences. They aren’t necessarily genetic, but that’s an obvious possibility.

My own prediction, as stated in the book and on this website, is that when somebody has this all figured out sometime in the future, one’s level of rwa will be shown to be determined by the interaction of genetic and environmental influences, not one or the other. The way each of these forces expresses itself will be affected by the other, and it will not be a matter of “which is more important” but “how did the two produce this?” [This is the stock answer among behavioral scientists now, by the way, and we may turn out to be wrong.]

To Walter: You gave my answer to your question about the difference between self-esteem and self-efficacy as you discussed this issue in your posting. Self-esteem is more global and can be based, in part, on feelings of self-efficacy. But it can mask a lack of self-efficacy as well, and I think it does, in general, in high RWAs. They don’t think they can do much by themselves, they feel vulnerable and unimportant. Being in a group reassures them, and having a powerful leader and cause, especially a holy or a "patriotic" one, can make them quite proud of themselves. (I’ve been struck, over the years, by “white power” groups whose members are basing their self-esteem on something they did not achieve in the least: the color of their skin. It’s sort of the minimal basis for self-esteem. Maybe it works for these people because it’s all they’ve got.) Low RWAs, I think, will show stronger self-efficacy as a group than high RWAs.

Also to Walter: I think you’re right about the validity of distinguishing pro-establishment from anti-establishment authoritarians. I tried to capture the latter with my LWA scale, but just couldn’t find many genuine cases in my studies, which included socialist politicians.

I heard the suggestion in 1975 that Nixon could pardon himself, whether he resigned or not. But I don’t know of any evidence that this was stated to Gerald Ford and used to lever the pardon. I don’t think even Alexander Haig, who was the point man in these negotiations, told Ford this was one of Nixon’s options. (For one thing, Nixon would have long been out of office, one way or the other, by the time he was convicted of anything. And the legality of giving yourself a pardon before you’ve been convicted of anything would probably fall down in court.)

To Gary Williams: Yes, Henry Wallace was quite concerned about the possibility of fascism growing in the United States. So were others, including some researchers. And yes, the parallels to Fox News, etc. are striking. Wallace was talking about fascist leaders using the news to deceive the public. The researchers went beyond that and talked about the people who wanted to be deceived, whom we now call authoritarian followers. I’ve tried to argue that they’re the bigger problem.

 It wasn’t long before Sen. McCarthy was using Wallace and the threat of “Communists spread all throughout the government” (“I have a list…”) to illustrate Wallace’s very point, and the researchers’.

Also to Gary Williams: Yes, that Pew Poll of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which was reported in July, 2009, found an overwhelming 9-1 preference for the Democratic party over the Republicans. I don’t think the Republicans have gained much ground since then, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the Democrats have lost some to Independents.

This may have something to do with what it takes to be a scientist, which include having a relatively open mind, rational thinking, a willingness to let nature decide, and a distrust of dogma. So high RWA students may find scientific inquiry scary, not to mention distressing given many of the things science has found. Hence more liberals than scientists may become scientists.

But I think the bigger reason why scientists tend to favor the Democratic Party over the GOP is the one Pew Research cited: the GOP, especially under Bush, has alienated scientists. They didn’t just ignore the research, but adopted policies that went against the collective scientific wisdom. That’s pretty hard to take for people who are busting a gut trying to discover the truth. “Here, look, we’ve worked long and hard at it, and the evidence is clear. The planet is heating up dangerously.” And the reply was, “No it’s not.” (And Jupiter doesn’t have moons, and the sun goes around the earth every day.)

 This hasn’t changed. Republican politicians are still making arguments like, “We don’t have to worry about global warming because the Bible says God’s going to destroy the earth by fire.”  And few Republican politicians point out the many ways that this is foolish line of reasoning.

To Gary W. It’s hard to disagree with Frank’s assessment of GWB. I said I thought Bush was a Double High in the book (pp. 189-191—just after I described Tom DeLay as a Double High. (I see DeLay still maintains he didn’t break the law that the jury said he did.) And V.P. Cheney seems almost an archetypical high SDO—at least of the kind who work behind the scenes through others.

To Marie: Thank you very much for your kind words. It especially means a lot to me that you’ve recommended this book to your friends. That is how almost everyone comes to this site, and it is the very best kind of “advertising.”(It’s also quite inexpensive!)

Can you describe the experiences that made you a low, low RWA?

To Walter: I’d take “60% right” in a flash, although your comment about 99% reminds me of David Steinberg’s joke about the kid who came home from school and told his mother he’d gotten a 95% on his spelling test, and she responded, “Who got the other five?”

 I think Eric Hoffer was a very insightful thinker. It’s interesting that his first (and most famous) book, The True Believer, was published right after The Authoritarian Personality came out of the halls of U. Cal. Berkeley, on the other side of the Bay from his base. TAP had an enormous impact on psychology, but in the long run I think Hoffer hit more nails on the head. Particularly insightful was his observation that the same kind of person tends to flock to “left-wing” and “right-wing” mass movements. (I would call them authoritarian followers.) Hoffer thought they commonly lacked self-esteem. I’m not sure that’s right. It’s more a lack of self-confidence, or self-efficacy. (High RWAs do not tend to score low on the usual self-esteem scales…but these tests leave a lot to be desired.) And there’s a lot more going on in authoritarian followers than just the feeling that they personally can’t cut it, such as high levels of fear and a lot of blindness and denial.

To Greg: Psychological research, perhaps like research in economics, is strongly influenced by fads. People—especially young academics—are under unbelievable pressure to publish, and they pay close attention to what the editors of various journals are apparently interested in publishing. Authoritarianism had its day in the sun in the 1950s and 1960s, producing a vast, confusing literature that got bogged down in seemingly unanswerable technical questions, and people moved on to other topics (such as cognitive dissonance).

As you may have discovered from your searches, the research that has consumed my life has been favorably reviewed by almost every academic who has commented upon it. But this field will probably never become “hot” in psychology again, in my lifetime at least.

The world does not need tons of one-shot studies based on the RWA scale. Research on authoritarianism will be advanced from here by one or two new people who will make it their life’s work, and they will do it not to get tenure or to get grants or to get promoted, but because it thrills them so much to explore and figure things out.  

I read Escape from Freedom in college and believed every word in it. And doubtless the central premise that some people find freedom terrifying and want tyranny instead has held up well over the decades since Fromm’s seminal work. But the problem I have with it now is that it’s all explained in psychoanalytic theory involving the sado-masochistic personality, and that’s very hard to test. Furthermore, it probably was the origin in academic psychology of the notion that there is just one kind of authoritarian, who can be a commanding leader in one context but an abject follower in another. It turns out the leaders and the followers are pretty different from one another in many respects.

 Most of my grade school education occurred at the hands of Dominican nuns. Funny, they never told me that nickname.

 And of course you may be right (that is, correct) about my using the modifier “right-wing” in “right-wing authoritarianism.” But most people seem to understand from the beginning of Chapter 1 that the reason I call it “right-wing” is because there can be left-wing authoritarians too, and my research has been largely about the kind who submit to the established authorities. But maybe I should have called it “Z.”