Fruits of fear, seeds of terror: The political implications of psychological authoritarianism

This dissertation answers the question: "What is psychological authoritarianism?" It examines over eighty years of research on psychological authoritarianism, with special emphasis on Adorno et al.'s The Authoritarian Personality and Robert Altemeyer's work on "right-wing authoritarianism". It explains why Adorno 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 Adorno 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 authoritarianism is authoritarian aggression, nothing more, nothing less.;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.;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 Adorno et al.'s theory. Measures of "authoritarianism" relate well to "conservatism" because they are conceptualized and operationalized in similar ways. However, sixty years of emprical 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.