Conception And Measurement:A Comparative Study Of Authoritarian Personality Studies

The concept of authoritarian regime has always been an important issue of academia since it was put forward in the 1930s.In fact,there is another meaning of authoritarianism in foreign research,which is from the psychological level,refers to a group of people who blindly submit to the authority,extremely advocate traditional values,and hold prejudice to the out group.In contrast,under the combined effect of social and historical environment,such as family education,patriarchal structure and Confucian ethics,Chinese people also appear to be submission to socially legitimized authorities,adherence to established social norms and experience,which is called "authoritarian character" by some Chinese scholars to describe the basic personality structure of the Chinese.With the development of authoritarian personality research in western academia,domestic scholars have also begun to use this concept to replace the old one.However,it remains to be a problem that whether the Chinese concept is completely equivalent to the western one.This thesis attempts to sort out the conceptual connotation,generation basis,structure and characteristics of western authoritarian personality and Chinese authoritarian character from the perspective of political psychology,and to analyze the applicability of western authoritarian personality theory in the study of Chinese political psychology.By comparing the relevant research results at home and aboard,it is found that the two concepts are roughly the same in terms of the formation of authoritative psychology,behavioral tendencies and the strict patriarchal family education.On the other hand,there are inherent differences between the political and cultural background of Chinese and western culture,and the definition of "authority"is also inconsistent.Moreover,the basic point of western authoritarian personality is the anti-democratic fascist tendency,while Chinese authoritarian character determines the attitude towards authority based on both power and morality.Furthermore,the authoritarian personality is a characteristic of a minority group formed in a specific time background or family environment,while in China it is a group personality manifestation caused by historical and cultural traditions.Therefore,the two concepts are not exactly the same.Although the theoretical connotations of the two concepts are different,the behaviors in personal life are still relatively similar.From this perspective,western scholars' theoretical construction and research results on authoritarian personality may be useful to have a deeper understanding of the Chinese authoritarian character.The comparative analysis of Chinese and Western authoritarianism also contributes to the in-depth understanding of Chinese personality traits and the further advancement of authoritarian personality research.In addition,based on the existing research findings,this thesis attempts to conceptualize the Chinese authoritarian personality and propose a more localized measurement scale,as well as to provide theoretical foundation and valuable reference for the future Chinese authoritarian personality theory construction and empirical measurement.