1. They show that authoritarianism is strongly correlated with attitudes on a wide range of political and social issues, even after controlling for other factors like partisanship, ideology, and demographics. This supports the idea that authoritarianism is an important predictor of political attitudes. 2. They find that experimentally manipulating the salience of threats like terrorism can polarize attitudes between high and low authoritarians. However, their own correlational study does not prove that rising threats cause polarization. 3. They acknowledge limitations in applying their authoritarianism measure to African Americans and call for further

1. Psychobiography and the Authoritarian Personality

3.  Political elites
 Harold Lasswell’s, Psychopathology and Politics (1930). (First)
 Alexander & Juliette George, WoodrowWilson and Colonel House
(1964). (best)
 James David Barber, Presidential Character (1992). (most popular)
 David Winter. 1987. “Leader Appeal, Leader Performance, and the
Motive Profile of Leaders and Followers.”
 Mass Publics
 The Authoritarian Personality, (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik,
Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). (first)
 Bob Altemeyer. Enemies of freedom: understanding right-wing
authoritarianism, 1988. (second)
 Marc Hetherington. 2009. Authoritarianism and Polarization in
American Politics . (best in AU)
 Jeffrey Mondak & Matt Hibbing. 2010. Personality and the
Foundations of Political Behavior. (Big Five)

4.  Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolph
Hitler
 "Hitler might commit suicide.This is the most
plausible outcome. . . .It is probably true that
he has an inordinate fear of death, but being a
psychopath he could undoubtedly screw
himself up into the superman character and
perform the deed. In all probability, however,
it would not be a simple suicide. He has much
too much of the dramatic for that, and since
immortality is one of his dominant motives
we can imagine that he would stage the most
dramatic and effective death scene he could
possibly think of. . . .He might even engage
some other fanatic to do the final killing at his
orders."
 FromWalter C. Langer, in a top-secret
psychoanalysis of Adolph Hitler written for
the Office of Strategic Services, 1943.

5.  "The danger is that crisis will be transformed into
tragedy--that Nixon will go from a dramatic experiment
to a normal commitment, a commitment to follow his
private star, to fly off in the face of overwhelming odds.
That type of reaction is to be expected when and if
Nixon is confronted with a severe threat to his power
and sense of virtue.“
 James David Barber, on Richard Nixon, 1971,
seemed to foreshadow Nixon’s behavior in the
Watergate cover-up.
 The Presidential Character: Predicting
Performance in theWhite House
 Impact in the 1980s:
 Huge impact on news coverage of
presidents after LBJ & RMN convinced
people that flawed characters matter.
 Continual search for flawed personality
traits among pundits and academics.

6. Positive Negative
Active ADAPTIVE: self-confident; flexible;
creates opportunities for action;
enjoys the exercise of power, does not
take himself too seriously; optimistic;
emphasizes the "rational mastery" of
his environment; power used as a
means to achieve beneficial results.
Thomas Jefferson,
F. D. Roosevelt,
H.Truman,
J. F. Kennedy,
G. Ford,
G.W. Bush(?)
COMPULSIVE: power as a means to self-realization;
expends great energy on tasks but derives little joy;
preoccupied with whether he is failing or
succeeding; low self-esteem; inclined to rigidity and
pessimism; highly driven; problem managing
aggression.
John Adams,
W.Wilson,
H. Hoover,
A. Lincoln,
L. B. Johnson,
R. Nixon,
Passive COMPLIANT: seek to be loved; easily
manipulated; low self-esteem is
overcome by ingratiating personality;
reacts rather than initiates;
superficially optimistic.
James Madison,
W. H.Taft,
W. Harding,
R. Reagan,
Bill Clinton
WITHDRAWN: responds to a sense of duty; avoid
power; low self-esteem compensated by service to
others; responds rather than initiates; avoids conflict
and uncertainty. emphasizes principles and
procedures and an aversion to politicking.
GeorgeWashington,
C. Coolidge,
D. Eisenhower
Do you agree
with the
placement of
Clinton and
Bush?
Where
would you
put Obama?

7.  Simplicity?
 Ideological bias?
 Predictions?
 Problem with available data

8.  Data: Speeches, writings,
autobiographies,
interviews are influenced
by:
 Impression management
 Authorship
▪ Lee Sigelman: content analysis
of speeches. Evidence of "Two
Reagans” based on different
speech writers!
 Partisanship and ideology.
 Bush self-portraits

9.  Provide a critique of James David Barber’s
study of presidential character as discussed in
class and Houghton. How does it point up
some of the problems with doing psycho-
biographical studies of political elites?

11. Genetics Personality
General
Orientations
(Values)
Attitudes Behavior
Environment

12.  DEFINITION:
 FROM "PERSONA": MASK used by ANCIENT ROMANS to tell
audience what to expect from that particular character; signified a
consistent set of behaviors.
 GordonALLPORT in 1937 noted over fifty types of definitions of
personality
 MINIMALIST DEFINITION: an enduring set of dispositions to
respond in a particular manner that is consistent across time and
situations.

13.  COMMONCHARACTERISTICS
 INFERRED
 ENDURING
 CONSISTENT
 TRAITS (e.g., extroversion, optimism): an enduring disposition to
behave in a particular way over a range of situations, which are:
 COMPARABLE
 DIFFERENTIABLE
 STABLE
 TYPES, FACTORS: clusters of related personality traits (e.g.,
introversion/extroversion; authoritarian/democratic)

14.  Idiographic: emphasizes the uniqueness of
individuals in terms of specific traits and
the way the traits are organized.
 Nomothetic:An approach to personality
that emphasizes individual differences on
standard measures in order to compare
different individuals.

15.  Case studies: in-depth study of single individuals to capture the
uniqueness and complexity of individuals. Problem with subjective
interpretation of data & inability to generalize complexities across
individuals. (Georges, Barber)
 Correlational method: Is there an association or correlation
between different traits and with behaviors across individuals? Do
variable X (e.g., aggressiveness and variableY (e.g., political
violence) go together or vary together? Benefits are naturalness of
the design, generalizabity of results to population (subjects are
selected randomly); disadvantage is the inability to detect cause-
and-effect relationships. (Winter, Hetherington, Mondak)
 Experimental method: Causal variables are manipulated while all
other variables are held constant. Benefit is ability to determine
cause-and-effect relationships; disadvantage is laboratory setting
and inability to generalize results to wider population. (Feldman &
Stenner, Michels)

16. • Authoritarianism in Psychology & Political Science (Hetherington &Weiler)
• The Big Five Personality (Mondak & Hibbing)

17.  THE PREJUDICED PERSONALITY
 INTOLERANT PERSONALITY
 UNDEMOCRATIC PERSONALITY

18.  Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality
(1950)
 Psychoanalytic interpretation
 Problems with the F-scale
 Bob Altemeyer, Right-Wing Authoritarianism
 Authoritarian submission
 Authoritarian aggression
 Conventionalism
 Problems with RWA measure?
 Marc Hetherington & Jonathon Weiler.
2009. Authoritarianism and Polarization in
American Politics

19.  AU is fundamentally motivated by a need for
order & support for authorities seen as best
able to secure that order against a variety of
threats to social cohesion.
 Note: AU & conservatism aren’t the same thing,
and the association between them isn’t all that
high.

20. Values in Children vs Actual childrearing
practices.
“I am going to read you pairs of values. Which
value is more important for a child to have?”
1. Independence? or Respect for elders?
2. Curiosity? or Good manners?
3. Being considerate or Being well-behaved?
4. Obedience or Self-Reliance?

21. Construct validity: Is the measure correlated with the things theory tells us it should be?
 AU is correlated with:
 Need for cognition (low AU agree)
▪ “I would prefer complex to simple problems.”
▪ “I like to have the responsibility of handling a situation that requires a lot of
thinking.”
▪ “I have opinions on most things.”
 Intelligence (interviewer rating), education, political knowledge
 Need for order
▪ “Personally, I tend to think that there is a right way and a wrong way to do
almost everything”
▪ “Nothing gets accomplished in this world unless you stick to some basic rules”
 Next: Does AU help us explain political & social intolerance
toward a range of unpopular groups?

22. Even after adding lots of controls
for demographic characteristics,
political values, partisanship,
liberalism-conservatism, and
religiosity,Authoritarianism still
has a large impact on support for
(opposition to) Gay Rights Issues.

23. As AU increases, support for gay rights decreases, even after
removing the influence of all control variables, such as political
values, partisanship, liberalism-conservatism, and religiosity.

24. Even after adding lots of controls
for demographic characteristics,
partisanship, liberalism-
conservatism, Authoritarianism
still has a large impact on
ImmigrationAttitudes.

25.  Even after controlling
for other factors, like
PID, Ideology and
Social characteristics,
the magnitude of
authoritarianism’s
effect is sizeable.
 Percentage difference in
immigration attitudes for
people at the lowest and
highest ends of the AU
scale. 30% to 40%.

26. 28
50
38 37
67
83 82
77
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Economy Culture Breakers, Immigrants
American American are Law- for Illegal
is a Threat to should Adopt Immigrants to Citizenship
Immigration Immigrants Illegal Against Path
Low Author High Author

27. Civil Liberties Questions
1. As you may know, federal government
agencies have recently been given more power
to use electronic surveillance to monitor
phone calls and emails within the United
States without first getting a court warrant
to do so. Do you consider this an acceptable or
unacceptable way for the federal government
to investigate terrorism?
2. Some people think installing video cameras
in public places is a good idea because they
may help to reduce the threat of terrorism.
Other people think this is a bad idea because
surveillance cameras may infringe on people’s
privacy rights.What do you think?Would you
say this it is a good idea or a bad idea to install
surveillance cameras in public places?
3. These days, if someone disagrees with the
president on issues relating to terrorism, do
you think it is okay to criticize him publicly, or
should people not criticize the president on
issues relating to terrorism?
4. Do you think the news media should - or
should not - report information it obtains
about the secret methods the government is
using to fight terrorism?

28. Even after adding lots of
controls for demographic
characteristics,
partisanship, liberalism-
conservatism, and
perceived threat from
terrorism,Authoritarianism
still has a large impact on
support for Use of Force vs.
Diplomacy abroad.

29. HawkishViews:
1. Do you think the war in Iraq
was a mistake?
2. Allies vs. National Interest:
“The U.S. should take into
account the interests of its
allies even if it means
making compromises,” or
“the U.S. should follow its
own national interests even
when its allies strongly
disagree.”
3. Strength vs. Diplomacy:
Agree more: “the best way
to ensure peace is through
military strength” or “Good
diplomacy is the best way to
ensure peace.”

30.  Sometimes the issue favors Republicans,
such as when perceived threat from
terrorists, immigration or cultural issues
increases among a majority of the public.
 But it also creates a wedge issue that divides
Republicans and prevents them from winning
elections if the establishment cannot move a
larger portion of their supporters to a
majority position on cultural and other “hot
button” issues.

31.  H&W’s study is correlational so while it
provides lots of external validity for the
associations betweenAU & political
attitudes, internal validity is harder to
establish with their cross-sectional survey
data.
 Experimental studies: manipulate threat
from outgroups to see if that makes
authoritarianism a stronger source of political
attitudes whenAU feel threatened.

32. Chapter 6 (Not Assigned!)

33.  Experimental studies find polarization of high
and low authoritarian responses after
manipulating threat in the laboratory or a
survey experiment
 e.g., Merolla and Zechmeister (2008): after
raising the salience of terrorist threat in their
experiments, high authoritarian individuals,
compared with low authoritarian individuals:
▪ Perceive greater threat from terrorism
▪ Support restrictions on civil liberties at home
▪ Support the war on terror abroad
▪ Support for a strong leader
 H &W argue that these findings occur in the
“laboratory” and do not accurately reflect
rising threat levels in the “real” world.

34.  A very different effect of perceived threat.
Non-authoritarians converge to an
authoritarian response.
 Problem: H&W do not manipulate threat.
They ask people about their existing level of
threat and find that non-authoritarians who
perceive high threat from terrorism, say, shift
to the Right.

35. Problems:
1. Their cross-sectional survey results are
interpreted as if threat levels had just
changed. Association is interpreted as
causation.
2. Non-authoritarians who perceive a lot of
threat may be atypical.
3. Their survey was done in 2006, 5 years
after 9/11. Authoritarians may have
already moved to the Right on this issue
after 9/11 and a ceiling effect prevents
further movement to the Right.

36.  Basically, their measure of Authoritarianism
works for white respondents but doesn’t
perform as expected for AfricanAmerican
respondents.
 And they are not sure why that is the case.
Their recommendation is for further research.

37.  “Authoritarianism in Black &White” (Perez & Hetherington)
 To further investigate whether and why their measure doesn’t work as
well for African Americans, they conduct an experiment where they
manipulate the level of threat from illegal immigrant groups that
either pose a threat to the established order or not (i.e., Mexicans or
Canadians).
▪ The control group provided no information about immigrants’ legal status or
national origin.The second and third conditions identified immigrants as illegal
Canadians and illegal Mexicans, respectively.
▪ Let’s talk about a group of immigrants that has been coming illegally into the
U.S. for some years. Because [Canada/Mexico] is so close to the U.S., many
[Canadian/Mexican] immigrants have found it relatively easy to cross into the
U.S. withoutAmerican authorities detecting them.This ease of movement has
permitted these [Canadian/Mexican] immigrants to settle and find jobs in the
U.S. Some individuals believe that illegal immigration is beneficial to the U.S.
economy because it supplies labor that employers demand. Other individuals
believe, however, that the unchecked flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S.
leads to more problems than benefits, such as an increase in crime.

38. • White AUs are more
opposed to Mexican &
Canadian illegal immigrants
than the Control, while
Black AUs are only more
opposed to Canadian illegal
immigrants.
• Conclusion:AU doesn’t
seem to measure the same
concept for Blacks.
Authoritarianism in Black andWhite

39.  Conclusions
 Based on research employing different authoritarianism measures (e.g., Smith
and Prothro 1957; Henry 2011), it is reasonable to believe that Blacks might be
relatively more authoritarian than Whites.Yet the fact that Blacks’
authoritarianism—as measured by the child rearing scale—does not correlate
with a range of theoretically relevant variables suggests this scale is not
effectively measuring authoritarianism within this group.
 The child rearing scale is a very effective measure of authoritarianism among
Whites.
 Solutions? Further research.
▪ Focus groups
▪ Our results indicate the current child rearing items are too “easy” for African Americans to
answer in an authoritarian direction, which helps to produce a large racial gap in
authoritarianism. If the goal of researchers is to shrink this gap to a more reasonable size,
while also enhancing the link between authoritarianism and other variables among Blacks,
then scholars might design slightly revised items that assess preferences for different sets
of desirable traits, such as “conforming to others” versus being “unafraid to be different.”

40. 1. In their 2009 study of Authoritarianism and Polarization inAmerican
Politics, how do Hetherington &Weiler measure authoritarianism and
how is their measure an improvement over prior studies of
authoritarianism?What are some of their measure’s limitations?
2. Why don’t Hetherington &Weiler include AfricanAmericans in their
study? Does the omission of blacks undermine their study? Why or why
not?
3. On what sorts of political issues do Hetherington &Weiler find that
high authoritarians differ a lot from low authoritarians?

42.  We can define personality as being a
multifaceted and enduring psychological
structure that influences patterns in behavior.
 Instead of a single trait or disposition, the Big
Five focuses on many traits that are
subsumed by 5 dimensions

46.  Big Five Factors
 Reduces the semantic nightmare of 1000’s of studied traits
 Hierarchy of general factors subsumes most studied traits
 Genetic basis (H = .45 to .90); mediates biological factors
(“news you can use” vs. genes, alleles)
 Highly stable across the lifespan
 Provides a complete personality profile vs. specific trait
 Consensus in Psychology on:
▪ Factors, traits, measures (NEO-PI-R = 240 items, 30-45 mins; short-
form = 45-60 items)
Genetics Personality
General
Orientations
(Values)
Attitudes Behavior

47. Which one is he?

49. Mondak & Hibbing, 2015

50. Table 2. Personality and Ideology
2010 Americas
Barometer
2012 CCES 2012 ANES
Constant 4.77
(0.40)
4.10
(0.41)
0.60
(0.22)
Female -0.55***
(0.14)
-0.29**
(0.12)
-0.31***
(0.08)
African-American -0.79***
(0.22)
-0.66***
(0.19)
-1.16***
(0.11)
Hispanic -0.47**
(0.21)
-0.23
(0.22)
-0.62***
(0.11)
Age 0.02***
(0.00)
0.02***
(0.00)
0.07***
(0.01)
Openness to
Experience
-2.17***
(0.35)
-2.38***
(0.36)
-2.87***
(0.23)
Conscientiousness 1.88***
(0.35)
1.18**
(0.43)
1.69***
(0.23)
Extraversion 0.29
(0.31)
-0.17
(0.30)
0.23
(0.19)
Agreeableness 0.46
(0.39)
0.03
(0.34)
-0.43
(0.24)
Emotional Stability 0.62*
(0.34)
0.59*
(0.34)
0.60**
(0.22)
R2
0.09 0.08 0.08
Number of Cases 1493 879 4679
Source: U.S. component of the 2010 AmericasBarometer (first column); 2012 Cooperative Congressional
Election Study (second column); 2012 American National Election Study (third column).
Note: Cell entries are OLS regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. The dependent
variable is a 10-point (column one) or 7-point (columns two and three) measure of ideological self-
placement, coded liberal (1) to conservative (highest value).
*** p < .001 ** p < .05 * p < .10
Personality shapes Ideology Personality & Ideology shape SSM
Direct and Indirect Links

51. Direct effect
Indirect effects (by shaping Ideology,
which, in turn, shapes Approval of SSM)
-2.17
-.18
1.52
Note: Coefficients are from
AmericasBarometer surveys