The Psychology of Authoritarianism: From Post-WWII to January 6, 2021

Historical Context

After World War II and the horrors of fascism, social scientists sought to understand the psychological underpinnings that might make individuals susceptible to authoritarian ideologies. The groundbreaking 1950 study The Authoritarian Personality emerged as a pivotal work in this field, offering the first systematic attempt to measure and quantify fascist tendencies through psychological profiling. The researchers, including Theodor Adorno and Else Frenkel-Brunswik who had fled Nazi Germany and German-annexed Austria, had deeply personal motivations for this investigation.

The Original Framework

Here is the original list of features of the construct as articulated by Adorno et al. The original work developed four scales as tools to explore the authoritarian personality:

1. The F-scale (F for fascist), testing for "pre-fascist" traits

2. The "A-S scale," testing for anti-Semitism

3. The "E-scale," testing for ethnocentrism (including anti-Semitism)

4. The "PEC-scale," testing for political and economic conservatism:

Nine Traits of the Original Model

a. Conventionalism. Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-­ class values.

b. Authoritarian submission. Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the ingroup.

c. Authoritarian aggression. Tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values.

d. Anti-­ intraception. Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-­ minded.

e. Superstition and stereotypy. The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories.

f. Power and “toughness.” Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-­ weak, leader-­follower dimension, identification with power figures; overemphasis on the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness.

g. Destructiveness and cynicism. Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.

h. Projectivity. The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.

i. Sex. Exaggerated concern with sexual “goings-­on.”

The F-Scale in Practice

The work introduced a quantifiable measure of an individual's susceptibility to fascism through the F Scale. Those who strongly agreed with statements like the following might not be a fascist at the moment, but a person who could fall for a fascist demagogue when one emerged:

• There is too much emphasis in college on intellectual and theoretical topics, not enough emphasis on practical matters and on the homely virtues of living.

• Homosexuality is a particularly rotten form of delinquency and ought to be severely punished.

• Human nature being what it is, there will always be war and conflict.

• There are some things too intimate or personal to talk about even with one’s closest friends.

• There are some activities so flagrantly un-American that, when responsible officials won’t take the proper steps, the wide-awake citizen should take the law into his own hands.

• No insult to our honor should ever go unpunished.

• Every person should have a deep faith in some supernatural force higher than himself to which he gives total allegiance and whose decisions he does not question.

• Too many people today are living in an unnatural, soft way; we should return to the fundamentals, to a more red-blooded, active way of life.

Spotlight on Anti-intraception

Anti-intraception, a cornerstone trait of the authoritarian personality, represents a deep-seated aversion to introspection and emotional awareness. Those high in this characteristic actively resist examining themselves and their inner world, preferring concrete action over contemplation. They display discomfort with ambiguity, imagination, and “tender-mindedness,” often dismissing artistic or emotional expressions as frivolous or weak.

This rejection of self-reflection could serve a protective function, according to some thinkers, shielding those individuals from confronting internal conflicts or challenging the rigid belief systems they've adopted. By avoiding introspection, they maintain mental defenses that support other authoritarian tendencies—their unquestioning submission to authority figures remains unchallenged while their aggressive impulses go unexamined. Although empirical evidence is lacking, logical inference suggests that anti-intraception manifests as skepticism toward psychology, dismissal of emotional intelligence, and resistance to educational approaches that encourage critical thinking about one's own perspectives.

Critical Perspectives

Note that intense opposition to this construct exists. Christopher Lasch, a formidable and prolific conservative social critic, argued that Adorno's work had a "strongly politicized agenda" that equated mental health with left-wing politics while pathologizing rightwing views as an "authoritarian" disorder. He claimed the book's ultimate goal was to eliminate antisemitism by essentially treating Americans as "inmates of an insane asylum" requiring collective psychotherapy. Lasch's book The Minimal Self (1985) offers an alternative typology to replace the Left-Right axis that Adorno's work implicitly reinforced, suggesting a "politics of the psyche" with three camps: "the party of the superego," "the party of the ego," and "the party of Narcissus."

“[Education] has neither improved popular understanding of modern society, raised the quality of popular culture, nor reduced the gap between wealth and poverty, which remains as wide as ever. On the other hand, it has contributed to the decline of critical thought and the erosion of intellectual standards, forcing us to consider the possibility that mass education, as conservatives have argued all along, is intrinsically incompatible with the maintenance of educational standards.”

Peter Gordon offers a structural reading of Adorno that critiques simplistic applications of Adorno's theory rather than the theory itself. He argues against using the framework to diagnose "particular pathologies of Trump or his supporters," suggesting that Adorno himself "refused to identify such social pathologies with specific personalities or social groups." Adorno et al. didn’t set out to define a social psychopathology but to understand the inner core of political movements elevating one leader to accrue the power required to dehumanize those who do not agree with the leader.

The question of whether authoritarianism constitutes a mental illness is complex and contentious. The original researchers did not frame it as a mental illness, but rather as a personality type or syndrome with specific characteristics. Psychologist Bruce Levine argues that many individuals diagnosed with conditions like oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD, or anxiety disorders are essentially anti-authoritarians who question illegitimate authority. He suggests that the mental health profession, which selects for compliance with authority through its educational and credentialing systems, may be predisposed to view anti-authoritarian traits as problematic.

Reflective Discussion

The erosion of democratic norms continues apace with hundreds of political scientists recently warning that the United States is "moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism." This slide is marked by expanding executive power and diminishing checks and balances, creating what Harvard professor Steven Levitsky describes as a "relatively mild" but recognizable form of authoritarian governance.

Authoritarian aggression—the tendency to condemn and punish those who violate conventional values—is evident in promises to weaponize government powers against critics. Recent political rhetoric has increasingly used administrative and regulatory authorities not just for governance but as "tools to coerce loyalty and curb dissent," with federal agencies potentially being transformed into instruments of punishment against perceived enemies. For example, the American people watched helplessly as a legally sanctioned immigrant named Abrego Garcia was loaded on an airplane with 500 other immigrants to America and was transported to a foreign prison despite a legal injunction to turn the plane around.

Conventionalism—the rigid adherence to traditional values—manifests in attempts to control education and expression. In terms of expression, in states like Florida, legislation resembling Hungary's educational restrictions has emerged with laws like the "Don't Say Gay" bill effectively prohibiting open classroom discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity as a routine part of instruction while universities face increasing political pressure to conform to traditional ideological expectations. In terms of broader educational control, some argue that a variant of this authoritarian sentiment may have emerged in our classrooms as a response to the intrusion of AI in the current mindset toward banning technological reforms. Students have reported a heightened sense of surveillance and mistrust in their classrooms.

The authoritarian personality, not a personality trait but a type, doesn't suddenly emerge fully formed; it grows incrementally through normalized intolerance and the gradual acceptance of previously unthinkable breaches of democratic norms. It grows through adult practices and modeling in roles wielding arbitrary power over others. As we reflect on Adorno's warnings from 1950, we must recognize that, even though the construct itself has been vigorously contested as a valid and reliable map of the territory it espouses to cover, the psychological mechanisms he identified continue to operate, making vigilance against authoritarian tendencies in all of their forms not an academic exercise but an urgent civic responsibility to speak against the undemocratic actions by the powerful.

There is no assumption beneath the authoritarian personality model specifying that conservatives are authoritarian and liberals are not; authoritarians are found across the aisle. There is no intent to classify people. There is, however, an impressive mental model our predecessors have left us of authoritarian features in mass movements within societies humans have seen repeatedly throughout history regardless of political affiliation—authoritarianism is non-partisan. Authoritarian rhetoric brought us to this brink. Democratic rhetoric can bring us back.

Download the pdf for the entire Adorno et al. book at the link provided in the introduction to this post. Adorno, Theodor W., Else Frenkel-­ Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. NevittSanford. (1950) 1982. The Authoritarian Personality: Studies in Prejudice. Abridged ed. Edited by Max Horkheimer and Samuel H. Flowerman. NewYork: Norton.