Summary Of The Authoritarian Spector

The Authoritarian Spector is a compelling book by the social psychologist Bob Altemeyer, that discusses the different aspects of the authoritarian personality, all based on both his research and the research of others. Altemeyer makes the claim that different behaviors, “trusting Nixon during Watergate, hating homosexuals, opposing abortion” (Altemeyer 45) are all linked through authoritarianism, all the while reminding the reader that there are exceptions to these behaviors. The authoritarian personality falls along a spectrum rather than a cut and paste personality. The author of this book does not delve deeply into why these behaviors are linked to the authoritarianism, unless the reason is itself because they are authoritarian. He does; however, provide an extensive number of personality traits that one can identify, and possess a correlation, strong or otherwise, with the authoritarian personality.

Altemeyer begins the book will a list of twenty news stories that appeared as he began writing his book in 1993, two of which stood out to me the most.

In Florida, an anti-abortionist shot and killed a doctor; supporters said he did a good thing (Altemeyer 1). Americans pleaded for stricter gun control after a gunman shot twenty-four people and killed five on a train to Long Island; the NRA opposed any and all new laws (Altemeyer 2). Even after twenty-five years, different, newer versions of these stories have appeared in the news. In the case of the first story there have been many attacks on planned parenthood and even attempts in changing policies when it comes to abortion and whether woman even have the right to this procedure. With the second case, there has been shootings in movie theaters, night clubs, music festivals, churches, and even schools, every year. These stories, both past and present, make me wonder who these people are who are refusing change and why they have the views they

do.
Altemeyer obtains his data through his introductory psychology students and their parents at the University of Manitoba in Canada, as well students in Russia, the United States, and politicians in Canada and the U.S., by using surveys that he then correlates with his RWA Scale. These correlations are presented in three forms, an alpha value, p value, and r value. I was not able to catch what the alpha and p values were meant to represent, whether they were somewhere hidden in the notes at the back of the book, or stated directly, I do not know. Without this knowledge, reading the vast amount of values that was reported was a bit confusing, but I was able to understand whether the behavior correlated with the authoritarian personality because of his explanation of the r value. The r value, which he states has a “strong correlation” if the value is between 0.40-0.60, according to behavioral scientists (Altemeyer 38), is given for nearly all of the behaviors that he had tested.
Starting from the very beginning Altemeyer was listing off correlation data left and right, without stating what a strong correlation value looks like. It was very confusing at first, at least for me, how an r value of 0.41 could prove that a behavior correlates with the authoritarian personality. For the past two years of college I have been told that for two things to correlate, they must have an r2 value of at least 0.99, a value of 0.98 was pushing it but sometimes allowed. It did occur to me that an r value for a phycologist and the r2 value for a natural scientist are probably inherently different, for the first twenty or so pages, relating these two values of correlation was the only thing that I thought to do.
Before going further with his presentation of the behavioral research, Altemeyer considers whether this “fascist” personality is determined by genetics, environment or a combination of both. For the genetic side of the argument, Altemeyer brings up the Minnesota Twin Studies. For identical twins raised both together and apart, there was a strong correlation that showed that genetics plays a role in fascist behavior. There was an average correlation of 0.65 for identical twins and 0.55 for fraternal twins raised together (Altemeyer 74), which, according to Altemeyer, showed that there was no significant different between fraternal and identical twins; genes did not factor into authoritarianism in this case (Altemeyer 73). In another study conducted by Thomas Bouchard, a correlation of 0.62 for identical twins raised apart and -0.18 for fraternal twins (Altemeyer 73). This study was able to show that genetics plays a huge role in authoritarian personality. There are still some questions that both Altemeyer and myself had for the identical twins raised together, the main question being whether these twins were treated any differently by those around them. Altemeyer did his own experiment to test the validity of genetics, by studying the RWA correlation of adoptive parents and their children and found this correlation to be 0.55. This correlation does not support the previously proven notion that genes play a role in authoritarianism (Altemeyer 75).
For Altemeyer’s study, while he did conduct it with adoptive parents, he studied the correlation between the parent and the children, instead of the original child to child study. Due to these differences, Altemeyer can make the claim that parents do not pass their personality “genes: onto their children, but he cannot make the claim that his results disprove the idea of genetics factoring into personality. Identical twins’ genetics are identical, and it would only make sense that certain aspects of their personality, determined by the brain, would be similar whether raised together or apart.
For the environment side of the argument, Altemeyer mentions a study conducted in which he measured the RWA scores for liberal arts students who were graduating, and it showed that High RWAs scored dropped by nearly twice as much as the Lows, with an overall drop of about 11%. Altemeyer states that the cause was university and how it exposed them to a wider range of ideas and peers. (Altemeyer 85) It’s not hard for me to understand why this happens. Universities are filled with people from all walks of life who are more than willing to share their experiences with those around them. However, Altemeyer does another study with alumni who had first taken the RWA scale twelve years before. He had found that their scores had only dropped 5%, but those without children had their scores dropped 9%. He concludes that the reason behind the lower drop with those with children was because they had children. He does not go in any detail on why children had such an effect on authoritarianism. If there is any wish to understand why children have this effect, this book does not provide the answers. My guess as of now is that parents have become the authorities in their children lives and thus have a greater understanding of obedience to authority because of it. Regardless, from these studies mentioned in the last three paragraphs, it seems to be the case that both genetics and environment play a role on authoritarianism, each one playing a greater role in different circumstances.
For the remaining sections of the book Altemeyer begins to discuss the behaviors authoritarian personalities present mostly in terms of their political views and associations, “Low RWA tend to like Democrats, while the Republican Party tends to win the hearts of Highs” (Altemeyer 37), as well as how certain situations in social will affect a person’s RWA Scale score. One of these social changes measured was societal threats. Altemeyer found that when there was a theoretical violent left-wing upheaval (toppling the government), RWA scores increased three times more than the control group; however, when there was a theoretical right-wing upheaval (government threat to democracy), RWA scores did not change significantly. RWA scores also showed a significant increase with a right-wing movement aimed at toppling the government (Altemeyer 91). These people had become more authoritarian when there was a threat coming from the general people, unless the uprising were nonviolent, but not when the government was trying to overthrow democracy. He also showed that the ones who moved the most during the violent uprisings were the Low RWAs, while the Highs generally stayed the same. Why is it that all that needs to happen is a spark of violence for people to become more authoritarian? Is it because people depend on members of authority to protect them from the violence?
Altemeyer had also found that many High RWAs talk about “perversions eating away at society, about the situation in our country getting so serious, about the rot that is poising us” (Altemeyer 101). Are these sentiments the reason why Trump came to power in America? I’m sure there are those who only voted for Trump because he was the male candidate, but what about the others? It is in my option that Trump represented people whose lives were changing, their way of life inherently being threatened. Due to the changing times coal had started to become a dying industry, rightfully so. People in the coal industry will eventually lose their jobs and with the promise from Trump to save them instead of moving to cleaner energy, they mostly voted for Trump.
This trend is also seen with the idea of immigration. Altemeyer believes through his research that “High RWAs can be easily frightened, which makes them vulnerable to precisely the kind of overstated, emotional, and dangerous assertions a demagogue would make” (Altemeyer 101). I do not know exactly what Trump had said about both Mexicans and Muslims or the policies that came after, but the publics opinion that these groups of people shouldn’t be let into the country came to light. Trump’s promise to build a wall and essentially find and kick out all undocumented immigrants sounded amazing to those who believed that Mexicans were stealing American jobs. (This notion is ridiculous to me because of the amount of people who are actually willing to do the jobs these immigrants are reduced to). With the threat of ISIS on the U.S., (as well as the rest of the world, which includes the Middle East), is was also appealing that Trump was hard on the Middle East, wanting to impose travel bans. It makes sense to me now, how someone like Trump came to be president. His ideas appeal to the authoritarian personally in those who voted for him.