Authoritarian Personality

Summary

This encyclopedia entry defines the authoritarian personality as a set of individual differences encompassing aggression toward threatening social groups, submission to ingroup authorities, and rigid adherence to conventional norms. It situates the construct within social and political psychology as an influential explanation for prejudice, ethnocentrism, and anti-democratic attitudes. The authors trace the concept from Adorno and colleagues' original theory and note that weak empirical support for the initial conceptualization led to reformulations, most prominently the construct of right-wing authoritarianism. The entry summarizes how the construct has been measured and situates it in relation to religion and behavior.