Excellent book on authoritarianism
The Authoritarians
Bob Altemeyer
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Canada
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
In the fall of 2005 I found myself engaged, most unexpectedly, in a heavy
exchange of emails with the man who had blown the whistle on Watergate, John
Dean. He was writing a book about conservatives without conscience --which
the late Senator Barry Goldwater was to have co-authored. Dean, Goldwater,
and others with solid Republican credentials had been alarmed by the capture of
the Grand Old Party by the Religious Right and its seemingly amoral leaders.
Dean was plowing through the social science literatures on conservatism and
religion to see what perspective academics could offer his analysis, and
eventually he ran across my name.
Who am I? I'm a nearly retired psychology professor in Canada who has
spent most of his life studying authoritarianism. I got into this field by being
lazy. When I took the exams for getting a Ph.D. at Carnegie-Mellon University
in Pittsburgh in 1965, I failed a question about a famous early effort to
understand the authoritarian personality. I had to write a paper to prove I could
learn at least something about this research, which had gotten itself into a huge
hairy mess by then. However, I got caught up in the tangle too. Thus I didn=t
start studying authoritarianism because I am a left-winger (I think I=m a
moderate on most issues)1 (if you want to read a note, click on the number) or
because I secretly hated my father. I got into it because it presented a long series
of puzzles to be solved, and I love a good mystery.
Bob Altemeyer
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Canada
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
In the fall of 2005 I found myself engaged, most unexpectedly, in a heavy
exchange of emails with the man who had blown the whistle on Watergate, John
Dean. He was writing a book about conservatives without conscience --which
the late Senator Barry Goldwater was to have co-authored. Dean, Goldwater,
and others with solid Republican credentials had been alarmed by the capture of
the Grand Old Party by the Religious Right and its seemingly amoral leaders.
Dean was plowing through the social science literatures on conservatism and
religion to see what perspective academics could offer his analysis, and
eventually he ran across my name.
Who am I? I'm a nearly retired psychology professor in Canada who has
spent most of his life studying authoritarianism. I got into this field by being
lazy. When I took the exams for getting a Ph.D. at Carnegie-Mellon University
in Pittsburgh in 1965, I failed a question about a famous early effort to
understand the authoritarian personality. I had to write a paper to prove I could
learn at least something about this research, which had gotten itself into a huge
hairy mess by then. However, I got caught up in the tangle too. Thus I didn=t
start studying authoritarianism because I am a left-winger (I think I=m a
moderate on most issues)1 (if you want to read a note, click on the number) or
because I secretly hated my father. I got into it because it presented a long series
of puzzles to be solved, and I love a good mystery.