The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Not sure if this should go on ILE or ILB. I think ILE as there's an obvious political dimension to all this that I would like to see some commentary on.

It's an academic psychological analysis of the "Right Wing Authoritarian" personality type, looking both at what makes people more likely to be followers of authoritarians, and also what makes people more likely to lead them.

(Also find it interesting that he chose to web publish rather than go the academic/publisher route. Not sure if this means that his work is less valid because a self published book hasn't been put through the usual rigours (though it seems that his research has?) or if it's more valid because he found it so important to get these ideas out)

Anyway. Thoughts?

Bumping in the vague hope that some Americans have read or even heard of this?

kingfish has posted on this in the past. there's a thread even...

Dealing with Authoritarians; or, How to Talk to People Who Hate You

(altermeyer comes up in the middle somewhere)

would like to read this, maybe i'll hit the work printer early in the morn.

i've taken a look at this, though not extensively, but i have to say i have my doubts about this guy's analysis. i'm looking at the follow-up notes to the 08 election and the tea party movement, and he's misreading a lot of things imo.

like this:

Despite all the factors handicapping the Republicans from the start, and the painfully
inept, lurching, hypocritical, unfocused campaign they ran, some 60 million Americans voted
for McCain/Palin. That’s a pretty sobering realization. I think it shows Barack Obama was
working against a significantly stronger headwind than John McCain was, yet he prevailed.

that's just plain not true -- every pollster knew it was going to be a heavily democratic year, the republicans were behind on every metric from the start and remained there.

does he talk about this work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality

it came out in 1950...

i'll keep reading i guess

Yes, he talks about that work, and also the Milgram experiments in great detail.

I did see the other thread, but the book just seemed mentioned in passing, amid a bunch of other stuff (other stuff I am now reading online, but still.) Should I go and revive the other thread instead, maybe?

Be sure to read John Dean's books about this, too.