Authoritarianism is a socialized cultural belief system, not a marker of individual pathology.

Evidence

Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation are strongly related to the mediator of scapegoating proposed here, endorsement of nationalistic and xenophobic political ideologies (Duckitt, ch. 24 this volume). Further, rather than indicating individual psychopathology, current research reveals these individual differences to be socialized belief systems (Duckitt, this volume), suggesting that cultures (as well as individuals) differ on these dimensions and therefore in their proneness to scapegoating (Staub, 1989). As Duckitt (this volume) notes, people’s endorsement of authoritarianism and social dominance may increase when the ingroup is threatened (authoritarianism) or the status of the ingroup is diminished (social dominance), increasing attraction to and social consensus in scapegoating. Thus, people who endorse these belief systems are likely to be prominent among the willing adherents of scapegoat movements (Staub, 1989). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1603

Categorization

• QUESTION: If authoritarianism is a ‘socialized belief system’ rather than personality pathology, what exactly predicts susceptibility to that socialization?
• XREF: Challenges the intuitive clinical framing of authoritarianism as psychological defect, parallel to Coleman’s treatment of social capital as rational behavior.