Early parenting style shapes lifelong tolerance versus authoritarianism

Evidence

While the core of the authoritarian personality was threat, insecurity, and ego weakness, the core of the tolerant personality was the exact opposite: a sense of inner security, freedom from threat, ego maturity, and therefore the inner confidence and strength to cope adequately with threat. In contrast to the typically harsh, punitive early life experience of the authoritarian, the tolerant person was the product of a permissive home characterized by security and unconditional acceptance from parents, leading to an empathic and accepting orientation toward others, a liberal ideological outlook, tolerance of ambiguity, psychological sophistication, and the capacity to think in shades of gray rather than simplistic, rigid categories. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2431

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes attachment theory and the later finding that secure attachment predicts lower out-group prejudice. — connects to: Authoritarian parenting produces children unable to manage aggression or form intimate bonds — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1779; Rigid distant fathers and self-sacrificing mothers raise children prone to authoritarian personality — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 443
• QUESTION: The permissive-home origin story of tolerance is empirically shaky today; worth checking how modern research treats it.