Nazi and American researchers described nearly the same personality types with opposite valuations.

Evidence

In 1950, in the United States, The Authoritarian Personality was published. The research reported in this book undertook to discover the psychological roots of anti- Semitism. The anti-Semite in America turned out to be generally ethnocentric, generally antagonistic to groups other than his own because he thought of these groups as having various disagreeable innate qualities. Politically the anti-Semite tended to be conservative, a firm believer in “free enterprise,” nationalistic, a friend of business, and an enemy of labor unions. A person with this combination of opinions sounded like a potential Fascist. The authoritarian type in his perception and thought appeared to be rigid and intolerant of ambiguity. He was, more or less, Jaensch’s J-Type, but J, who was a hero to Nazi social science, was a villain to American social science. What Jaensch called “stability” we called “rigidity” and the flaccidity and eccentric-ity of Jaensch’s despised Anti-Type were for us the flexibility and individualism of the democratic equalitarian. The typologies of Jaensch and of the authors of The Authoritarian Personality were much the same but the evaluations were different. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 429

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The same descriptive typology mapped perversely onto opposite political heroes and villains—Jaensch’s despicable S-Type is America’s democratic equalitarian, his admired J-Type is American social science’s authoritarian villain. This undercuts any pretense that political personality psychology is value-neutral description; the raw material is fundamentally equivocal until theory assigns valence.
• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School volume already read—the Authoritarian Personality project commissioned by the AJC in 1944 and its reception sits in both books. — connects to: Early authoritarian personality research hoped to blame anti-Semitism on deviants — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1594; Nazism and Bolshevism converged on identical structure from opposite origins. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 873; Antisemitism scholarship asked the uniqueness question at the expense of comparative racism — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 494

Broader Connections

• Early authoritarian personality research hoped to blame anti-Semitism on deviants #complicates (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1594
• Nazism and Bolshevism converged on identical structure from opposite origins. #expands (0.82) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 873
• Antisemitism scholarship asked the uniqueness question at the expense of comparative racism #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 494