Browsing by Subject "Authoritarianism"
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Item Authoritarianism and Personality: Conceptual Issues and the Role of Biased Responding(2013-05) Ludeke, StevenIn this dissertation I address two topics concerning authoritarianism: (1) the role of self-report bias in the assessment of the correlates of authoritarianism, and (2) the question of whether authoritarianism is appropriately conceptualized as a personality trait. I addressed the first topic in Studies 1 and 2. Study 1 used two samples to highlight the role of the individual's perceptions of trait desirability in predicting bias in that individual's self-reports. The individual's views of the desirability of a trait were shown to be an effective predictor of variance that remained in self-report for that trait after the variance shared with peer-reported and/or objectively-assessed levels of that trait have been removed, indicating that people were more prone to exaggerate their levels of a trait when they personally viewed that trait as desirable. In a direct comparison against socially desirable responding measures, which identify individuals who claim exaggerated levels of general patterns of traits, individual perceptions of the desirability of traits were found to predict equal or greater amounts of bias in self-report measures, depending on the trait. As previous studies had reported that authoritarians scored highly on measures of socially desirable responding, Study 2 applied the concepts of Study 1 to identify whether and how authoritarians exaggerate trait levels in self-reports. I found that authoritarians and nonauthoritarians were prone to distinct patterns of exaggerations in self-reports, where these exaggerations were explained by the different views of trait desirability held by authoritarians versus nonauthoritarians. There is thus nothing about authoritarianism per se that was connected to a tendency to misrepresent one's true trait levels; rather, its connection with exaggeration in self-reports derived from its association with perceptions of trait desirability. In Study 3, I addressed recent challenges to the original "trait" conception of authoritarianism in a longitudinal twin study. I found that, consistent with the results observed for other personality traits, authoritarianism was highly stable over time, and this stability was influenced primarily by genetic factors.Item Closed Personalities: The Psychological Roots of Autocratic Support(2022-04) Armendariz Miranda, PaulaWhy do some citizens support autocratic forms of government while others prefer democratic ones? Despite all the tragedy that dictatorships have brought to humanity some individuals still believe that autocracy is desirable. My dissertation seeks to uncover why citizens living in the same country and experiencing the same phenomena, show different preferences and support for authoritarianism and democracy. In this, I argue that individuals who are wary of diversity and individual autonomy – what psychologists would call individuals with closed personalities – crave autocratic political structures that suppress citizen participation, individual autonomy, and plurality of political expression. This form of government provides such individuals with psychological security and reassurance, particularly during times of perceived crisis and civil disobedience.Item Making Law Matter: The Legal Mobilization of Subaltern Actors In Cambodia(2022-07) Tek, FarrahThe goal of this dissertation is to explain why and how subaltern actors engage in legal mobilization in an authoritarian country with a weak rule of law. Scholarship on authoritarian legality argue that citizen use the law under certain conditions—if the issue is apolitical, not involving powerful actors, or because the state purposefully redirects public grievances from the streets to legal institutions. I, however, argue that even on contentious issues involving the state, subaltern actors organize “from below” to develop innovative repertoires of legal mobilization tactics to build alternate forms of enforcement. My two case studies—a grassroots environmental group called the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) and garment factory workers and trade unions creatively employ complex legal mobilization repertoires. The PLCN use what is called “legal bricolage” by resourcefully and innovatively combining practices and beliefs from different normative orderings. Garment factory workers engage in what I call “contentious accountability” by mixing disruption with arbitration in going on strike and using a legal institution simultaneously. Through intensive fieldwork in Cambodia combining a multitude of different methods, this interdisciplinary social study of law illustrates how despite living in a repressive country that weaponizes the law against its citizens, subaltern actors engage in legal mobilization to build their own system of enforcement.Item The Political Psychology Of Immigration Attitudes: A Compound Threat Sensitivity Framework(2020-05) Weiner, ElliotImmigration attitudes are shaped by complex interactions between contextual factors and individual differences. Whereas prior work has generally considered these interactions in isolation, I contend that we can gain a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of immigration attitudes by assessing individual differences in sensitivity to simultaneous contextual changes. I develop a compound threat sensitivity framework, which proposes that the influence of population change on immigration attitudes is dependent on concurrent changes in economic wellbeing and crime, as well as individual differences associated with preferences for security/order over social freedom (e.g., authoritarianism; see Altemeyer, 1981; Stenner, 2005), and those associated with preferences for power/dominance over egalitarianism (e.g., social dominance orientation; see Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). Correspondingly, the influence of economic conditions and crime on immigration attitudes depends on concurrent changes in the rate of immigration, as well as these individual differences. I tested these ideas in two studies. Study 1 assessed the contingent influence of objective country-level contextual factors, using data from the European Social Survey. Study 2 tested these ideas experimentally by manipulating information about concurrent changes in society. The results provide support for a compound threat sensitivity framework. These findings expand upon and qualify both the Dual Process Model of Prejudice (DPM; Duckitt & Sibley, 2009) and research on the influence of demographic change on political attitudes (e.g., Craig & Richeson, 2014). In addition to enhancing our theoretical understanding of “person X context” interactions in the domain of immigration, this work also has practical implications regarding messages that are likely to influence support for immigration.