Authoritarian Personality

Authoritarian personality may be defined as a system of individual attitudes and behaviors that have a certain stability and resistance to change and that creates an intensely strict and hierarchical vision of the world. In particular, subjects with an authoritarian personality demonstrate an automatic and mechanical adherence to traditional norms and values of their own community of reference. Along with an inflexible adherence to their cultural conventions, there is an unconditional deference, if not an actual submission, to the authoritarian figure – or figures – taken as a model. People who demonstrate such a personality tend to distinctly separate those who share their own system of values (in-group) from those who do not (out-group). This attitude translates into a prejudice toward the members of the out-group that can give rise to blind hatred and aggressive behavior.