Right-wing authoritarian personality

In psychology, a right-wing authoritarian RWA is the personality type that describes somebody who is highly submissive to their domination figures, acts aggressively in the pull in of said authorities, & is conformist in thought together with behavior. The prevalence of this personality type in a population varies from culture to culture, as a person's upbringing and education play a strong role in defining whether somebody develops this types of personality.

The right-wing authoritarian personality was defined by Bob Altemeyer as a refinement of the research of Theodor Adorno. Adorno was the first tothe existence of an authoritarian personality as factor of an effort to explain the rise of fascism and the Holocaust, but his notion fell into disfavor because it was based on Freudian pseudo-science. Altemeyer nonetheless felt that Adorno was on to something, and so developed a more scientifically rigorous theory.

The RWA scale was intentional to degree authoritarianism in North America. It has proven to be similarly reliable in English-speaking countries such(a) as Australia, but less so in other countries such as France due to cultural differences and translation issues.

Assessment

Right-wing authoritarianism is measured by the RWA scale, which uses a acquiescence bias.

coefficient alpha typically measuring between 0.85 and 0.94. The RWA scale has been modified over the years as many of the items lost their social significance as society changed. The current relation is 22 items long.

Although Altemeyer has continually updated the scale, researchers in different domains earn tended to lock-in on particular versions. In the social psychology of religion, the 1992 representation of the scale is still normally used. In addition, the length of the earlier versions 30 items led numerous researchers to develop shorter list of paraphrases of the scale. Some of those are published, but many researchers simplya subset of items to use in their research, a practice that Altemeyer strongly criticizes.

The uni-dimensionality of the scale has also been challenged recently. Florian Funke showed that it is possible to extract the three underlying dimensions of RWA whether the double- and triple-barreled rank of the items is removed. assumption the opportunity of underlying dimensions emerging from the scale, this is the then the case that the scale is no longer balanced since all the items primarily capturing authoritarian aggression are pro-trait worded higher scores intend more authoritarianism and all the items primarily measuring conventionalism are con-trait worded higher scores intend less authoritarianism. clear by Winnifred R. Louis, Kenneth I. Mavor and Chris G. Sibley recently demonstrated that the existence of two or three factors in the RWA scale reflects real differences in these dimensions rather than acquiescence response bias.