Bill E. Peterson

Authoritarianism and Gender Roles: Toward a Psychological Analysis of Hegemonic Relationships

The authors examined the relationship between authoritarianism and gender-role identity, attitudes, and behaviors. Using Altemeyers Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale, they found that high scores on authoritarianism were related to traditional gender-role identity and attitudes, rating political events concerning women as less important, and rating feminists and women as having relatively more power and influence in society. Authoritarianism was also related to the expression of anti-abortion views in essays and using arguments based on conventional morality, submission to authority, and punitiveness toward women seeking abortions. Finally, high scores on authoritarianism were related to participating in pro-life rallies and not participating in pro-choice and womens issues meetings. The authors offer speculations about the connections between social structures and individual psychological mechanisms.

Midlife Women's Generativity and Authoritarianism: Marriage, Motherhood, and 10 Years of Aging

Generativity and authoritarianism assessed at age 52 were correlated with criterion variables assessed at age 62 in a sample of well-educated women (N = 81). Results indicated that generativity predicted positive personality characteristics, satisfaction with marriage and motherhood, and successful aging. By contrast, although authoritarianism is linked in the literature to endorsing traditional gender roles, authoritarianism was uncorrelated in the current study with happiness about marriage and was negatively related to perceptions of motherhood. Furthermore, authoritarianism was correlated with neuroticism later in life. These data suggest that midlife authoritarianism may be problematic as women transition from their 50s to their 60s. Midlife generativity, in contrast, seems to offer one path to life satisfaction.

Longitudinal analysis of midlife generativity, intergenerational roles, and caregiving.

Items from the California Adult Q-Sort (CAQ) were used to assess psychosocial generativity (E. H. Erikson, 1950) in a sample of educated women at midlife. CAQ scores measured at age 43 demonstrated convergent validity with an inventory measure of generativity assessed at age 53. According to other longitudinal analyses, women who attained a generative stance at age 43 reported greater investment 10 years later in intergenerational roles (e.g., daughter, mother) but not nonintergenerational ones (e.g., friend, sister). Generative women also reported less subjective burden in caring for aging parents and more knowledge about community elder care programs. Further evidence suggests that participants felt embedded in a reciprocal caregiving network in which they themselves were the recipients of care.

Implications of Authoritarianism for Young Adulthood: Longitudinal Analysis of College Experiences and Future Goals:

Longitudinal data were used to explore links between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and young adult development. Analyses demonstrated that 4 years of college were related to reductions in RWA and that high-RWA participants who majored in the liberal arts had lower grade point averages. No grade effects were found for students in the professional schools. Explanations centered on the difficulty that high-RWA students might have with the ambiguous nature of liberal arts knowledge (e.g., hermeneutics, conflicting theories and data). In terms of goals after graduation, men and women high on authoritarianism had different expectations. Men scoring high on RWA focused on career goals, whereas high-RWA women experienced career confusion and expected marriage to entail increased responsibilities without personal rewards. Both genders high on RWA were also uninterested in exploring aspects of identity. Although focused on young adulthood, this study suggests that links exist between developmental theory in general and authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism and Political Impoverishment: Deficits in Knowledge and Civic Disinterest

Past research shows that authoritarian individuals hold strong opinions about a variety of political and social issues, such as race relations and military conflict. What has not been established, though, is the amount of general political knowledge that authoritarians possess. In this study, three groups of college students were administered Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale; most of them also received items assessing general political knowledge and specific knowledge about the 2000 presidential election, as well as items assessing interest in politics. Relative to students with low RWA scores, those with high scores possessed less political knowledge; moreover, they expressed less interest in learning about politics. In general, authoritarianism was unrelated to how individuals got their political information or how credible they found their sources. The implication that authoritarians hold strong attitudinal beliefs with weak political knowledge is discussed.

Crossing the Line: Case Studies of Identity Development in First-Generation College Women

In this paper we present four case studies of adult women from working class backgrounds who attended Hillside College (a pseudonym for one of the “seven-sister” colleges) during the early 1990s. Although research on women has led, over the past few decades, to a more complex picture of the contexts in which women develop their identities, one important context that has been underexplored is social class. Drawing on data from three lengthy interviews with each of our four participants, our purpose was to explore the identity concerns of adult women from working class backgrounds in their experience getting to and attending Hillside College, which has historically been home to the middle and upper social classes. Implications for college retention are discussed.

Generative Concern, Political Commitment, and Charitable Actions

The implications of psychosocial generativity (Erikson, 1950) for understanding contemporary politics were explored. Study 1 replicated, in two samples, previous findings that generativity concerns are related to a variety of political activities, including the expenditure of time and money in support of political organizations. Using path analyses, Study 2 extended these findings and demonstrated how midlife generativity concerns interacted with political orientation and interest in politics to produce stronger relationships with giving. These findings suggest that people view the political arena as one important way to improve society and thereby manifest cultural generativity. Although focusing on the domain of politics, these studies highlight the complexity of generativity as a construct; broad concerns with generativity operate within the context of ideological commitments to produce greater levels of generative activity.

Gender, Sexuality, and the Authoritarian Personality

The political correlates of the authoritarian personality have been well established by researchers, but important linkages to other major constructs in psychology need fuller elaboration. We present new data and review old data from our laboratories that show the myriad ways in which authoritarianism is implicated in the important domain of gender roles. We show that women and men high in authoritarianism live in rigidly gendered worlds where male and female roles are narrowly defined, attractiveness is based on traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity, and conventional sexual mores are prescribed. As a construct, authoritarianism is not just relevant for understanding peoples politics, but it also affects the most personal of domains--romantic partnerships, lifestyle goals, and basic attitudes about male and female relationships.

Beyond Politics: Authoritarianism and the Pursuit of Leisure

Psychologists know a lot about the political ands ideological correlates of people scoring high on authoritarianism. However, psychologists have less knowledge about such peoples everyday pursuits. In the present study, the authors examined authoritarian interest in film, live events, music, and reading. A predictable pattern of correlates emerged. For example, authoritarians enjoyed activities in which physical conflict was prominent, whereas authoritarians tended not to like entertainment that offered introspection. In general, the present results were consistent across 2 samples (N = 120, N = 90). Although men and women had significantly different preferences on over 0.5 of the leisure pursuits (e.g., men enjoyed action films more than did women), there were no significant gender differences in the magnitudes of correlates with authoritarianism. In general, leisure interests appeared to be partly manifestations or expressions of authoritarian tendencies.

Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation-Intimacy, and Power

Research on achievement, affiliation–intimacy, and power motivation is tied intimately to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), co-developed by Christiana D. Morgan and Henry A. Murray (1935). In the TAT, respondents are shown pictures of people (often line drawings) and asked to write a story in response to each picture cue. Researchers assume that test takers will tell stories that reflect their own conscious and unconscious motives and impulses. As the methodology evolved, these stories (or thought samples) were content coded by experts for recurring themes that reflect major human motives. The three most studied motives, also referred to as social motives, are achievement, affiliation–intimacy, and power.