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Discusses the human predilection toward fanaticism; the debt that Western culture owes to fanatics; fundamental objections to fanaticism; the way that traditional educational approaches cultivate a propensity toward dogmatism, obscurantism, and authoritarianism; and possible educational methods for encouraging critical thinking. (GT)

Peabody has shown that of authoritarianism items agreed to in the original, twice as many are agreed to as are rejected in their reverse forms. This "double agreement" phenomenon argues for interpreting endorsement of authoritarianism items in terms of response sets rather than on the basis of the content of the item. in a previous paper, the present authors demonstrated that approval-dependent subjects double-agreed more often than less approval- dependent ones. Recently, however, Miklich reported a significant negative correlation between double agreement to Dogmatism items and approval dependence. The present paper presents two subsequent studies in an attempt to resolve the issue. These findings show (a) that a significant positive relationship existed between double agreement and approval dependence and (b) that high approval-need subjects viewed both original and reversed authoritarianism items as more ambiguous. It is suggested that differential perception of item ambiguity by these subjects mediated their tendency toward double agreement, and that certain features of the Miklich design may have minimized the effect of this variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In Of Spirit, Jacques Derrida claims that Heidegger's attempted deconstruction of metaphysical anthropocentrism remains anthropocentric and, as such, is inherently authoritarian. This paper takes up these charges to engage with whether Derrida is justified in coming to this conclusion. To do so, it briefly outlines Heidegger's critique of anthropocentrism and subsequent re-thinking of human being in line with the question of being, before suggesting that Derrida is correct to suggest that Heidegger's thinking remains anthropocentric. It then engages with whether Heidegger's defence of this continued anthropocentrism is authoritarian by engaging with the nature of what it is to be authoritarian. By engaging with three senses of authoritarianism, termed authoritarian in the sense of the author, sovereign, and dogmatic, it suggests that, while Heidegger can indeed be thought of as being authoritarian in the senses of the author and sovereign so too can Derrida, and, indeed, by pointing to passages whereby Derrida links the sovereign author to democracy, I show that, on Derrida's terms, it is possible to conclude that Heidegger's thinking is inherently democratic. I then engage with the third sense of authoritarian, authoritarian in the sense of the dogmatic, and by discussing the relationship between being and time, the nature of provisionality in Heidegger's thinking, highlighting a number of statements he makes on animality that confirm this provisionality, and pointing to the openness inherent to meditative thinking, conclude that, while Derrida is correct to maintain that Heidegger's thinking is anthropocentric and can be thought of as being authoritarian in the senses of authorship and sovereignty, it is not authoritarian in the sense of the dogmatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on Rokeach's original construct of dogmatism outlined some fifty years ago in his classical treatise The Open and Closed Mind. It draws from Altemeyer's definition and measurement of dogmatism as well as the Big Five dimension of Closed (or Closedness) to articulate a comprehensive framework for three broad domains of characteristic subtraits: the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural. Collectively, these features form an embryonic classification system that expands earlier concepts of dogmatism. While the theory proposed here assumes that dogmatism is a personality trait consisting of 13 subtraits, six of which are necessary to determine trait presence, empirical tests on the construct validity of these subtraits are necessary to support the interpretative and explanatory framework of the model. It is hoped that research on these fundamentals will advance our psychological understanding of the psychological nature and manifestations of dogmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After reviewing research by Roof, Mol and Kaill, this paper examines relationships among the following explanatory variables theological conservatism, localism, authoritarianism/dogmatism, and civil liberalism. Using data drawn from members of three Protestant denominations in Australia, it is found that, of these four variables, theological conservatism is the best predictor of frequency of church attendance, degree of involvement in other church activities, views about ecumenism, attitudes to change in church structures and practices, and moral conservatism But the other three explanatory variables are each more useful than theological conservatism in predicting degree of concern for social justice and degree of approval for church activism on social, political and economic issues The four explanatory variables are all fairly weak predictors of political-economic conservatism. It is argued that the affects attributed to localism, authoritarianism/dogmatism or lack of civil liberalism can be explained by a more general concept, breadth of perspective Modifications to Roof's theory are suggested it is hypothesized that at least among Protestant church members, the impact of breadth of perspective decreases, and the salience of theological orientation increases, as the proportion of the total population which regularly participates in church-oriented religion decreases.
This paper provides a critique and extension of studies undertaken by Roof (1976 and 1978), Mol (1969 and 1971) and Kaill (1971). Each of these studies deals inter alia with the relative importance of theological orientation and of some other variable in the explanation or prediction of church members' attitudes and behaviors.
It is clear that Roof's theory needs considerable qualification in the light of the data reviewed in the present paper. In particular, I would now hypothesize that at least among Protestant church members,[6] the impact of breadth of perspective decreases, and the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The December 2011 legislative election was among the most fraudulent national elections in Russia since the communist period. The fraud, however, was not evenly spread across the country. Precinct-level election returns from the 83 regions of the Russian Federation suggest that the level of fraud ranged from minimal or small in some regions to extreme in some others, with moderate to high fraud levels in many regions in between. We argue that in an electoral authoritarian context like Russia, regional variation in fraud can be explained by differences in (a) the perceived need by regional authorities to signal loyalty to the center by "delivering" desired election results; (b) the capacity of regional authorities to organize fraud; and (c) the vulnerability of citizens to political pressure and manipulation. We test the effect of signaling, capacity, and vulnerability on electoral fraud in the 2011 legislative elections with data on the 83 regions of the Russian Federation. We find evidence for all three mechanisms, finding that the tenure of governors in office, United Russia's dominance in regional legislatures, and the ethnic composition of regions are most important for explaining regional variation in electoral fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A persistent concern for democratic theorists is the degree to which religious authority trumps democratic authority. This is often assessed using generic measures of religiosity or religious beliefs ill-suited to the task. Moreover, while religion is linked to dogmatism and authoritarianism, this begs the question how much influence religion has independent of psychological dispositions. We attempt to add to these debates with a new measure of religious authority. We draw on data gathered from three samples—a sample of Christian clergy from 2014, a national sample of 1,000 Americans from Spring 2016, and a national sample of 1,010 Protestants from 2019. We examine the distribution of the religious authority measure and then compare its effects of the measure in the context of authoritarian child-rearing values, deliberative values, and democratic norms. The results indicate religious authority values represent a distinct measurement of how people connect to religion in politically salient ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different theoretical perspectives have been developed within the psychology framework for the analysis of the authoritarian phenomenon. They constituted some of the background lines of what would afterwards be considered as the field of Political Psychology. The first approach takes place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century's, along with group psychology, where authoritarianism is studied as an emergent behavior of crowds. Subsequently, developments in authoritarian personality suggest a change in the analysis axes by studying the phenomenon in an intra-individual way. A third perspective arises with the cognitive approach, represented by the concept of dogmatism, which emphasized the study of beliefs and the way in which individuals defend them. Parallel to this approach, advances in the field of Experimental Psychology on obedience, account for the situation in the authoritarian phenomenon. Later on, the study of authoritarian personality is taken up once more with the concept of right-wing authoritarianism, which is defined as the individual differences in the covariation of three attitudinal clusters (authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression and conventionalism). Finally, the most recent perspective for the study of the phenomenon suggests rethinking rightwing authoritarianism as an intergroup phenomenon, since its three attitudinal clusters account for a group phenomenon, plus a personality trait. The main objective of this paper is to critically review each of the six perspectives which have approached the study of authoritarianism as psycho-political phenomena, showing its peculiarities as well as its differences so as to finally consider which of those are still acceptable alternatives for the interpretation of this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strictly speaking, if we want to teach science in good agreement with its essence, we ought to encourage the respective ethos among our students. In fact, this implies the incorporation of a conception of the world from a specific viewpoint, which is antagonistic in relation to dogmatisms and authoritarian principles. Thus, it is proposed in this paper the replication of historical experiments in consonance with the amusing science in order to promote the aforementioned ethos from its practical and enjoyable dimension. Furthermore, some examples are provided with the object of illustrating the foregoing approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers what united and divided Benjamin and Horkheimer-Adorno in terms of their respective confrontations with the question of what it is to articulate the past historically. It presents their shared self-consciousness of the difficult task of responding critically to a problem conceived of as the entanglement of the concept of history with domination. For the problem imbues conceptualization itself and therefore threatens the value of the authoritative statements made in their own critical reflection on it. I show that these thinkers necessarily respond to the problem in confrontation with specific historical contexts: fascism, Soviet communism, German social democracy, and liberal democracy. The challenge they face is how to metabolize thinking in the midst of tendencies that disable it. I compare Benjamin's solution, the dialectical image, with Horkheimer and Adorno's solution, the recovery of critical reflection through the fragmentary writing of Dialectic of Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper was to study the relationship between an achievement ego scale and a hypercompetitive scale to assess a more general competitive disposition. Results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of 232 and 186 sport science students’ responses revealed that these two scales measure different behavioral tendencies. It seems that an ego scale measures a goal performance, in terms of social comparison, while a hypercompetitive attitude scale explains the ideological consequences of this comparison in terms of authoritarian and dogmatic thinking. A second study (n=178) tested this difference showing that the ego scale correlated only with a behavioral measure of intolerance, taken from the dogmatism scale, while a hypercompetitive attitude scale correlated with this behavioral dimension and with an ideological factor of dogmatism and authoritarianism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right‐wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right‐wing and left‐wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right‐wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left‐wing authoritarianism) scale. Participants further completed measurements of ideology and three domain‐specific scales: prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. Findings from both studies lend support to an authoritarianism symmetry hypothesis: Significant positive correlations emerged between LWA and measurements of liberalism, prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. These results largely paralleled those correlating RWA with identical conservative‐focused measurements, and an overall effect‐size measurement showed LWA was similarly related to those constructs (compared to RWA) in both Study 1 and Study 2. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that LWA may be a viable construct in ordinary U.S. samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the paradoxes of Gregorian chant is the way in which written sources become ever more plentiful across the Middle Ages while commentaries on its cultural and intellectual status take the opposite direction, becoming rare after the ninth century. An exception to that trend is the essay De varia psalmorum atque cantuum modulatione (On the Varied Modulation of Psalms and Chants), a substantial yet little known offering from the music theorist and liturgist Berno of Reichenau (d. 1048). Previously considered to be of uncertain authorship and doubtful musical value, the work is now shown to be an authentic witness, in part through evidence provided by a rediscovered manuscript (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mus.ms.theor. 95). This permits a new appreciation of the author's unique and revealing agenda-to soothe the many tensions reportedly incited by the textual content of chant. With resonances in contemporary music theory, De varia psalmorum testifies to divergent practices in need of a new theoretical underpinning, as well as to previously unstudied cultures of textual correction existing between the ninth and twelfth centuries. In so doing it offers a rare insight into the liturgical chant traditions of the post-Carolingian age, both in Berno's native Germany and further afield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia's politics in the reformasi era has been far more dynamic compared to previous regime. People have been enjoying the democratic atmosphere as a result of people struggle that change political system from authoritarian. Direct election for political positions (president/vice president, parliament members, and local leaders) have been practiced in a very democratic ways on one hand, but on the hand there is inclination to create people political demoralization due to the justification of any mean to achieve political ends by politicians, government officials and including election organizers. Both people and elites, in short, tend to be trapped by pragmatism politics. These practices and attitudes are contradictive with reformasi struggle values which hope new political system will be used for the better and improvement of social political and state-government management. The late of making consolidated democracy has been always used to explain this phenomena, but actually the low political willingness of the state actors to be toughly consistent in implementing reformasi agenda become a crucial reason. Social economic conditions of many Indonesian, mainly who are poor with their lack political awareness, tend to be exploited by certain political elites to achieve their own interest by disdaining morality and reformasi values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of the relation between authoritarianism and conservatism is made using newly developed balanced forms of the 'D' and 'F' scales together with scales to measure political, social, moral and economic conservatism. Neither 'BD' nor 'SF' scales predicted voting preference. The 'BD' scale was significantly, positively related to the political, social and moral conservatism scales but was non-significantly, negatively related to economic conservatism. It was concluded that both the 'BD' and 'SF' scales are equally good measures of general authoritarianism among supporters of Australian political parties and that while it is in general true that dogmatic people tend to be ideologically conservative, an exception must be made for economic conservatism. This exception is seen to be inferable from the theory of 'working class authoritarianism' advanced by Lipset (1960). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the demonstration of a methodology for validating instruments employed in science education research. The other focus is its would provide empirical support to the conceptual linkage between the philosophical view of science and the intellectual variables, dogmatism and authoritarianism. The current research is an attempt to validate empirically a theoretically derived construct "view of science." This construct is derived from Nagel's descriptions of realism and instrumentalism. The present study was undertaken to test the relationships among the constructs described above and to assist in the selection of an instrument for measuring the convergent trait. This study has shown the potential usefulness of the multitrait-multimethod validation model for research.

The role of theology and other "belief" variables in explaining clergy civil rights activism was investigated with a national sample of clergy from five Protestant denominations. Theology as well as the other "belief" variables of moral autonomy, efficacy, dogmatism, and authoritarianism exhibit substantial bivariate association with activism. Muhi variate analysis reveals, however, that the "belief" variables are related to civil rights activism mostly in an indirect fashion via political ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article argues that the media offer a way of reading cultural identity. The theme of collective identity is conceptualized quite differently in the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, due to different historical processes of political and societal change. In the African context, the three liberation struggles of colonial liberation, political-economical liberation, and fight against authoritarianism has taken place within a short period of time. Hence, the customary western modes of thinking about identity politics in late modernity easily lead to false assumptions when transposed to the African context. In Africa, the locality and life-world experiences in the village are more important than global 'mediascapes' and 'ideoscapes', and the article discusses present changes concerning cultural identities in Africa, particularly in Tanzania and Kenya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tested in this study were hypotheses relevant to Rokeach's position that dogmatism, as measured, taps general authoritarianism, whereas authoritarianism, as measured, taps only rightist authoritarianism. The testing instrument, disguised as a public opinion questionnaire, consisted of categorical and qualified authoritarianism items and reversals from the Stereopathy-Acquiescence Scales interspersed with Dogmatism Scale items, The subjects were 301 university students. While there was no significant difference in dogmatism between Authoritarians (As) and Non-Authoritarians (Ns), authoritarian responses were more highly correlated with dogmatism than were nonauthoritarian, regardless of the quality of response (categorical or qualified). The data support Rokeach's hypothesis that the Dogmatism Scale taps general authoritarianism, but tends to negate the suggestion that As and Ns are equally dogmatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on some personality differences between dogmatic and nondogmatic groups. The purpose of this article is to present the results of analyses directed toward determining how persons who differ markedly in measured dogmatism differ in certain other respects. The Rokeach Dogmatism Scale: Form E was the measure used to select extreme groups for this purpose. In the monograph "Political and Religious Dogmatism," the author published a 40-item measure of general authoritarianism or dogmatism. Since its publication, the Dogmatism Scale, hereinafter referred to as the D Scale, has been and continues to be used extensively in social-psychological research and particularly in research dealing with attempts to measure the nonintellectual effects of a college education. The most comprehensive summary of work with the scale to date is found in the book "The Open and Closed Mind." In the development of the D Scale, systematic effort demonstrated that this scale is less loaded with a left-right or liberal-conservative political dimension than is the familiar California F Scale.

The research reported here investigated the possibility that dogmatism is related to an individual's association with certain groups, as well as to his psychological predispositions or characteristics. The relative neglect of social influences upon authoritarianism and dogmatism has been cited by Kirscht and Dillehay (1967), among others. This study tested the hypothesis that dogmatism is associated with membership in orthodox (fundamentalist) Christian groups in addition to, or apart from, defense against anxiety, the typically invoked etiology of closed-mindedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the authoritarian and libertarian concepts of rationality focusing on the theoretical rationality. It talks about the main tenets of the authoritarian rationalism, the concept of theoretical rationality that generates absurdities, and the libertarian approach derived from Karl Popper's critical rationalism. It notes the difference between theoretical and practical rationality and the contemporary philosophy of the human knowledge. It mentions the requirements for empirical knowledge in authoritarian approach and the freedom of thought in libertarian concept.