From this Jamesian analysis (as well as many other insights that he offers), we can conclude that our mid-21st Century world is conducive to authoritarian perspectives precisely because this world is filled with the troubling ambiguity (the A in VUCA-Plus) and the interplay between words (that are memorable) and visual images (that slip through our censors). We remember and are mobilized by the words that are being shouted and repeated by the authoritarian tyrant. We are also transfixed (and transformed) by the visual images that are being displayed at rallies—and increasingly on social media. Together, the words and images yield authoritarian perspectives and practices that are hard to resist—whether coming from the right wing or the left wing of the political spectrum.
Humanistic Perspectives: Gordon Allport
The humanistic/multi-disciplinary perspective offered initially by Henry Murray and later by Gordon Allport, Erik Erikson, Abraham Maslow and Robert White was largely ignored. Yet, the work of Gordon Allport was particularly relevant to the exploration of authoritarian and prejudicial perspectives. In The Nature of Prejudice, Allport has this to say about the authoritarian personality. Some people living in a democracy such as is found in the United States, find its complex and ambiguous conditions and the availability of personal freedom to be untenable. Allport (1954, p. 382) proposes that:
The consequences of personal freedom they find unpredictable. Individuality makes for indefiniteness, disorderliness, and change. To avoid such slipperiness the prejudiced person looks for hierarchy in society, Power arrangements are definite-something he can understand and count on. He likes authority, and says that what America needs is “more discipline.” By discipline, of course, he means outer discipline, preferring, so to speak, to see people’s backbones on the outside rather than on the inside. . . .
We find in this proposal anticipation of the VUCA-Plus conditions that we identified previously. It seems that Allport foresaw the conditions in American society that would increasingly threaten (or at lease confuse) many members of this society. He focuses, in particular, on a phrase used by Else Frenkel-Brunswick: “intolerance of ambiguity.” As the “A” in VUVA-Plus, this intolerance is found by Frenkel-Brunswick (and Allport) in not just the ambiguity to be found in an individualistic, democratic society, but also in the much more basic processing of ambiguous visual images and elusive ideas that are found in all societies.
Allport (1954, p. 382) notes further that:
This need for authority reflects a deep distrust of human beings. . . . .[T]he essential philosophy of democracy . . . tells us to trust a person until he proves himself untrustworthy. The prejudiced person does the opposite. He distrusts every person until he proves himself trustworthy. . . . To the prejudiced person the best way to control these suspicions is to have an orderly, authoritative, powerful society.
However, it is important to note that he only offers these insights after devoting considerable time to broader contextual issues—primarily regarding the ongoing processing of information and dynamics of social groups in the formation of prejudicial attitudes. While Allport is primarily regarded as a leading figure in the formulation of personality theory, he devotes most of his attention to sources of prejudice that reside outside the personality. He considers preferential thinking (attitudes and beliefs that produce prejudgment), the formation of in-groups and out-groups, and resultant victimization and scapegoating. Only after entering such diverse psychological domains as cognitive processes, linguistics, culture, and introducing the interplay between frustration and aggression does he consider the role played by an authoritarian personality.
