250 Part II Psychodynamic Theories
publication of Escape from Freedom, scholars became interested particularly in the
authoritarian escape mechanism. The central idea behind Escape from Freedom is
that people are attracted to absolute answers and certainty, even if it means author-
itarian dictators, when they are afraid and uncertain. Following Fromm, Adorno
and colleagues published a book entitled The Authoritarian Personality in 1950,
and this work spurred a great deal of research, ongoing today, into the question of
authoritarianism as a personality orientation. However, much of this work has
veered away from Fromm’s original conceptualization and focused on the out-
comes of authoritarianism, including prejudice and hostility.
Recently, however, J. Corey Butler (2009) has sought to reopen the question
of the relationship between fear and authoritarianism. Adorno (1950) postulated
that authoritarianism is the consequence of overly harsh parenting during child-
hood, leading to a generalized sense of a fear about the interpersonal world.
Butler’s work, in contrast, is an effort to confirm Fromm’s idea that feelings of
powerlessness engendered by the isolation of modern, “free” society lead to author-
itarian submission. Sociological studies do indeed show that groups shift toward
authoritarianism during times of economic or social strain (e.g., Rickert, 1998),
preferring order and stability. Consistent with Fromm’s original thesis, Butler pre-
dicted that, since authoritarians give up personal autonomy and freedom for the
sake of established cultural norms, those with authoritarian personality tendencies
ought to be fearful not of all interpersonal situations, but particularly of social
deviance and social disorder. That is, those in society who challenge norms of
order ought to be particularly troublesome to authoritarians.
Butler conducted several studies to test this prediction. In each, he gave
college undergraduates the “Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale” (RWA, Altemeyer,
1981), a 22-item scale with statements such as “Our country desperately needs a
mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways
and sinfulness that are ruining us” on which participants rate their strength of
agreement. In the first set of studies (2009) students also rated how afraid they
were of a variety of items, situations, or circumstances. In the second study
(2013), the students were presented with a slideshow of various items, including
animals, dangerous situations, diverse people, or scenes of social disorder. Butler
found support for his prediction in all cases. Social differences and social disorder
were disproportionately feared over other fears by those who scored high on
authoritarianism.
It seems, then, as Erich Fromm theorized, that political and social threats,
not personal threats, are most strongly related to authoritarianism. This implies that
the ideology associated with authoritarianism is a kind of motivated social cogni-
tion. Butler (2009) hypothesizes that certain cultural stimuli lead to fear, which
then creates the motivation for an authoritarian belief system. Deviance and social
disorder, then, become particularly threatening to such people, who have now
developed a more conventional and restricted lifestyle. Since so-called deviant
behavior suggests that there are other ways of living, authoritarians will be espe-
cially threatened by it.
Today, in the United States and the European Union, refugees, immigrants and
asylum seekers, religious extremist movements, and even marriage equality for
LGBTQ persons might all be considered the “perfect storm” of social and economic
unrest that Erich Fromm would argue opens the door to authoritarianism as an escape.