from the cited article . . .Following World War II, social scientists conducted a landmark study of how great masses of supposedly enlightened, Christian people willingly tolerated the systematic oppression and extermination of millions of their fellow citizens and others (Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Black persons, mentally and physically-impaired people, and political dissenters). A related concern was how masses of other people, who profess freedom as a God-given birthright, could stand by for so long and allow such religious, racial, ethnic, ideological and homophobic hatred to continue. The aim of the study was to employ the scientific method to understand what in an individual causes him to be prejudiced, and to use the findings to help in seeking solutions to inter-group prejudice and hatred. The study revealed that authoritarian tendencies in an individual's personality make him receptive to anti-democratic propaganda and policies that target out-groups for discrimination and destruction. (The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno, et al, pp v-viii, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1950).
The personality tendencies of the authoritarian-disposed individual were found to include:
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"Desire for a strong leader" resulting in "submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the in-group"
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"Cultural narrowness"seen in rigid acceptance of the conventional middle-class values of "the culturally 'alike'" and the tendency to reject and punish "the culturally 'unlike' . . . who violate conventional values."
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Unreflective ethnocentric patriotic conformity, rooted in the belief that one's own nation is superior and should rightly dominate and that other nations are inferior and threatening out-groups
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Negative stereotyped perceptions of the members of "unlike" out-groups, rather than seeing them as individuals who also laugh and cry and love and hate, or who, in the words of Joseph Berger, "lived, laughed, cursed, fought, who did the things human beings do"
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Anti-introspection, i.e. resistance to self-understanding, to soul- searching, to cause-and-effect analysis of individual and group behavior, unable to tolerate ambiguity, belief in mystical, unexplainable phenomenon, disparaging intellectual attempts to perceive life's nuances and complexities
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Aggression, involving "the ethnocentric need for an out-group" who represents "the intrinsic evil (aggressiveness, laziness, power-seeking, etc.) of human nature . . .
is unchangeable must be attacked, stamped out, or segregated, wherever it is found, lest it contaminate the good."