How to identify especially unsuitable leaders
The Authoritarian Personality
This is a personality pattern which makes makes a person especially unsuitable for occupying top political, administrative and corporate positions. It is important to be able to recognize them because, for certain reasons explained here, they tend to seek power positions.
The Authoritarian Personality pattern was described by a team of psychologists at University of California at Berkeley lead by Theodor W. Adorno and his group over 50 years ago (Adorno et al 1950). They defined it as a pattern of nine traits:
- Blind allegiance to conventional beliefs about right and wrong
- Respect for submission to acknowledged authority
- Belief in aggression toward those who do not subscribe to conventional thinking, or who are different
- A negative view of people in general – i.e. the belief that people would all lie, cheat or steal if given the opportunity
- A need for strong leadership which displays uncompromising power
- A belief in simple answers and polemics – i.e. The media controls us all or The source of all our problems is the loss of morals these days.
- Resistance to creative, dangerous ideas. A black and white worldview.
- A tendency to project one’s own feelings of inadequacy, rage and fear onto a scapegoated group
- A preoccupation with violence and sex
New knowledge helps understand this personality
Although the theory about the authoritarian personality type has been questioned, it is a pattern that has been repeatedly confirmed in different studies and most psychologists consider it at least largely true. Recent brain-physiological understanding of “Survival-Oriented-Behavior” (SOB), has contributed to an understanding of this personality pattern. SOB is a stressful behavior pattern that appears when a person feels threatened (for more about SOB, see “Stress and mind”).
The key feature – emotional insecurity
The key reason for SOB is emotional insecurity, which colors the perception of life. It is called weak ”Emotional Basic Trust” (EBT) in psychology. When a person feels basically insecure, he is prone to perceive ordinary life situations as anxiety-provoking, which triggers SOB. An emotionally insecure person is mostly in state of SOB because anxiety is present virtually all the time.
Weak EBT (WEBT) develops when life conditions create feelings of fear and insecurity in childhood. Insecure parents with the instability, irritability and aggressiveness that is evoked by stress, are not able, even with the best intentions, to create the atmosphere of security required for developing strong EBT. Weak EBT may also be caused by specific traumas like war experiences, early loss of a parent, early separation from parents, divorce and abuse.
Predictability-increasing-strategies
- Control-demanding behavior, which includes a strong need to be in power, or dominant, if possible. This is because “being on top” increases the sense of security.
- Intolerance of dissenting opinions. When on top, there is a craving for more or less complete submission from the subordinates, because of the strong anxiety-driven need for total control. (compare, ”Respect for submission to acknowledged authority” - one of the criteria of authoritarian personality, see above) as a justification for own power wishes, logically follows.) People who don’t comply, create anxiety in such a leader, and are dismissed if possible.
- Need for authoritarian leadership. Submission to a strong authoritarian leader creates an increased sense of security.
- Resistance to unfamiliar or unconventional ideas.The need for predictability causes a resistance to anything that can change familiar conditions in society.
- Proneness for prejudices. The rigid adherence to preformed opinions is a kind of defense mechanism that helps to fend off (anxiety-provoking) unfamiliar ideas or views that challenge the world view that the person has established.
- Strong allegiance to conventional norms. The WEBT persons tend to be strongly adherent to conventional norms, because these provide a framework that increases predictability. Actually, they tend to obey the prevailing norms very ambitiously, because this increases the chances of being widely accepted in society (or at least the part of it they want to identify themselves with), which increases their feeling of security. From the conventionalism follows:
- Intolerance and aggression against unfamiliar behavior. Such behaviors feel unpredictable, and therefore they evoke uncomfortable feelings of insecurity and anxiety in WEBT persons. This tends to cause aggressive coping behavior such as rejecting, scapegoating or harrassing people from other ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, and others who deviate from familiar behavior patterns and norms.
- Avoidance of ambiguity. Ambiguous and complex information enhances the sense of insecurity greatly. Therefore these person want to simplify their perception of the world so as to have few nuances, either black or white, either good or bad, either yes or no, etc
- Preference for authoritarian beliefs and ideologies. To increase the sense of security and predictability, the person prefers ideologies and creeds that provide simple and authoritative answers to world problems. Therefore they may be prone to religious dogmatism and fundamentalism, as well as political (left or right) extremism.
The above list is very similar to Adorno’s list of the traits of the authoritarian personality except for just one point, preoccupation with sex, which I believe may be a “statistical error” because very many people are more or less preoccupied with sex so I doubt that this is a distinguishing trait.
Conclusion
It seems that the Authoritarian personality type is actually a SOB person who, because of pronounced insecurity, has developed the habit of predictability-enhancing strategies, probably since an early age.
In my experience, even less insecure SOB people have some tendency for using such strategies, so the authoritatian type appears to be the extreme variety on a continuous scale.
Other characteristics of pronouncedly insecure persons
- Suspiciousness. This is an expression of insecurity and an expectation that others have the same aggressiveness, lack of reliability, honesty and sense of responsibility that characterizes their own survival-oriented mentality. It may evoke paranoid tendencies. Paranoia is found in many of the worst dictators in history along with many signs of authoritarian personality disturbance.
- Preference for violence. The high level of aggressiveness that is associated with proncounced SOB leads to a tendency to justify the use of violence, like the right to use personal arms for personal security and for solving conflicts. Inclined to favor wars for solving international issues.
- “Popularity-seeking behavior”. In spite of their tendency for impulsiveness, instability and aggression, the person may make great efforts to conceal any negative behavior in order to become accepted and popular, which increases the feeling of security. So he may appear charming and friendly and very well adapted, being very keen on following all norms and informal social rules required for becoming accepted. This sign is not always present (perhaps genetic factors contribute to develop this “talent”).
- Manipulativeness. This is a variety of “popularity-seeking” where the person, often from early childhood on, has learnt to ensure his accpetance through manipulation of the attitudes and emotions of people.
- Dishonesty, unreliability. This ties closely with the manipulativeness. Lying and unreliability “widens” the possibilities for “effective” manipulation. So it is the strong inner anxiety that brings about dishonest behaviors as means for creating a feeling of a greater sense of security by increasing social acceptance as well as by increasing the ability to achieve desired goals (at any price).
- Prominent shortsightedness. This is the result of pronounced Survival-Oriented-Behavior, and is found to some extent in SOB as well, see “Top leaders should be tested“. The person tends to act dishonestly and unreliably although he knows that there may be risk for disclosure. This is because the future consequences of the persons actions are experienced as so remote that they tend to disregard them. This is because the survival-orientation brings about a disregard of anything else than what helps “survive” the present situation.
- Weak or absent empathy, ruthlessness, aggressiveness is found in SOB people as well to some degree, but reaches its maximum in this disturbance.
- Bullying. This is invariably a consequence of the above described trait elements. It is driven by their intolerance to (anxiety-provoking) unfamiliar or unconventional behavior and enabled by their aggressivenes and lack or empathy. Typically a bully attacks from the “secure” position of perfectly following all written and unwritten social norms of the group, attacking those who don’t fully comply with, or agree with, the norms or act “strangely” in some way.
- Psychopathy/sociopathy is the most pronounced form of this disturbance. All the above described traits are well-known elements of the sociopathic pattern in which they are most prominent. Recent research indicates that about 12-15% of the population are psychopaths, but only a few percent of them are criminals, while the “smarter” ones can be found in any sphere of society. They tend to assume leadership positions because this increases the sense of security, and can, for example cause great problems in companies, see “Why companies decline“. Of course they are a great danger to any society or nation or company who elects them as a leader. A considerable number of dictators have obvious psycopathic traits and the number of political leaders, including presidents and ministers, who have been sentenced for criminal acts is large.
Please note that all these signs don’t need to be present or apparent. Actually, the person may appear normal until he has established a secure top position. Not until then he may allow his real nature to become visible – this has been an unpleasant if not chocking surprise on several occasions in world history.
It has commonly been believed that this is because power “corrupts”, but I think it is mostly the other way around, that “authoritarian” personalities are more likely to strive for power and thus are corrupt from the beginning but don’t show it (due to the popularity-seeking mechanism) until they have reached the top. So, in such cases, I think right wording should be “power reveals the corrupt mind”.
Even most disturbed persons may be symptom-free
It is an experience from psychology the most disturbed and insecure persons are often subjectively symptom-free, and seem normal in their behavior, yes if they master the “popularity seeking” strategy well, they may seem psychologically healthy and completely normal. Even experienced psychologists are often unable to “see through” these cases according to the experience from air force pilot selection (however, persons trained at detecting well-adapted psychopats may be able to recognize them).
It has been a common experience in combat pilot training that apparently completely normal people with this weakness have strong hidden anxiety-proneness that only appears under stressful conditions and has devastating effects on performance (making grave judgement errors, losing the mind, panicking).
The reason why a special selection test was developed for the detection of such people with hidden pronounced disturbances was actually because they were often overlooked by psychologists and could not be detected with common psychological tests.
Actually a great majority of persons without any conscious anxiety symptoms applying for combat pilot training were found to have considerable subconscious anxiety (indicating SOB) according to this selection test, called the Defense mechanism test (DMT-Neumann).
The suggested explanation for the appearance of defense mechanims is that persons who have been traumatized severely early in life usually experience very painful anxiety. To quench this they tend to develop above described strategies including the use of defense mechanisms to suppress it. Experience indicates that the most disturbed ones tend to most unaware of their anxiety because their anxiety suppression mechanisms are especially strong.
WHY ESPECIALLY UNSUITABLE AS A POLITICAL OR CORPORATE LEADER?
In addition to having the disqualifying characteristics of SOB, the authoritarian personality has developed a pattern of behavior that may lead to more or less dictatorial leadership with a strong demand for submission along with a rigid resistance to new and creative solutions. Because of the strong preference for predictable subordinates, such a person will prefer people with authoritarian or SOB personality pattern for key positions.
Emotionally secure, creative and independently thinking people (SOB-free) are expelled because they tend to be unconventional and unpredictable, thereby creating anxiety. However, according to my experience, they usually leave the organization spontaneously, finding it suffocating when the ruler has established his dictatorial regime.
It is evident that an authoritarian personality type could have outright disastrous effects on an a government or business corporation and its ability to function properly especially in present turbulent times that demand a great flexibility, adaptibility, creativity, perfect judgment and an unperturbed perception of reality for successul results. For more about this, see “Why companies decline“.
CONCLUSION:
From the improved understanding of Survival-Oriented-Behavior provided by brain research, the authoritarian personality pattern described by Adorno can be logically derived as a consequence of anxiety-alleviating strategies, where seeking predictability is a key theme in order to increase the sense of security of these people who have an especially weak Emotional Basic Trust (inner insecurity).
As the rulership of such a leader would have disastrous consequences, presidential and vice presidential candidates and other top politicians, as well as people in administrative and corporate top positions should be carefully tested as proposed in “Top leaders must be tested”.
References:
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row (pp. 228).
