Authoritarianism and Achievement Motivation in Contemporary West Germany

Abstract

Summary Now that a valid measure of authoritarianism and a successfully balanced version of the California F scale are available, it seems a matter of interest to apply both to a sample from the society that gave the impetus for developing the concept of authoritarianism. Short forms of both scales plus short scales of ethnocentrism, neuroticism, achievement motivation, and social desirability set were applied to a random cluster sample of 136 people living in the Munich conurbation in Bavaria (where Hitler rose to power) in early 1982. When the Munich means were compared with means obtained from large-city-dwellers in other countries, the German respondents were found to have exceptionally low scores on achievement motivation and on the F scale, even though they saw high scores on the latter as socially desirable. Their scores on authoritarian personality (the Directive-ness scale) were, however, within the normal Western range. Prejudice against “Gastarbeiter” (immigrant workers) was positively correlated with authoritarian personality, authoritarian attitudes (the F scale), and achievement motivation, but was negatively correlated with neuroticism. Mean scores on ethnocentrism were not high but to be especially tolerant was neurotic. Prejudice was not related to social desirability. Germany today is a somewhat “hippie” society—quite tolerant, permissive, liberal, and rejecting of materialism. The present data are used to help build up a new cross-cultural theory of the genesis of achievement motivation. Possible explanations for the phenomena of Nazism are considered in the light of the new data.