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Book reviews for "Altemeyer,_Bob" sorted by average review score:
Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Published in Hardcover by Jossey-Bass (April, 1989)
Author: Bob Altemeyer
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Its the media stupid
Prof. Altemeyer measured the lowest scores for right-wing authoritarian (RWA) attitudes in 1973. From what I gather he attributes the rise of RWA throughout the late 1970's and 1980's to what? Certainly Left-wing anti-war violence, and street crime were as prevelant in the late 1960's and early 1970's (if not more so!) than in the '80's. Why were student attitudes less authoritarian in the early '70's when the conventional factors causing RWA were so prevelant? Especially since Altemeyer rejects as minimal the impact of parents and the media in shaping RWA attitudes. How could the excesses of the "student-left" and high crime rates of the '60's and early '70's effect student attitudes in the late '80's who were not yet out of diapers to "experience" the chaos? I have the same questions I had when I picked up the book? I give this book 5 stars mainly because the subject is so important.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Winner of the Prize for Behavioral Science Research in 1986 and a follow-up to his first book, of 1981, was written out of "apprehension that there may be a vast potential for the acceptance of right-wing totalitarian rule in countries such as Canada and the United States."

An experimental scientist who writes in a very easy-to-read way, professor Altemeyer (Univ. of Manitoba) has reworked the concept of authoritarianism, removing it from the Freudian view into a research-based social learning theory.

Authoritarianism is made of up three attitudinal clusters: submission to authorities, aggressiveness directed in accordance with the sanctions of authorities, and adhering to social conventions. Authoritarianism is researched with respect to topics such as punishment, prejudice, religion, political affiliation, education, and social status.

Important questions are considered in chapters, including why a person becomes authoritarian, how their aggression develops, the influence of religion, its relation to politics, and how we can protect ourselves from authoritarianism. Authoritarian aggressiveness seems to be related to a)fear of a dangerous world and b)self righteousness. We can help protect against authoritarianism by emphasizing the value of freedom, encouraging higher education especially in the liberal arts. The media can help by its coverage of crime, and religions can help by devaluing self righteousness.

Altemeyer includes the details of how he did his research and the individual questions in his survery forms, so if readers want to go survey all their relatives and friends (in secret!) they can!

If you're interested in people and personality, if you can read at the high-school level, or if you wonder about experimental psychology, then you'll find much of interest here.

Finally, Altemeyer is a character, once lying to his students that he was a homosexual to see if that would affect their responses to his survey on authoritarianism. In his Acknowledgements, he (jokingly) says that the reviewers of his manuscript "are responsible for all of the errors that you detect." He personally paid for nearly all the costs of his research, and scientific journal editors avoided publishing his findings. Yes, Altemeyer is a character!

The Authoritarian Specter
Published in Hardcover by Harvard Univ Pr (January, 1997)
Author: Bob Altemeyer
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psychology of conservatism & fundamentalism
Altemeyer is regarded by social psychologists as the world's leading authority on the psychology of political conservatism and the psychology of religious fundamentalism. He has also done the most-extensive studies in the psychology of bigotry. Altemeyer has submitted his fascinating personality-questionnaire to over 50,000 individuals, including young and old, various academic specializations, Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Jews, Moslems, religious reformists, religious fundamentalists, atheists, agnostics, professional politicians, U.S., Canada, the former Soviet Union--many categories of people. He has applied the sophisticated mathematical technique of factorial analysis to the results, so as to identify how a wide range of personality variables naturally cluster together or separate--are actually the same or different from one another. He has found that political conservatism, religious fundamentalism, and all kinds of bigotry--against Jews, gays, Blacks, women, the poor, and many other minority or other weak groups--cluster together as actually a single personality-trait, which he has thus called "Right-Wing Authoritarianism." He was amazed to find, when he submitted his questionnaires to members of the communist party in the former Soviet Union, that they too scored very high on his "RWA" scale--that the U.S.S.R.'s communists were true conservatives. However, communists in capitalist countries, interestingly, scored low on "RWA" or conservatism.

This book is a more-updated version of Altemeyer's ENEMIES OF FREEDOM, which won the Behavioral Science Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. However, it is not by any means a revised edition--it is a new work. Both books are phenomenally well-written, in a style that is both clear and engaging, and organized well. Both would probably have become national, if not international, bestsellers if only they had been promoted reasonably well, which neither was.

It is rare that the virtues of scientific professionalism and popular-appeal attractiveness are combined together. This book, like ENEMIES OF FREEDOM, is such a work. Anyone who wants to understand religious fundamentalism, political conservatism, or bigotry, cannot do better than to start with either of these two masterpieces by Altemeyer.

Amazing Conversions: Why Some Turn to Faith & Others Abandon Religion
Published in Hardcover by Promethean Books (July, 1997)
Authors: Bob Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger
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Shallow and Disappointing
My expectations for this book were to find stories of people who either became religious after many yrs of atheism or vice versa. What you will find, however, is a study done on college age students who have found religion (no matter how superficially) or left it behind. I thought the work done by the authors was very shallow as to their presentation on why someone might take upon themselves a belief system foreign to them. There are no Muslim converts, Mormon or any "exotic" groups, only Protestant Christians. The subjects are pretty young, so there is no way of telling how deeply their newfound beliefs or freethinking will go in the future.

Establishes a basis for studying deconversion experiences
I believe this book lays the foundation for the study of the deconversion phenomenon. The authors clearly establish their criteria for candidate selection as well as the type of relevant data to collect. Their data collection methodolgy follows the scientific process. However, I believe the conclusions were simplistic and somewhat "rushed". I do not feel that the book adequately established a cause-effect using the data. However, I do think this book is a valuable resource as a starting point for other social scientists who wish to examine the phenomenon further

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