Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-7262s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-27T17:29:31.062Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Authoritarianism in Black and White: Testing the Cross-Racial Validity of the Child Rearing Scale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Efrén O. Pérez  and
Marc J. Hetherington
Efrén O. Pérez*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, PMB 505, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203
Marc J. Hetherington
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, PMB 505, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203
*
email: efren.o.perez@vanderbilt.edu (corresponding author)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using a scale of child rearing preferences, scholars find that African Americans are far more authoritarian than Whites. We argue that this racial gap in authoritarianism is largely a measurement artifact. The child rearing scale now used to measure authoritarianism is cross-racially invalid because it draws heavily on a metaphor about hierarchy. Akin to someone who favors enforcing conformity in a child, the authoritarian is thought to be inclined toward enforcing conformity in social subordinates. In both cases, one's perspective is drawn from a position of relative power. We believe this metaphor is effective among members of a majority racial group because individual dominance at home meshes with group dominance in society. For members of a racial minority, we believe this metaphor breaks down. Using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we establish that Blacks and Whites construe the child rearing items differently. Consequently, authoritarianism correlates highly with the things it should for Whites, but rarely so for Blacks. Using an illegal immigration experiment, we then show divergent patterns of intolerance based on the same child rearing scale. Our results highlight measurement's role in producing large racial gaps in authoritarianism, while illuminating the racial boundaries of the child rearing scale.

Information

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , Summer 2014 , pp. 398 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Authors' note: For constructive comments and advice on an earlier version of this article, we thank Cindy Kam, Casey Klofstad, Taeku Lee, Natalie Masuoka, Francisco Pedraza, and Karthick Ramakrishnan. Replication materials are available from the Political Analysis Dataverse at http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24094. Supplementary materials for this article are available on the Political Analysis Web site.

References

Abrajano, Marisa. 2012. In the eye of the beholder: How ethnic and racial minorities view the American political landscape. Working paper. Department of Political Science, UC San Diego.Google Scholar
Achen, Christopher H. 1977. Measuring representation: perils of the correlation coefficient. American Journal of Political Science 21(4): 805–15.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W., Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, Levinson, Daniel, and Sanford, Nevitt. 1950. The authoritarian personality. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Altemeyer, Bob. 1996. The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Billingsley, Andrew. 1992. Climbing Jacob's ladder: The enduring legacy of African-American families. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Brown, Timothy A. 2006. Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Byrne, Barbara B., and Watkins, David. 2003. The issue of measurement invariance revisited. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 34(2): 155–75.Google Scholar
Christie, R. 1954. Authoritarianism re-examined. In Studies in the scope and method of “the authoritarian personality”: Continuities in social research, eds. Christie, R. and Jahoda, M., 123–96. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Davidov, Eldad. 2009. Measurement equivalence of nationalism and constructive patriotism in the ISSP: 34 countries in a comparative perspective. Political Analysis 17(1): 64–82.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. 1994. Behind the mule: Race and class in African-American politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. 2000. Slowly coming to grips with the effects of the American racial order on American policy preferences. In Racialized politics: Values, ideology, and prejudice in American public opinion, eds. Sears, D. O., Sidanius, J., and Bobo, L., 344–57. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, Jeff. 1998. African American attitudes towards United States immigration policy. International Migration Review 32(2): 451–70.Google Scholar
Elkins, Zachary, and Sides, John. 2010. The vodka is potent, but the meat is rotten: Evaluating measurement equivalence across contexts. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stanley. 2003. Enforcing social conformity: A theory of authoritarianism. Political Psychology 24(1): 41–74.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stanley, and Stenner, Karen. 1997. Perceived threat and authoritarianism. Political Psychology 18: 741–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finney, Sara J., and DiStefano, Christine. 2006. Non-normal and categorical data in structural equation modeling. In Structural equation modeling: A second course, eds. Hancock, Gregory R. and Mueller, Ralph O., 269–314. Madison, WI: Information Age Publishing.Google Scholar
Gaines, Kevin K. 1996. Uplifting the race: Black leadership, politics, and culture in the twentieth century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Garcia Bedolla, Lisa. 2005. Fluid borders: Latino power, identity, and politics in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gay, Claudine. 2006. Seeing difference: The effect of economic disparity on black attitudes toward Latinos. American Journal of Political Science 50(4): 982–97.Google Scholar
Hambleton, Ronald K., Swaminathan, H., and Jane Rogers, H. 1991. Fundamentals of item response theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Henry, P. J. 2011. The role of stigma in understanding ethnicity differences in authoritarianism. Political Psychology 32(3): 419–38.Google Scholar
Hetherington, Marc J., and Weiler, Jonathan D. 2009. Authoritarianism and polarization in American politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hyman, Herbert, and Sheatsley, Paul. 1954. The authoritarian personality: A methodological critique. In Studies in the scope and method of “the authoritarian personality”: Continuities in social research, eds. Christie, R. and Jahoda, M., 50–122. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Kam, Cindy D. 2009. Gender and economic voting, revisited. Electoral Studies 28: 615–24.Google Scholar
Kim, Claire Jean. 2000. Bitter fruit: The politics of Black-Korean conflict in New York City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R. 2007. Review of Karen Stenner, The Authoritarian Dynamic. Journal of Politics 69: 264–65.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., and Sanders, Lynn M. 1996. Divided by color: Racial politics and democratic ideals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kohn, Melvin, and Schooler, Carmi. 1983. Work and personality: An inquiry into the impact of social stratification. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Press.Google Scholar
Lareau, Annette. 2002. Invisible inequality: Social class and childrearing in Black families and White families. American Sociological Review 67(5): 747–76.Google Scholar
MacCallum, Robert C. 1995. Model specification: Procedures, strategies, and related issues. In Structural equation modeling: Concepts, issues, and applications, ed. Hoyle, R. H., 16–36. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, William J., and Centers, Richard. 1956. Authoritarianism and urban stratification. American Journal of Sociology 61(6): 610–20.Google Scholar
McClain, Paula D., Lyle, Monique L., Carter, Niambi M., DeFrancesco Soto, Victoria, Lackey, Gerald F., Cotton, Kendra Davenport, Nunnally, Shayla C., Scotto, Thomas J., Grynaviski, Jeffrey D., and Alan Kendrick, J. 2007. Black Americans and Latino immigrants in a southern city: Friendly neighbors or economic competitors? DuBois Review 4(1): 97–117.Google Scholar
Meredith, William. 1993. Measurement invariance, factor analysis, and factorial invariance. Psychometrika 58(4): 525–43.Google Scholar
Merolla, Jennifer L., and Zechmeister, Elizabeth J. 2009. Democracy at risk: How terrorist threats affect the public. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Muthén, Linda K., and Muthén, Bengt O. 1998–2007. Mplus User's Guide (Fifth Edition). Los Angeles: Muthén & Muthén.Google Scholar
Noel, Donald L., and Pinkney, Alphonso. 1964. Correlates of prejudice: Some racial differences and similarities. American Journal of Sociology 69(6): 609–22.Google Scholar
Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard. 1994. Racial formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pérez, Efrén O. 2009. Lost in translation? Item validity in bilingual political surveys. Journal of Politics 71(4): 1530–48.Google Scholar
Philpot, Tasha S., and White, Ismail K. 2010. Defining African American political psychology. In African-American political psychology: Identity, opinion, and action in the post-Civil Rights era, eds. Philpot, Tasha S. and White, Ismail K., 1–8. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sidanius, Jim, Feshbach, Seymour, Levin, Shana, and Pratto, Felicia. 1997. The interface between ethnic and national attachment. Public Opinion Quarterly 61(1): 102–33.Google Scholar
Smith, Charles U., and Prothro, James W. 1957. Ethnic differences in authoritarian personality. Social Forces 35: 334–38.Google Scholar
Stegmueller, Daniel. 2011. Apples and oranges? The problem of equivalence in comparative research. Political Analysis 19(4): 471–87.Google Scholar
Stenner, Karen. 2005. The authoritarian dynamic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
United States Department of Homeland Security. 2011. Yearbook of immigration statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Pérez and Hetherington supplementary material

Supporting Information

Download Pérez and Hetherington supplementary material(File)
File 51.7 KB