Ideology Authoritarianism and Mental Health

During the 1960s, social scientists tended to view the young people who comprised the new left as part of a liberated or postmaterialist generation which was likely to bring about afar better world. These young people were favorably contrasted with their more "Authoritarian" peers in study after study. In the 1970s this image was partially replaced by one which suggested that "late capitalism" was producing a generation of narcissists. Following a critique of both views, I report on a series of studies which throw a rather different light on developments in those two decades. Our data indicate that the "liberated" young people so praised in the 1960s were, in fact, the narcissists who were so disparaged in the 1970s. After discussing our findings, I attempt to place them in a broader historical and theoretical context.

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