This Week on “The Morning Show”: Psychologist Bernard Golden on “The Psychology Behind the Appeal of Authoritarianism”
February 12, 2025February 12, 2025
This Week on “The Morning Show”: Psychologist Bernard Golden on “The Psychology
Behind the Appeal of Authoritarianism”
This week I’m talking with psychologist Bernard Golden, Ph.D., about why some people are attracted to authoritarianism.
Dr. Golden has almost 40 years of clinical experience in community mental health centers, inpatient psychiatric hospitals, and individual practice. He is the author of Overcoming Destructive Anger: Strategies That Work, and the author of an article titled “The Psychology Behind What Makes Authoritarianism Appealing.”
Bernie will describe how three core values underpin the attraction of authoritarianism: security; conformity; and loyalty to a leader whom followers perceive as strong. Anger plays a key role in attraction to authoritarianism, and Bernie explains how authoritarian leaders use marketing principles to generate and sustain followers’ anger at targeted groups, and to justify oppression and/or violence toward them.
Bernie explains numerous other factors that can create a predisposition to authoritarianism, including growing up in closed families, childhood trauma, disillusionment with democracy, psychological factors such as anxiety and depression, as well as social isolation and loneliness and the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation on social media.
In spite of the complexity and diverse sources of authoritarianism’s appeal, Bernie will explain why he believes it’s important for people not to turn away from it, but to be curious about and to understand why friends, neighbors, family and fellow citizens are drawn to it.
You can find Dr. Golden’s essay at www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/overcoming-destructive-anger/202312/the-psychology-behind-what-makes-authoritarianism
How to Find “The Morning Show”
Broadcast at 9 AM on Thursday on WJOP (FM 96.3), and on Channel 9
After Broadcast:
Visit http://www.NCMHub.org, click YouTube, then Playlist & scroll down to the “Morning Show”; or
Listen on WJOP (FM 96.3) on Friday at 8 AM, or the following Tues. 4 p.m. or Wed, at 3 p.m.
Listen on the Sound Cloud; Go to NCMHub.org and click on the Cloud, then scroll down.
Thanks for watching!
