Right Wing Authoritarianism
Encyclopedia
Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a personality
and ideological
variable studied in political
, social, and personality psychology
. It is defined by three attitudinal
and behavioral clusters which correlate
together:
The terminology of authoritarianism, right-wing authoritarianism, and authoritarian personality tend to be used interchangeably by psychologists, though inclusion of the term "personality" may indicate a psychodynamic interpretation consistent with the original formulation of the theory.
theory originally pioneered by University of California at Berkeley researchers Theodor W. Adorno
, Else Frenkel-Brunswik
, Daniel Levinson
, and Nevitt Sanford
. After extensive questionnaire research and statistical analysis, Altemeyer found that only three of the original nine hypothesized components of the model correlated together: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. Researchers have traditionally assumed that there was just one kind of authoritarian personality, who could be either a follower or a leader. The discovery that followers and leaders are usually different types of authoritarians is based on research done by Sam McFarland.
Psychometrically, the RWA scale was a significant improvement over the F-scale
, which was the original measure of the authoritarian personality. The F-scale was worded so that agreement always indicated an authoritarian response, thus leaving it susceptible to the acquiescence response bias
. The RWA scale is balanced to have an equal number of pro and anti authoritarian statements. The RWA scale also has excellent internal reliability, with coefficient alpha
typically measured over .90.
The RWA scale has been modified over the years, as many of the items lost their social significance as society changed. The current version is 22 items long, and can be found online.
Although Altemeyer has continually updated the scale, researchers in different domains have tended to lock-in on particular versions. For example in the social psychology of religion, the 1992 version of the scale is still commonly used,. In addition, the length of the earlier versions (30 items) led many researchers to develop shorter versions of the scale. Some of those are published but many researchers simply select a subset of items to use in their research; a practice that Altemeyer strongly criticises .
The uni-dimensionality of the scale has also been challenged recently. Funke, for example, showed that it is possible to extract the three underlying dimensions of RWA if the double- and triple-barreled nature of the items is removed. Given the possibility of underlying dimensions emerging from the scale, it is then the case that the scale is no longer balanced, since all the items primarily capturing authoritarian aggression are pro-trait worded (higher scores mean less authoritarianism) and all the items primarily measuring conventionalism are con-trait worded (higher scores mean less authoritarianism). Work by Mavor, Louis and Sibley recently demonstrated that the existence of 2 or 3 factors in the RWA scale reflects real differences in these dimensions rather than acquiescence response bias.
Milton Rokeach's
dogmatism scale was an early attempt to measure pure authoritarianism, whether left or right. The scale was carefully designed to measure "closed mindedness" without regard to ideology. Nevertheless, researchers found that it correlated with British political conservativism. In a similar line of research, Philip Tetlock found that right wing beliefs are associated with less integrative complexity
than left wing beliefs. People with moderate liberal attitudes had the highest integrative complexity in their cognitions.
There have been a number of other attempts to identify "left-wing authoritarians" in the United States and Canada. These would be people who submit to leftist authorities, are highly conventional to liberal viewpoints, and are aggressive to people who oppose left-wing ideology. These attempts have failed because measures of authoritarianism always correlate at least slightly with the right. There are certainly extremists across the political spectrum, but most psychologists now believe that authoritarianism is a predominantly right-wing phenomenon.
Although authoritarians in North America generally support conservative political parties, this finding must be considered in a historical and cultural context. For example, during the Cold War
, authoritarians in the United States were usually anti-communist, whereas in the Soviet Union, authoritarians generally supported the Communist Party and were opposed to capitalism. Thus, authoritarians generally favor the established ways and oppose social and political change. Hence, even politics usually labeled as right or left-wing is not descriptive. While Communism in the Soviet Union is seen as leftist, it still inspired the same responses. This leaves questions over what makes various ideologies left or right open to interpretation.
that result from compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations. Nevertheless, there is no connection between authoritarianism and either low or high intelligence. Measured against the five factor model
of personality, authoritarians generally score lower on openness to experience
and slightly higher on conscientiousness
.
Altemeyer suggested that authoritarian politicians are more likely to be in the Conservative or Reform party in Canada, or the Republican Party in the United States. They generally have a conservative economic philosophy, are highly nationalistic, oppose abortion, support capital punishment, oppose gun control legislation, and do not value social equality. The RWA scale reliably correlates with political party affiliation, reactions to Watergate, pro-capitalist attitudes, religious orthodoxy, and acceptance of covert governmental activities such as illegal wiretaps. Although authoritarianism is correlated with conservative political ideology, not all authoritarians are conservative, and not all conservatives are authoritarian. It is also worth noting that many authoritarians have no interest in politics.
Authoritarians are generally more favorable to punishment and control than personal freedom and diversity. For example, they are more willing to suspend constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights
. They are more likely to advocate strict, punitive sentences for criminals, and they report that they obtain personal satisfaction from punishing such people. They tend to be ethnocentric and prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities, and homosexuals.
In roleplaying situations, authoritarians tend to seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive instead of cooperative. In a study by Altemeyer, 68 authoritarians played a three hour simulation of the Earth's future entitled the Global change game
. Unlike a comparison game played by individuals with low RWA scores, which resulted in world peace
and widespread international cooperation, the simulation by authoritarians became highly militarized and eventually entered the stage of nuclear war. By the end of the high RWA game, the entire population of the earth was declared dead.
The vast majority of research on right-wing authoritarianism has been done in the United States and Canada. A recent (2003) cross-cultural study, however, examined the relation between authoritarianism and individualism-collectivism in samples from Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, and the U.S.A. (total N = 1,018). Both at the individual level and the societal level, authoritarianism was correlated with vertical individualism (or dominance seeking) and vertical or hierarchical collectivism, which is the tendency to submit to the demands of one's ingroup. A study done on both Israeli and Palestinian students in Israel found that RWA scores of right-wing party supporters were significantly higher than those of left-wing party supporters, and scores of secular subjects were lowest.
Right-wing authoritarianism has been found to correlate only slightly with Social Dominance Orientation
(SDO). Together they are strong predictors of a variety of prejudices such as sexism
, racism
, and heterosexism
. The two measures can be thought of as two sides of the same coin: RWA provides submissive followers, and SDO provides power-seeking leaders.
A recent refinement to this body of research was presented in Karen Stenner's 2005 book, The Authoritarian Dynamic. Stenner argues that RWA is best understood as expressing a dynamic response to external threat, not a static disposition based only on the traits of submission, aggression, and conventionalism. Stenner is critical of Altemeyer's social learning interpretation and argues that it cannot account for how levels of authoritarianism fluctuate with social conditions. She argues that the RWA Scale can be viewed as a measure of expressed authoritarianism, but that other measures are needed to assess authoritarian predispositions which interact with threatening circumstances to produce the authoritarian response.
Recent criticism has also come as a result of treating RWA as uni-dimensional even in contexts where it makes no sense to do so. For example, RWA has been used in regression analyses with fundamentalism as another predictor, and attitudes to homosexuality and racism as the outcomes. This research seemed to show that, for example, Fundamentalism would be associated with reduced racism once the authoritarian component was removed, and this was summarized in a recent review of the field. However, since the RWA scale has items that also measure fundamentalist religiosity, and attitudes to homosexuality, this undermines the interpretation of such analyses. Even worse is the possibility that the unrecognised dimensionality in RWA can cause a statistical artifact to arise in such regressions, which can reduce or even reverse some of the relationships. Mavor and colleagues have argued that this artifact eliminates or even reverses any apparent tendency for fundamentalism to reduce racism once RWA is controlled. The implication is that in some domains such as the social psychology of religion it is not only preferable to think of RWA as consisting of at least two components, but essential in order to avoid statistical errors and incorrect conclusions . Several options currently exist for scales that acknowledge at least the two main underlying components in the scale (aggression/submission and conventionalism).
Personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...
and ideological
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
variable studied in political
Political psychology
Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field dedicated to understanding political science, politicians and political behavior. Psychological theories of behavior including; belief, motivation, conflict, perception, cognition, information processing, learning strategies, socialization...
, social, and personality psychology
Personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...
. It is defined by three attitudinal
Attitude (psychology)
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...
and behavioral clusters which correlate
Correlation
In statistics, dependence refers to any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data. Correlation refers to any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence....
together:
- Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
- Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
- Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.
The terminology of authoritarianism, right-wing authoritarianism, and authoritarian personality tend to be used interchangeably by psychologists, though inclusion of the term "personality" may indicate a psychodynamic interpretation consistent with the original formulation of the theory.
History
The concept of right-wing authoritarianism was introduced in 1981 by Canadian psychologist Bob Altemeyer, as a refinement of the authoritarian personalityAuthoritarian personality
-Historical Origins:Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford compiled a large body of research and theory , which attempted to characterize a personality type that described the “potentially fascistic individual”...
theory originally pioneered by University of California at Berkeley researchers Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
, Else Frenkel-Brunswik
Else Frenkel-Brunswik
Else Frenkel-Brunswik was a Polish-Austrian Jewish psychologist.- External links :* http://www.kfunigraz.ac.at/sozwww/agsoe/bestand/25_agsoe/25bio.htm...
, Daniel Levinson
Daniel Levinson
Daniel J. Levinson , a psychologist, was one of the founders of the field of Positive Adult Development.-Early life and education:...
, and Nevitt Sanford
Nevitt Sanford
Nevitt Sanford was professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. He studied ethnocentrism and antisemitism, and was one of the authors of The Authoritarian Personality. His co-authors in this work were Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik and Daniel Levinson...
. After extensive questionnaire research and statistical analysis, Altemeyer found that only three of the original nine hypothesized components of the model correlated together: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. Researchers have traditionally assumed that there was just one kind of authoritarian personality, who could be either a follower or a leader. The discovery that followers and leaders are usually different types of authoritarians is based on research done by Sam McFarland.
Assessment
Right-wing authoritarianism is measured by the RWA scale. The first item on the scale states, "Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us." People who strongly agree with this are showing a tendency toward authoritarian submission (Our country desperately needs a mighty leader), authoritarian aggression (who will do what has to be done to destroy), and conventionalism (the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us).Psychometrically, the RWA scale was a significant improvement over the F-scale
F-scale
The F-scale is a 1947 personality test, designed by Theodor W. Adorno and others to measure the authoritarian personality. The "F" stands for "fascist." The F-scale measures responses on several different components of authoritarianism, including conventionalism, authoritarian submission,...
, which was the original measure of the authoritarian personality. The F-scale was worded so that agreement always indicated an authoritarian response, thus leaving it susceptible to the acquiescence response bias
Acquiescence bias
Acquiescence bias is a category of response bias in which respondents to a survey have a tendency to agree with all the questions or to indicate a positive connotation. Acquiescence is sometimes referred to as "yah-saying" and is the tendency of a respondent to agree with a statement when in doubt...
. The RWA scale is balanced to have an equal number of pro and anti authoritarian statements. The RWA scale also has excellent internal reliability, with coefficient alpha
Cronbach's alpha
Cronbach's \alpha is a coefficient of reliability. It is commonly used as a measure of the internal consistency or reliability of a psychometric test score for a sample of examinees. It was first named alpha by Lee Cronbach in 1951, as he had intended to continue with further coefficients...
typically measured over .90.
The RWA scale has been modified over the years, as many of the items lost their social significance as society changed. The current version is 22 items long, and can be found online.
Although Altemeyer has continually updated the scale, researchers in different domains have tended to lock-in on particular versions. For example in the social psychology of religion, the 1992 version of the scale is still commonly used,. In addition, the length of the earlier versions (30 items) led many researchers to develop shorter versions of the scale. Some of those are published but many researchers simply select a subset of items to use in their research; a practice that Altemeyer strongly criticises .
The uni-dimensionality of the scale has also been challenged recently. Funke, for example, showed that it is possible to extract the three underlying dimensions of RWA if the double- and triple-barreled nature of the items is removed. Given the possibility of underlying dimensions emerging from the scale, it is then the case that the scale is no longer balanced, since all the items primarily capturing authoritarian aggression are pro-trait worded (higher scores mean less authoritarianism) and all the items primarily measuring conventionalism are con-trait worded (higher scores mean less authoritarianism). Work by Mavor, Louis and Sibley recently demonstrated that the existence of 2 or 3 factors in the RWA scale reflects real differences in these dimensions rather than acquiescence response bias.
Right and left
The "right wing" in right-wing authoritarianism does not necessarily refer to someone's politics, but to psychological preferences and personality. It means that the person tends to follow the established conventions and authorities in society. In theory, the authorities could have either right-wing or left-wing political views.Milton Rokeach's
Milton Rokeach
Milton Rokeach was a Polish-American social psychologist. He taught at Michigan State University, the University of Western Ontario, Washington State University, and the University of Southern California.-Early life:...
dogmatism scale was an early attempt to measure pure authoritarianism, whether left or right. The scale was carefully designed to measure "closed mindedness" without regard to ideology. Nevertheless, researchers found that it correlated with British political conservativism. In a similar line of research, Philip Tetlock found that right wing beliefs are associated with less integrative complexity
Integrative complexity
Integrative complexity is a research psychometric that refers to the degree to which thinking and reasoning involve the recognition and integration of multiple perspectives and possibilities and their interrelated contingencies....
than left wing beliefs. People with moderate liberal attitudes had the highest integrative complexity in their cognitions.
There have been a number of other attempts to identify "left-wing authoritarians" in the United States and Canada. These would be people who submit to leftist authorities, are highly conventional to liberal viewpoints, and are aggressive to people who oppose left-wing ideology. These attempts have failed because measures of authoritarianism always correlate at least slightly with the right. There are certainly extremists across the political spectrum, but most psychologists now believe that authoritarianism is a predominantly right-wing phenomenon.
Although authoritarians in North America generally support conservative political parties, this finding must be considered in a historical and cultural context. For example, during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, authoritarians in the United States were usually anti-communist, whereas in the Soviet Union, authoritarians generally supported the Communist Party and were opposed to capitalism. Thus, authoritarians generally favor the established ways and oppose social and political change. Hence, even politics usually labeled as right or left-wing is not descriptive. While Communism in the Soviet Union is seen as leftist, it still inspired the same responses. This leaves questions over what makes various ideologies left or right open to interpretation.
Research
According to research by Altemeyer, right-wing authoritarians tend to exhibit cognitive errors and symptoms of faulty reasoning. Specifically, they are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideasDoublethink
Doublethink, a word coined by George Orwell in the novel 1984, describes the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts. It is related to, but distinct from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Its opposite is cognitive dissonance, where...
that result from compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations. Nevertheless, there is no connection between authoritarianism and either low or high intelligence. Measured against the five factor model
Big Five personality traits
In contemporary psychology, the "Big Five" factors of personality are five broad domains or dimensions of personality which are used to describe human personality....
of personality, authoritarians generally score lower on openness to experience
Openness to experience
Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model Openness involves active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety, and intellectual curiosity. A great deal of psychometric research...
and slightly higher on conscientiousness
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is the trait of being painstaking and careful, or the quality of acting according to the dictates of one's conscience. It includes such elements as self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, organization, deliberation , and need for achievement. It is an aspect of what has...
.
Altemeyer suggested that authoritarian politicians are more likely to be in the Conservative or Reform party in Canada, or the Republican Party in the United States. They generally have a conservative economic philosophy, are highly nationalistic, oppose abortion, support capital punishment, oppose gun control legislation, and do not value social equality. The RWA scale reliably correlates with political party affiliation, reactions to Watergate, pro-capitalist attitudes, religious orthodoxy, and acceptance of covert governmental activities such as illegal wiretaps. Although authoritarianism is correlated with conservative political ideology, not all authoritarians are conservative, and not all conservatives are authoritarian. It is also worth noting that many authoritarians have no interest in politics.
Authoritarians are generally more favorable to punishment and control than personal freedom and diversity. For example, they are more willing to suspend constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights
Bill of rights
A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or...
. They are more likely to advocate strict, punitive sentences for criminals, and they report that they obtain personal satisfaction from punishing such people. They tend to be ethnocentric and prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities, and homosexuals.
In roleplaying situations, authoritarians tend to seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive instead of cooperative. In a study by Altemeyer, 68 authoritarians played a three hour simulation of the Earth's future entitled the Global change game
Global change game
The Global change game was devised in Winnipeg in December 1991 by a group of students from the University of Manitoba. It is a simulation that involves exploring, understanding and solving some of the issues that plague the world today....
. Unlike a comparison game played by individuals with low RWA scores, which resulted in world peace
World peace
World Peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. World peace is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The term is sometimes used to...
and widespread international cooperation, the simulation by authoritarians became highly militarized and eventually entered the stage of nuclear war. By the end of the high RWA game, the entire population of the earth was declared dead.
The vast majority of research on right-wing authoritarianism has been done in the United States and Canada. A recent (2003) cross-cultural study, however, examined the relation between authoritarianism and individualism-collectivism in samples from Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, and the U.S.A. (total N = 1,018). Both at the individual level and the societal level, authoritarianism was correlated with vertical individualism (or dominance seeking) and vertical or hierarchical collectivism, which is the tendency to submit to the demands of one's ingroup. A study done on both Israeli and Palestinian students in Israel found that RWA scores of right-wing party supporters were significantly higher than those of left-wing party supporters, and scores of secular subjects were lowest.
Right-wing authoritarianism has been found to correlate only slightly with Social Dominance Orientation
Social dominance orientation
Social dominance orientation is a personality trait which predicts social and political attitudes, and is a widely used Social Psychological scale. SDO is conceptualised as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination and domination; that is, it is a measure of an...
(SDO). Together they are strong predictors of a variety of prejudices such as sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
, racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, and heterosexism
Heterosexism
Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior...
. The two measures can be thought of as two sides of the same coin: RWA provides submissive followers, and SDO provides power-seeking leaders.
Criticism
Altemeyer's research on authoritarianism has been challenged by psychologist John J. Ray, who questions the sampling methods used and the ability of the RWA Scale to predict authoritarian behavior and provides evidence that the RWA scale measures conservatism rather than "directiveness", a construct that John J. Ray invented and that he relates to authoritarianism. Ray's approach is, however, a minority position among researchers and other psychologists have found that both the RWA Scale and the original F-Scale are good predictors of both attitudes and behavior.A recent refinement to this body of research was presented in Karen Stenner's 2005 book, The Authoritarian Dynamic. Stenner argues that RWA is best understood as expressing a dynamic response to external threat, not a static disposition based only on the traits of submission, aggression, and conventionalism. Stenner is critical of Altemeyer's social learning interpretation and argues that it cannot account for how levels of authoritarianism fluctuate with social conditions. She argues that the RWA Scale can be viewed as a measure of expressed authoritarianism, but that other measures are needed to assess authoritarian predispositions which interact with threatening circumstances to produce the authoritarian response.
Recent criticism has also come as a result of treating RWA as uni-dimensional even in contexts where it makes no sense to do so. For example, RWA has been used in regression analyses with fundamentalism as another predictor, and attitudes to homosexuality and racism as the outcomes. This research seemed to show that, for example, Fundamentalism would be associated with reduced racism once the authoritarian component was removed, and this was summarized in a recent review of the field. However, since the RWA scale has items that also measure fundamentalist religiosity, and attitudes to homosexuality, this undermines the interpretation of such analyses. Even worse is the possibility that the unrecognised dimensionality in RWA can cause a statistical artifact to arise in such regressions, which can reduce or even reverse some of the relationships. Mavor and colleagues have argued that this artifact eliminates or even reverses any apparent tendency for fundamentalism to reduce racism once RWA is controlled. The implication is that in some domains such as the social psychology of religion it is not only preferable to think of RWA as consisting of at least two components, but essential in order to avoid statistical errors and incorrect conclusions . Several options currently exist for scales that acknowledge at least the two main underlying components in the scale (aggression/submission and conventionalism).
See also
- Authoritarian personalityAuthoritarian personality-Historical Origins:Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford compiled a large body of research and theory , which attempted to characterize a personality type that described the “potentially fascistic individual”...
- Social Dominance OrientationSocial dominance orientationSocial dominance orientation is a personality trait which predicts social and political attitudes, and is a widely used Social Psychological scale. SDO is conceptualised as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination and domination; that is, it is a measure of an...
- Fascist (epithet)Fascist (epithet)The word fascist is sometimes used to denigrate people, institutions, or groups that would not describe themselves as ideologically fascist, and that may not fall within the formal definition of the word. The Fascist party that developed in Italy in the 1920s rigidly enforced conservative values...