RIGHT-WING AUTHORITARIANISM 

Note: when discussing right-wing authoritarianism, I will focus my discussion on those scoring high on this dimension. While research shows that RWA correlates with political conservatism (Wilson & Sibley, 2013) other research shows that being a right-wing authoritarian is not synonymous with political conservatism (Crowson, Thoma, & Hestevold, 2005). Later on, we will discuss the existence of left-wing authoritarianism, its relationship to political ideology, as well as its relationship to authoritarianism.

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is said to be an individual-difference measure of prejudice (Duckitt, 2006); in other words – an explanation of prejudice in terms of personality. The development of RWAs in the 1950s by Adorno was a profound move forward in our understanding of prejudice, racism, and discrimination. The outlook on prejudiced personalities, however, was rather grim, with Allport and Williams stating that prejudice, if rooted in personality, would be immune to the beneficial effects of intergroup contact.

People high on RWA show three central traits:

1. they are strongly committed to traditions / social conventions endorsed by authority figures;
2. they believe in submitting to the social norms and mores put forth by authority figures viewing it as a moral obligation to obey those in charge; and
3. will aggress against outgroups as supported by those in charge.

As such, people high on RWA view the world as dangerous and threatening place (Duckitt, 2006). As such, when an authority requires action be taken against an outgroup, RWAs see it as a moral obligation to obey and they are quick to do so (Altemeyer, 2003). For instance, using Milgram’s paradigm on obedience, Blass (1995) had individuals rate how responsible the “teacher” was for administering a shock to the pupil at the instruction of the researcher. Blass found that individuals high in RWA were less likely to ascribe blame to the teacher for providing (ostensible) high-voltage shocks to the “student” (for similar results, see Altemeyer, 1996). Individuals high in RWA are more likely to say that the experimenter

The general disposition of a RWA is evidenced by the survey questions used to measure the construct, which include, “The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas” (Altemeyer, 2003, p. 161). From this example taken from Altemeyer’s scale of RWAism, people high in RWA are particularly prejudiced against those who they view as being morally deviant or threatening social conventions held by the ingroup.

People high in RWA often endorsing double standards. Altemeyer (1988) showed that people high on RWA will more harshly punish a prohomosexual activist who committed an attack on an anti-homosexual protester than an anti-homosexual activist who committed an attack on a prohomosexual protestor. Similarly, people high in RWA will more harshly punish a panhandler (someone who stops people in the street asking them for money) than an accountant for committing similar crimes (Altemeyer, 1981). Altemeyer (1998) contends that individuals high in RWA do not know they are endorsing double-standards. Moreover, he states that these double-standards arise from memorizing what leaders tell them without critical appraisal of these messages or instructions.

High RWAs are particularly sensitive to normative pressure (Altemeyer, 1998). The beliefs and behaviours of RWAs at times seem contradictory; RWAs often identify as godly people, yet concurrently high RWAs are likely to lie, cheat, and manipulate to serve their own needs (Alteyemer, 2004). For example, White South Africans high in RWA were more likely to have supported Apartheid in South Africa (Duckitt, 1990), more likely to oppose democracy (McFarland, 1990), and will discriminate against a wide range of outgroups (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). Indeed, research shows that the authoritarian will aggress against outgroupers. For instance, people high in RWA hand out harsher punishments towards outgroupers in fictitious trials (Wylie & Forest, 1992) but not law officials (e.g., police and Air Force officers; Altemeyer, 1996). In the latter instance, RWA scores correlated negatively with jail sentences. Once again, in the context of a replication of Milgram’s experiments into obedience, RWA scores correlated positively with the intensity of shock chosen to administer to the “learner” (Altemeyer, 1996).

LEFT-WING AUTHORITARIANISM

Altemeyer and others were sceptical of the existence of LWA. Both Altemeyer (1996) and Stone (1980) draw comparisons between LWA and the Loch Ness Monster (see also Sanders & Jost, 2023). Stone does not mince their words when stating,

“…[left-wing authoritarianism] may have no foundation in fact…it seems clear that the concept of left-wing authoritarianism is relatively unproductive and that it might well be discarded. There may be similarities in personality between communists and fascists, but existing evidence strongly suggests that authoritarianism is a personality and attitudinal syndrome characteristic of right-wingers alone.” (p. 14)

As such, there has been little research into the notion of the left-wing authoritarian personality. Costello and colleagues (2022) show that typing “right-wing authoritarianism” will return 12 700 results for the phrase. Typing “left-wing authoritarianism” into Google, however, returns just 635. The existence of LWA has not, however, gone without scientific investigation. Early researchers have indeed sought to uncover evidence for the LWA personality (e.g., Eysenck, 1954) or an apolitical measure of authoritarianism (e.g., Rockeach, 1960). Despite initial (Altemeyer, 1996) and continued (Sanders & Jost, 2023) pessimism into the existence of LWA, there is a growing literature on the existence of the construct (e.g., McFarland, 1992, 1993; Van Hiel et al., 2006) with recent research providing the most robust evidence for it (Costello et al., 2022; Conway et al., 2023).

More recently, researchers have found considerable evidence for the existence of LWA. For instance, Conway and colleagues (2018) found that their LWA scale correlated positively with liberalism, prejudice, and liberal-focused dogmatism. Conway and colleagues (2023) again find consistent evidence for the existence of LWA. Across 12 studies and 74 000 participants across the world, they find that their measure of LWA correlates with political liberalism as well as a view of the world as a threatening place (Conway et al., 2023, Studies 3, 4, 5 and 6). They found that high-LWA persons supported more restrictive political correctness norms and expressed greater prejudice towards African-Americans and Jews. RWAs have been described as cognitively rigid (Jost et al., 2003) which, in-part, helps explain their support of double-standards. Conway and colleagues (2023) found similar correlates of LWA and cognitive rigidity. Study 12 of the Conway et al. (2023) suite finds impressive cross-cultural evidence for LWA across 54 nations across 5 continents involving 66 000 participants (see Sprong et al., 2019, for further cross-cultural evidence).

Altemeyer (1996), in an effort to develop a LWA scale gave up on such efforts because he (a) found that his LWA scale correlated positively with his RWA scale and (b) found few individuals who scored as high on his LWA scale as he did find high RWAs. Van Hiel and colleagues (2006) similarly find that (a) their LWA scale correlates positively with RWA and (b) few instances of high-LWAs. They draw other conclusions, however, arguing that their scale does tap LWA and that the positive correlation between LWA and RWA scales is evidence of an underlying authoritarian personality structure that is apolitical. Indeed, this is the same conclusion that Costello, Conway, Van Hiel, and several other researchers reach. Costello and colleagues (2022), in yet another impressive data set (including 6 samples, over 7000 participants, and 60 authoritarianism-related variables) show that LWA and RWA tap the same underlying authoritarian personality construct. They find (see also Van Heil, 2006) evidence for the same personality substructures of submission and aggression. While there are some notable exceptions between LWA and RWA (LWAs are lower on dogmatism, cognitive rigidity; see also Conway et al., 2023) and there are fewer individuals who inhabit the high-LWA positions compared to high-RWAs, Costello and colleagues (2022) conclude that a“…movement away from exclusively right-wing conceptualizations of authoritarianism may be required to illuminate authoritarianism’s central features, conceptual breadth, and psychological appeal” (p. 1).