The Authoritarians

Overview

The Authoritarians is a book written by retiring University of Manitoba professor Bob Altemeyer and published solely online in PDF format, available for free download. (The PDFs are compatible with KGhostView and KPDF, although the footnote links did not work in KGhostView.)

Right Wing Authoritarians score highly on the

• The Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale (RWA) (Chapter 1)
• Could be ~26% of US public (see footnote 9 chapter 3)

Right Wing Authoritarians are:

• Submissive to established, legitimate Authorities in their society
  • Scored low on Illegal Government Wiretap Seriousness test
  • Favoured the Repeal Bill of Rights letter
• Highly aggressive on behalf of those Authorities
  • Longer Sentences for the Punishment of Mr Smith
• Self Righteous
  • Score highly on the Predijuce test
• Fearful
  • Score highly on the Posse test
• Highly Conventional
  • Score highly on the Dangerous World test
  • Score highly on the Young People Notion test
  • Performed poorly on the Global Change Game
  • Score low on the Experiences Scale (Chapter 2)
• Illogical, uncritical Thinkers
  • Less independent on the Existence of God decision test (Chapter 3)
• Have Highly Compartmentalized Minds
  • Believed that US found weapons of Mass Distruction within Iraq
• Exhibit Double Standards
  • Show Double standard on the Trials Case test
• Hypocritical
  • Score highly on the Censorship Quiz
• Un-Self Reflective
• Profoundly Ethnocentric
  • Score highly on the Group Loyality Quiz
• Dogmatic
  • Score highly on the Dogmatic (DOG) Scale

Religious Fundamentalists score highly on the

• Religious Fundamentalism scale (Chapter 4)
• Solid Majority are RWA
• Correlated .47 with Dangerous World
• Correlated .61 on "Liberal--Conservatism" Scale

Religious Fundamentalists are:

• Evangelical
  • Most are classified as Evangelical by the Evangelical Test
• Religiously intolerant
  • Score highly on the Religious Ethnocentrism scale
• Illogical, uncritical Thinkers, Compartmentalized minds, Double standards, Hypocritical, Dogmatic, Selective Ignorance
  • Correlated .62 with Dogmatic Scale
  • School Prayer: Majority Rights, unless... test
  • Selective Ignorance on Evolution
  • The Bible is always right, unless... test
• Little belief in Scientific Method
• Happy
• Zealots
  • Score highly on the Zealot scale
• Less Guilt
  • Have cheap grace on the Guilt resolution test
• Bible read
  • Scored only 60% on easy Bible Quiz
  • Read on average about 20 books of the bible 1/3 of total

Authoritarian Leaders score highly on the

• Social Dominance Orientation scale Chapter 5
• Weak correlation with the RWA scale

Authoritarian Leaders are:

• More predijudiced than RWAs
• Desire power
  • Score highly on the Personal Power, Meanness, and Dominance Scale (MAD)
• Intimidating, Ruthless, Vengeful, Religious Pretence, Little Empathy
  • Score highly on The Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty Scale (Exploitive-MAD)
• Dislike Equality
  • Score highly on the Against Equality test
• "Lethal Union" with Authoritarian in power, RWA following.

Double Highs have scored highly on both the

• The Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale (RWA) Chapter 1
• Social Dominance Orientation scale Chapter 5
• 5-10% of Authoritarian Leaders are Double Highs

Double Highs are:

• Worst of the lot - Score "worst" on all scales
  • Score highly on The Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty Scale
  • Score highly on the “Militia” scale
• Most Predijuce
  • Very high on the Predijuce test
• Best chance of attracting RWA followers
  • Together performed badly on the Global Change Game
  • Overreach on power and domination

Terminology

The book is about what it calls "Right Wing Authoritarianism", or "RWA" for short; individuals and groups exhibit varying degrees of this as a personality trait, and are correspondingly referred to as "high-RWA" or "low-RWA" where they have unusually high or low levels of it. Chapter 1 explains the reason for the word "Right" in relation to the "high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society" exhibited by authoritarian followers:

Chapter 1 of The Authoritarians says:

Because the submission occurs to traditional authority, I call these followers right-wing authoritarians. I'm using the word "right" in one of its earliest meanings, for in Old English "riht"(pronounced "writ") as an adjective meant lawful, proper, correct, doing what the authorities said. In North America people who submit to the established authorities to extraordinary degrees often turn out to be political conservatives, so you can call them "right-wingers" both in my new-fangled psychological sense and in the usual political sense as well. But someone who lived in a country long ruled by Communists and who ardently supported the Communist Party would also be one of my psychological right-wing authoritarians even though we would also say he was a political left-winger. So a right-wing authoritarian follower doesn’t necessarily have conservative political views. Instead he's someone who readily submits to the established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly conventional. It's an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics. Right-wing authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being characteristically bashful or happy or grumpy or dopey.

This explanation seems to imply that the "R" in "RWA" is not to be taken as applying specifically to the political right wing. Dr. Altemeyer later elaborated about this question on Google groups seems to be saying, in essence, that although the phenomenon is not confined to the political right, the experiments he did and the data he gathered were specifically addressing the political right. The "Right [Wing]" was therefore included in the term in order to be as unassuming as possible in giving a label to that which was measured.

To give another example: One might do experiments using water from Lake Huron and describe the results as "the properties of water", but it would probably be more accurate to say they were "the properties of water from Lake Huron". The book similarly describes the properties of "Right Wing Authoritarians", although it may turn out that the results are generalizable in many ways to Authoritarians of other stripes.

Issuepedia policy

Issuepedia will be going on the "reasonably sound opinion" assumption that the various hunches and deductions about the wider nature of authoritarianism are correct until such time as someone argues otherwise – though contributors should be aware of situations in which political orientation is a factor, and clarify this in their writing if necessary. --Woozle 13:41, 27 March 2007 (EDT)

Chapters

• Introduction (best to read this first)
  • PDF HTML

1. Who Are the Authoritarian Followers?
   • PDF HTML
2. The Roots of Authoritarian Aggression, and Authoritarianism Itself
   • PDF HTML
3. How Authoritarian Followers Think
   • PDF HTML
4. Authoritarian Followers and Religious Fundamentalism
   • PDF HTML
5. Authoritarian Leaders
   • PDF HTML
6. Authoritarianism and Politics
   • PDF HTML
7. What's To Be Done?
   • PDF HTML

Links

Reference

• official web site
  • Google Groups forum
  • very simple, limited forum
• Google search: [1]
• Order From Randomness: A few USA 360 statistical correlations to think about when reading The Authoritarians, by Raymond A. Orr

Commentary

• 2007-01-20 Bob Altemeyer Publishes "The Authoritarians" Online

Notes

Questions for follow-up studies

• Is there a correlation between "RWA" level and...
  • ...interest in spectator sports?
  • ...friendships? (do high-RWAs and low-RWAs get along?)
  • ...creativity? artistic talent?

Some examples of "left-wing" authoritarianism are raised here.