I just finished the book “The Authoritarian Specter, by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba. It’s taken a while, I’ve read other books while I struggled through this one, but today I finally closed the back cover.
Altemeyer spends a great deal of time describing methodology, and then chapter after chapter detailing the results of various tests of students, their parents, legislators and and even Russian students. The implications of his work, controversial but replicable and defendable, are damning for the right wing.
The center of Altemeyer’s work is a test he developed over many years called the RWA. It’s a 34 question test with various statements to extract positive and contrait data from those who take it. The questions are answered on a -4 to +4 scale, to that there are nine possible responses to each statement. Only 30 of the 34 questions count in the scoring (the first four are table-setters), so that the highest possible score is 270 – anyone who scores that high is truly dangerous. (He says that a Texas Democrat and West Virginia Republican legislator each scored 257 – the highest ever. Eeek!)
I would put the test up here for observation, but since it is not available on the internet, I suspect it is proprietary. However, anyone wanting to see it can contact me via the comment section, and I will fax or PDF it it to you. I think that is legal.
Altemeyer has taken the scores on the test, and correlated them with attitudes of conservatives and liberals, progressives and right wingers. He found a very high correlation between Canadian conservatives and American Republicans and high RWA scores, and a lower one for liberals and Democrats. In other words, right wingers tend to manifest authoritarian traits, which I will list in detail below, while left wingers do not. The old saw that there are extremes of left and right, and that each side provides dictators, according to Altemeyer, is false. The right wing is providing the world its thugs …
… with one caveat. He uncovered an odd duck. He calls this person the “wild card” authoritarian, not a right winger, not a left winger, but standing at the ready to assume power. Altemeyer speculates that this is the origin of our Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s – non ideological psychopaths who like authority for its own sake, and kill and enslave people because they can, and because it pleases them. Pinochet was a right wing authoritarian, as is Cheney, but these men are also driven by right wing ideology.
Altemeyer studied Russian students (during the Cold War) to ascertain their attitudes, and found that those who supported the Soviet system were also … right wing authoritarians. Those in charge of the Soviet system were mirror images of American right wingers.
Anyway, here’s a list of traits exhibited by ‘most’ High RWA’s, and keep in mind that nothing is true of all, and to say that these traits manifest mostly on the right does not mean they do not exist on the left. It only means that they are far less prominent on the left.
Compared with others, right wing authoritarians are significantly more likely to:
Accept unfair and illegal abuses of power by government authorities.
Trust leaders who are untrustworthy.
Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty, such as the Bill of Rights.
Punish severely “common” criminals in role playing situations, and admit they get personal pleasure from doing so.
Go easy on authorities who commit crimes and people who attack minorities.
Be prejudiced against many racial, ethnic, nationalistic and linguistic minorities.
Be hostile towards homosexuals and support “gay bashing”.
Volunteer to help the government prosecute almost anyone.
Be mean-spirited towards those who have made mistakes and suffered.
Insist on traditional sex roles.
Be hostile towards feminists.
Conform to opinions of others, and be more likely to “yea-say”.
Be fearful of a dangerous world.
Be highly self-righteous.
Strongly beleive in group cohesiveness and “loyalty”.
Make many incorrect inferences from evidence.
Hold contradictory ideas – cognitive dissonance.
Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.
Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.
Use double standards in thinking and judgments.
Be hypocrites.
Be bullies when they have power over others.
Seek dominance by being competitive and destructive.
Believe they have no personal failings.
Use religioin to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.
Be religious “fundamentalists”.
Be dogmatic.
Be zealots.
Be less educated.
Be conservative/Republican (U.S.), Reform (Canada) and have a conservative economic philosophy.
Believe in social dominance.
Oppose abortion.
Be ethnocentric.
Support capital punishment.
Oppose gun control.
Say they value freedom but actually want to undermine the Bill of Rights.
Do not value equality.
Not be likely to rise in the Democratic Party, but likely to rise among Republicans.
Phew! I should say that I got a queasy feeling as I typed many items on the list, as I am no slouch when it comes to failings regarding evidence, hero-worship, or dogmatism.
There are those who like to compare parties and ideologies and claim that all exhibit mirror negative tendencies. According to Altemeyer, it’s not true. It’s a Republican/conservative/right wing thing more than anything.
Most interesting: The book was written in 1996, long before 9/11 and Naomi Kleins’ “Shock Doctrine”. But Altemeyer claims that right wingers are very dangerous in troubled times, as they look to authoritarians to govern them. This, before Bush/Cheney. I think that prescient.
And, among his many warnings in the concluding chapter, we should be very careful when protesting certain behaviors and policies, such as pro-abortion or single payer, never to engage in violence. This sets off right wingers, and is counterproductive. I guess that’s obvious.
Piece of Mindful 
PDF please.
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