Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA)

Where can you take the test?

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Where can you take the test?

Take the test HERE
It's very basic and you really need to read the book to get anything out of it

Manach wrote: »

Whilst we all bear disappointments in life and I'm sure you will manage to get over this.

To be honest, I'm nearly over it already. Still, it griped while it lasted.

Manach wrote: »

So contextualising, I posted my comments in response after going to the website and reading the researcher's meta-commentary about the book. Choice phrases like 'Yes, experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, but why are they so dogmatic?' implied it was hardly the work of an unbiased and disinterested party. I take right-leaning authors like Anne Coutlter with a measure of salt and now likewise Mr.Altemeyer.

The paper does make it clear that a RWA in the Soviet Union would have been a doctrinaire Communist. In North Korea they would be someone who completely believed that the Dear Leader was exactly what was needed, that his uncle was clearly a traitor, etc. In Khomeini's Iran they would have been someone who believed completely that Islam was the only way, that America was the Great Satan, etc.

I'm not sure how the phrase "'Yes, experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, but why are they so dogmatic?'" can be taken as aimed at the general run of the right-wing or the left-wing in politics as opposed to the extremists who are specifically mentioned. I'm not sure exactly why you have apparently reflexively taken it as being aimed at you.

Anyway, read the paper if you want to actually find anything out about the research. Comments based on reading short and informal comments are never going to be a substitute for that.

cordially,
Scofflaw

unfortunately wrote: »

Completely dismissing the research simply based on the title or summaries is perhaps precisely what someone with a high score on the RWA Scale would do.

The scale has undergone a whole lot of statistical tests to make sure it is internally reliable and that you can predict people's behaviors from it. It has been a while since I read the paper but it has a very high reliability and consistency especially for the social sciences, much higher indeed than other psychological scales.

As I pointed out in the OP, "right-wing" means obedience to established legitimate authorities, while "left wing" would be dedication to some small authority that wants to overthrow the established authorities. Altemeyer does point out that Left-Wing Authoritarians are harder to find as authoritarian personalities would more than likely support the most established and readily available authority.

It has nothing to do with political ideology. Some Marxists can be high RWAs. Most people on the right and left are low to medium on the RWA Scale. The problem are the high RWAs or when a shift occurs were people's RWA score increases.

To quote the paper:

In North America people who submit to the established authorities to extraordinary degrees often turn out to be political conservatives, 2 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. Rightwing authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being characteristically bashful or happy or grumpy or dopey.

cordially,
Scofflaw

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I used to describe myself as left wing, because the anti sexual/moral freedom and pro police, military etc aspects of the right sickened me.
However, in recent times the "left wing" or "progressive" label has been used by groups who support concepts such as positive discrimination, limits on freedom of speech so as to remove "offensive" speech from the public domain, etc.

Both the le4ft and the right can be authoritarian in different ways. What should one describe one's self as if one's political view is that nothing should be banned unless it directly harms a non-consenting third party?

Social libertarian. Or just libertarian in the European sense

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Social libertarian. Or just libertarian in the European sense

That's what I tend to call myself, but I sometimes worry that the word "libertarian" is too tied up with the concept of anarcho-capitalism to apply to me - I don't believe in a world without regulation of corporate power, or without any kind of public services for instance.

As Scofflaw pointed out above, sometimes getting beyond the name / label is the hardest thing about political alignment. Because everyone's political views are somewhat unique, you're almost never going to find an established ideology that you don't differ substantially on at least one major point, and this causes more havoc than anything else in political debate.
You can see an example of that any time feminism comes up for debate on AH (so roughly four times a week ) - people will point out specific aspects of it that they disagree with, and others will say "It's a wide ranging ideology, not all of us subscribe to that particular aspect, so you can't criticize the movement as a whole based on that" - but in essence, if you can't criticize a movement as a whole based on a belief that substantial numbers of its followers DO subscribe to, then is there any meaning to applying the label to yourself in the first place? Such debates over feminism almost always end up as debates over what the term actually means and which, if any, of the many different ideologies is necessary to subscribe to in order to use the label. Look beyond page 6 or 7 in any of those threads and I can almost guarantee the debate will not be about the movement, but about "This is what feminism means" "No it isn't, that's only part of it, THIS is what it's really about" "You're both being ridiculous, it's obviously about THIS" etc.

Basically what I'm saying is, I've pretty much given up on political labels, including right/left wing at this stage - it just means too many different things to different people and is no longer a coherent way of debating political views.

unfortunately wrote: »

Note: As far as I understand, the "right-wing" in RWA is just a placeholder meaning obedience to established authorities (e.g. church, state etc.). It has nothing to do with economic or political ideologies. A "left-wing" authoritarian would be someone who has authoritarian notions and opposes the legitimate authorities and is part of some rebel group.

For example, Stalinists are Right-Wing Authoritarians because they were loyal to the Party and the established powers, even though they are seen as politically left-wing.

Conversely, extreme White Supremacists in the States who want to overthrow the Federal government (who they see as illegitimate) and establish their own authoritarian racist state are seen as "Left-Wing Authoritarians".

RWA is also a sliding scale; we all lie on the spectrum somewhere, and events around us an make us more or less authoritarian. e.g. post-9/11 people's RWA scores increased.

Oh, thats not needlessly confusing at all.
Surely if that is what they mean then Establishment Authoritarian and Anti-Establishment Authoritarian would have made far more sense than trying to use political terms largely unrelated to what they actually mean.

GaelMise wrote: »

Oh, thats not needlessly confusing at all.
Surely if that is what they mean then Establishment Authoritarian and Anti-Establishment Authoritarian would have made far more sense than trying to use political terms largely unrelated to what they actually mean.

I don't think that is what's meant. Authoritarians are pro-establishment. It doesn't matter to them whether the establishment is right-wing, left-wing, religious, atheistic, or whatever, as long as it's the establishment. The establishment is right because it is the establishment, it is what is established, and what is customary. It's the word "riht" which he uses as the basis for his "right-wing" - that is, what is established as a "right" by virtue of custom, although the French Revolution derivation works as well, since those "on the right" were supporting the status quo because it was the status quo:

Because the submission occurs to traditional authority, I call these followers rightwing 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. Rightwing authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being characteristically bashful or happy or grumpy or dopey.

So the example of a white supremacist:

Conversely, extreme White Supremacists in the States who want to overthrow the Federal government (who they see as illegitimate) and establish their own authoritarian racist state are seen as "Left-Wing Authoritarians".

is not correct. You can't have an anti-establishment authoritarian. You can have an authoritarian who recognises a different authority, but you can't have one who is opposed to authority because it is authority. Authoritarians are only rebels where rebellion is the social norm and established custom of their group.

A white supremacist can be an authoritarian within the confines of his/her own community - that is, he can believe that the establishment within his own community is correct, and submit him/herself to that authority because it is his/her local establishment, rather than being someone who has become a white supremacist after some effort of individual thought. He's not "left-wing" because he/she is opposed to the national government - he's still right-wing because he believes in the correctness of established authority, although the particular authority he recognises is not the national government.

It is somewhat confusing, but only with respect to the economic right-wing. The social right wing fits the profile - they generally wish people to be normal, not to upset previously established social norms, and definitely not to abandon or reject social norms - no matter what those social norms might be.

Our social right wingers, our 'conservatives', tend to hark back to a particular set of recognisable social norms - Catholic Irish small town conservatism, when the priest told you what was what and that was that. But in, say, a post-Communist country, the 'conservatives' would be Communists, harking back to the days of (apparent) equality and communal ownership, when the Party told you what was what and that was that.

All that matters to the authoritarian is that there should be a recognisable and strong authority which lays down how life should be lived, and removes uncertainty and doubt by removing freedom. It doesn't matter what the authority is, or how it acts. The weirdest thing in the whole paper is the finding that authoritarians would be OK with persecuting themselves if they were told by people in authority to do so:

Finally, just to take this to its ludicrous extreme, I asked for reactions to a "law to eliminate right-wing authoritarians." (I told the subjects that right-wing authoritarians are people who are so submissive to authority, so aggressive in the name of authority, and so conventional that they may pose a threat to democratic rule.) RWA scale scores did not connect as solidly with joining this posse as they had in the other cases. Surely some of the high RWAs realized that if they supported this law, they were being the very people whom the law would persecute, and the posse should therefore put itself in jail. But not all of them realized this, for authoritarian followers still favored, more than others did, a law to persecute themselves. You can almost hear the circuits clanking shut in their brains: "If the government says these people are dangerous, then they’ve got to be stopped."

For an authoritarian, even persecuting yourself is better than uncertainty or resistance to authority. You cannot have an anti-establishment authoritarian.

cordially,
Scofflaw

unfortunately wrote: »

Has anyone heard about this? I think it explains why it is difficult to talk about political topics with certain individuals.

I've noticed debate is near impossible with some people. I've never really noticed any particular leaning left or right in this though (in the sense that you mean, rather than but also the usual political sense).

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Not to be overly semantic, but could it be said that authoritarians are pro-authority rather than pro-establishment. So for example in pre revolutions Russia, the Bolsheviks were left wing or anti-establishment authoritiarians. They were against the established or traditional norms of their society, but they also imposed upon themselves rigid adherence to their beliefs. Post revolutions, they became the establishment party and so the kulaks went from being establishment authoritarians to non-establishment authoritiarians.

So people can slavishly follow a fringe party and be anti-establishment authoritiarians (eg socialist workers) or can be a fiercely independent anti-establishmentarian (eg Ming) likewise you can have people who are anti-authoritarian but pro establishment (Shane Ross) or pro establishment authoritiarians (of the "my grandfather fought for the anti-treaty side so I always vote FF" kind).

I think that terminology makes the sought after distinction ie there are two axes - how much of a free thinker you are and how your views match the broader society. Just because you support FG/Labours austerity doesn't mean you are a mindless FG/Labour supporter, and just because you have all the literature on the plight of the Palestinians doesn't mean that you've made up your own mind on the issue.

It's definitely clearer, but I'm not entirely certain that it's accurate. It's quite possible for someone to be highly doctrinaire, which is your "rigid adherence to their beliefs" without that being the result of an RWA disposition. The characteristic of a RWA is that they believe things that they are told by the leadership because they are the leadership - the 'established' leadership.

So you could have a ferociously doctrinaire Marxist who does not hesitate to challenge the party hierarchy if they perceive deviation from 'true Marxism' - and that person, while they are ferociously doctrinaire and may well be in favour of absolutely tight party discipline, is not a RWA. They're not a follower.

cordially,
Scofflaw