Journal
JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 122, Issue 1, Pages 135-170Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000341
Keywords
left-wing authoritarianism; political psychology; political violence; right-wing authoritarianism; social dominance orientation
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Funding
- Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University
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The study investigated the nature, structure, and nomological network of left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) and found that it shares many commonalities with right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation in terms of personality traits, cognitive features, beliefs, and motivational values. Left-wing authoritarians were found to be lower in dogmatism and cognitive rigidity compared to right-wing authoritarians.
Authoritarianism has been the subject of scientific inquiry for nearly a century, yet the vast majority of authoritarianism research has focused on right-wing authoritarianism. In the present studies, we investigate the nature, structure, and nomological network of left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), a construct famously known as the Loch Ness Monster of political psychology. We iteratively construct a measure and data-driven conceptualization of LWA across six samples (N = 7,258) and conduct quantitative tests of LWA's relations with more than 60 authoritarianism-related variables. We find that LWA, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation reflect a shared constellation of personality traits, cognitive features, beliefs, and motivational values that might be considered the heart of authoritarianism. Relative to right-wing authoritarians, left-wing authoritarians were lower in dogmatism and cognitive rigidity, higher in negative emotionality, and expressed stronger support for a political system with substantial centralized state control. Our results also indicate that LWA powerfully predicts behavioral aggression and is strongly correlated with participation in political violence. We 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.
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