The Authoritarian Dynamic
Abstract
What are the root causes of intolerance? This book addresses that question by developing a universal theory of what determines intolerance of difference in general, which includes racism, political intolerance, moral intolerance and punitiveness. It demonstrates that all these seemingly disparate attitudes are principally caused by just two factors: Individuals’ innate psychological predispositions to intolerance (“authoritarianism”) interacting with changing conditions of societal threat. The threatening conditions, particularly resonant in the present political climate, that exacerbate authoritarian attitudes include, most critically, great dissension in public opinion and general loss of confidence in political leaders. Using purpose-built experimental manipulations, cross-national survey data and in-depth personal interviews with extreme authoritarians and libertarians, the book shows that this simple model provides the most complete account of political conflict across the ostensibly distinct domains of race and immigration, civil liberties, morality, crime and punishment, and of when and why those battles will be most heated.
... Using an experimental design, we explore the extent to which climate change communication focusing on climate change threat can mobilize climate action and how value orientations, attitudes, and anger can moderate and/or mediate that effect. We focus particularly on social conformity versus individual autonomy values (an individual's authoritarian predisposition), as research suggests that this value orientation is particularly reactive to sociotropic threats (Stenner 2005;Stevens and Vaughan-Williams 2014) such as climate change. ...
... An authoritarian predisposition thereby motivates increased submission to ingroup authority and adherence to ingroup norms, as well as aggression toward those who defy ingroup authority or norms (i.e. right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)) (Cohrs et al. 2005;Duckitt 2001),; particularly when threatened (Stenner 2005). ...
... Those with an authoritarian predisposition are motivated, based on their values orientation, to act defensively in support of their goals to maintain social order in their ingroup (Janoff-Bulman, Sheikh, and Baldacci 2008; Stenner 2005). When threatened and anxious, their (avoidance) motivations from their values orientation align with the (avoidance) motivations produced by their anxiety. ...
... The literature has traditionally associated increased security threats with more authoritarian responses-illiberalism-among individuals with authoritarian predispositions (Altemeyer, 1996;Feldman & Stenner, 1997;Stenner, 2005). But revisionist claims have argued that it is libertarians who adopt more authoritarian responses in contexts of increased security threats (Hetherington & Weiler, 2009); in these accounts, authoritarians are on a permanent state of alert, meaning that contexts of increased security threat have little impact on their preferences for government actions and measures. ...
... First, there is a tendency toward a narrow focus on security issues related to conflict, terrorism, and prejudice. This tells us neither about other threats to welfare, such as those from infectious diseases, nor about the "everyday threats," such as crime that individuals experience, and whether there are differences in responses to these types of threats as opposed to the threats to social norms to which Stenner (2005) refers. Second, we possess knowledge of perceptions of various different security threats in a series of changing contexts, such as after a terrorist attack, and their relationship with authoritarian predispositions (e.g., Stevens & Banducci, 2022), but we know less about the same security threats in different contexts, such as the threat of terrorism when there is little discernible threat, and their relationship with authoritarian predispositions. ...
... 3. Authoritarians are responsive to changes in security threats with implications for "normative threat" but impervious to contextual changes to security threats that do not have implications for normative threat. Stenner (2005) suggests a more dynamic relationship between perceptions of threats and authoritarianism. She argues that while authoritarians are more likely to see the world as dangerous and "are inclined towards this peculiar fear of a dangerous world under any conditions" (Stenner, 2005, p. 69; italics in original), they are particularly attentive to "normative threat," which can be defined as "threats to unity and consensus, or 'oneness and sameness'" (Stenner & Haidt, 2018, p. 180). ...
This article offers a new perspective on when and why individual-level authoritarian perceptions of security threats change. We reexamine claims that authoritarian members of the public responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in a counterintuitive fashion. The response was counterintuitive in that, rather than a desire for a stronger government with the ability to impose measures to address the pandemic and its consequences, authoritarian individuals rejected a stronger government response and embraced individual autonomy. The article draws on perceptions of security threats—issues that directly or indirectly harm personal or collective safety and welfare—from surveys in two different contexts in England: 2012, when perceptions of the threat from infectious disease was low relative to most other security threats, and 2020, when perceptions of the personal and collective threat of COVID-19 superseded all other security threats. We argue that the authoritarian response was not counterintuitive once we account for the type of threat it represented.
... The idea of a particular authoritarian personality is replaced by a concept of authoritarian values and beliefs, referring to enduring dispositions assumed to guide individuals' evaluations and responses to circumstances and issues in society. Authoritarian responses thus transcend various issues and are manifest in shifting attitudes (Feldman, 2020;Norris & Inglehart, 2019;Stenner, 2005). ...
... The contrastive values are not necessarily incompatible in peoples' opinions. On the contrary, the appropriate balancing of such values can be understood as crucial in democracy (Stenner, 2005). Posts on the two forums provide examples. ...
... Perceived threats are amplified in line with traditional news values, as in this example of a heading with linguistic intensifiers: "Explosive increase in teenagers undergoing gender reassignment" (FB, refers to SVT News, 12 February 2020). The observation of such news inspiring authoritarian responses is consistent with the general argument in the literature suggesting that authoritarian values are typically activated in responses to circumstances of threat to norms and social order (Feldman, 2020;Stenner, 2005). • Moral discourse: The news discussed in the threads typically invokes a moral discourse in foregrounding wrongdoings. ...
The overall aim of this study is to explore the authoritarian dimension in the far-right discourse of online forums. The study argues for a focus on the articulations of authoritarianism to understand the dynamics of far-right discourse. Four central features of authoritarianism are identified and explored: 1) the authoritarian values underlying articulated opinions on diverse issues; 2) the emotional dimension of authoritarianism; 3) the coexistence of civil and uncivil articulations of authoritarianism; and 4) the role of mainstream news as reference for and trigger of authoritarian responses. The qualitative study is based on data from two Swedish forums, Flashback and Familjeliv [Family life], and consists of 79 threads related to three issues on the agenda: disorder in school, gang crime, and transgender. The results show expressions of authoritarian–liberal value conflicts, and, most significantly, the vigour of an authoritarian culture on the forums, with implications for the normalisation of far-right discourse.
... Diversity is the trigger of authoritarianism. According to Stenner (2005), authoritarianism evolves into a normative worldview that prioritizes obedience and conformity over freedom and difference, as well as group authority over individual autonomy. Authoritarianism promotes coercion and bias against out-groups while supporting restrictions on their rights and actions, such as "legal discrimination against minorities and restrictions on immigration; limits on free speech, assembly, and association" (p. ...
... Finally, negative stereotypes are conducive to the expectations that out-group members will harm the in-group; hence, negative stereotypes are perceived as threats toward the in-group members. Stenner (2005) also illustrates that normative threats, which are threats to oneness and sameness, are conducive to the rise of authoritarian predispositions. When plurality increases, people tend to seek conformity and familiarity with their in-group values, norms, and beliefs. ...
This chapter discusses authoritarian populism. Specifically, the chapter argues that populism is incompatible with the institutions of liberal democracy, such as the rule of law, checks and balances, and minority rights. Especially when populists come to power with majorities, they capture or weaken these institutions in the name of people’s sovereignty. Hence, we see the effects of populist conquest of the state with the surveys that measure the level of democracy as a decreasing trend.
... Similarly, tests of association between variables can justify the ascription of lower probabilities to some outcomes than others (e.g., finding a highly authoritarian individual among liberals vs. among conservatives), but they cannot "forbid" any outcome from occurring (Popper, 1959). The existence and characteristics of authoritarian individuals are more appropriately investigated through qualitative documentation of cases (e.g., Adorno et al., 1950;Stenner, 2005) and analyses of withinperson patterns across variables, situations, or time points (e.g., Magnusson, 1992;Molenaar & Campbell, 2009) and absolute scores (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996;Van Hiel et al., 2006). ...
... Similarly, it is reasonable to expect that antidemocratic tendencies on the right are bolstered by perceived threats against societal norms, while antidemocratic tendencies on the left are bolstered by perceived threats against progressive values. Classical research has suggested that threats against social conformity "activate" the antidemocratic potential in authoritarians, yielding intolerance and prejudice against those who deviate from social conventions (Feldman, 2003;Feldman & Stenner, 1997;Stenner, 2005). Less is known about the effects of threats against progressive values, but some studies have suggested that perceived threat from political opponents is a major predictor of willingness to support violence against them and restrictions of their democratic rights among both liberals and conservatives (Crawford & Pilanski, 2014;Dunwoody et al., 2022). ...
A series of new conceptualizations of left‐wing authoritarianism have recently been proposed to counterbalance the traditional focus on right‐wing authoritarianism in political psychology. This article scrutinizes conceptual confusions in the literature on authoritarianism that have been exacerbated by these new conceptualizations, including a pseudo‐debate about the existence of left‐wing authoritarianism; a conflation of the psychological phenomenon of authoritarianism with the more general category of all antidemocratic predispositions; and a number of logical, conceptual, and statistical fallacies that obscure psychological differences between antidemocratic predispositions on the right and the left. It proposes that antidemocratic predispositions on the right typically involve an authoritarian adherence to established norms along with violence and repression directed at perceived threats to, or deviations from, these norms, whereas those that occur on the left more commonly involve a motivation to overthrow the established authority along with violence and repression directed at perceived threats to superordinate ideological values. It concludes with a call for a broadened and reinvigorated program of research that studies the complexity and diversity of antidemocratic predispositions on the left, the right, and beyond, and their causal impact on antidemocratic attitudes and actions, drawing on insights from multiple traditions and fields of research.
... That is, varying levels of advocacy to obey authority figures-or authoritarianism (Stenner, 2005)-may account for the differences in children's trust preferences based on informants' social dominance between Western and Eastern cultures. In this study, we hypothesise that the degree to which authoritarianism is valued in a culture may impact children's preferences to trust in subordinate versus dominant informants. ...
... Child participants' parents will complete a Parents' Authoritarian Disposition Questionnaire (Ronfard et al., 2021;Stenner, 2005;Tagar et al., 2014) to report to which degrees they endorse authoritarianism in parenting. The Parents' Authoritarian Disposition Questionnaire consists of four forced-choice items. ...
Deciding whose words to trust profoundly impacts children's knowledge acquisition. In evaluating informants' trustworthiness, children are attentive to their social dominance. Previous studies have shown that children's trust preferences may differ across cultures based on the dominance of the informant: children in Western cultures prefer to trust in testimony from dominant informants, whereas children in Eastern cultures prefer to trust subordinate informants (Bernard et al., 2016; Charafeddine et al., 2019). We aim to investigate the potential cultural difference in the trust preferences of European American children (in the United States) and Chinese children (in China) from informants of varying levels of dominance, using a more refined method to assess children's trust preferences. We propose that different levels of authoritarianism – advocacies to obey authorities – in Western and Eastern cultures may explain the potential difference in children's selective trust. Specifically, as impacted by societal cultures, Chinese parents may possess a higher level of authoritarianism than European American parents and may place a higher emphasis on obedience in their parenting. Consequently, Chinese children may show stronger trust preferences from subordinate informants over dominant informants than European American children. Our research will offer insights into the potential mechanism underlying children's different learning preferences across cultures.
... A second potentially useful way of measuring political values is to examine them in a context other than country-level politics. This is done by the recent Nurturant Parent and Strict Father scales (Feinberg et al., 2020) that operationalize Lakoff (2016) moral politics thesis and which, in turn, builds on a long history of using family (and parenting) values as means to understand ideology (Fried, 1967, p. 83;Stenner, 2005). This research shows that values about family life comprise a two-dimensional structure that appears to mirror the two dimensions of national politics (Feinberg et al., 2020). ...
... Of key interest is the relationship between participants' DFS scores across two levels of social organization: nation and family. We examine the nation level due to its prevalence in the politics literature and include the family level as a comparison given the long history in psychology of links between politics and family and parenting values (Stenner, 2005;Barker and Tinnick, 2006). Theories of political ideology expect consistency across these two levels, either because people have stable dispositions that are expressed across both (e.g., Duckitt and Sibley, 2009) or because opinions about nation-level politics derive from opinions about family-level politics (e.g., Lakoff, 2016). ...
Psychological research repeatedly identifies two dimensions of political values. Recent work argues that these dimensions reflect the dual evolutionary foundations of human social and political life: a trade-off between cooperation and competition that generates differences in values about social inequality, and a trade-off in managing group coordination that generates differences in values about social control. Existing scales used to measure political values, however, were created prior to this framework. Here, we introduce the Dual Foundations Scale, designed to capture values about the two trade-offs. We validate the scale across two studies, showing it accurately and reliably measures both dimensions. Our results support key predictions of the dual foundations framework and pave the way for future work on the foundations of political ideology.
... • The values that come from [ In the YouGov 2018 and 2020 surveys, we also asked study participants to respond to the traditional economicindividualism battery described above, Triandis's measures of horizontal and vertical individualism, and the child-rearing-values questions that are often used to measure authoritarianism (Feldman and Stenner 1997;Hetherington and Weiler 2009;Stenner 2005). As Stenner (2005, 14) argues, authoritarianism is a predisposition having to do with "the appropriate balance between group authority and uniformity, on the one hand, and individual autonomy and diversity, on the other." ...
... As Stenner (2005, 14) argues, authoritarianism is a predisposition having to do with "the appropriate balance between group authority and uniformity, on the one hand, and individual autonomy and diversity, on the other." Political science research has shown that authoritarians tend to see the world in black-and-white terms, are highly sensitive to in-group/out-group boundaries, and have a strong need to defend the social order and existing group norms against those who would undermine the group and its values (Hetherington and Weiler 2009;Stenner 2005). ...
We reexamine the concept of individualism and its political implications. While both political scientists and social psychologists agree that individualism is a core value for many Americans, political science has primarily associated the concept with views about economic mobility. Building upon insights from political theory, we argue that a narrow focus on economics overlooks key elements of individualism and its relation to political life. With the help of five distinct datasets collected between 2018 and 2022 (combined N = 12,169), we develop a new index that emphasizes autonomy from authority, which we label moral individualism. We show how it and other dimensions of individualism explain interactions with the political world, including responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Across multiple indicators, moral individualists were far less likely to engage in collective action or pursue other behaviors meant to assist the community. For example, even after controlling for the effects of ideology and partisanship, moral individualism reduced the probability of wearing a mask during the first year of the pandemic by approximately 30 percentage points.
... Further, the 2020 NZES also included a set of questions asking the respondent which of two qualities are more important in children. It has been established that people who value qualities such as obedience and respect for elders are predisposed to authoritarianism (Feldman 2003;Feldman and Stenner 1997;Stenner 2005). ...
... Authoritarianism, a personality trait characterized by adherence to established authorities and conventions, obedience, and hostility toward outgroups, was found to be positively associated with IPV. When combined with perceived stress, the effects were amplified, leading to a greater likelihood of IPV (see Altemeyer, 1981;Stenner, 2005). Authoritarianism as a trait has often been associated with heightened threat perception and a preference for safety, conformity, and obedience to authority (Duckitt & Fisher, 2003). ...
COVID-19 pandemic caused several lockdowns in most countries, enclosing together perpetrators and victims of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Our study investigates psychological mechanisms associated with IPV. We supposed that stress provoked by the pandemic, as well as adhering to authoritarian beliefs will be a predictor of IPV. Using an online questionnaire, 1659 individuals indicated whether they have been victim or witnessed IPV at home and filled a perceived stress scale, anxiety, depression, and aggressiveness scales. They were also asked to fill an authoritarianism scale, how they cope with the lockdown situations, and some demographical information. We found that individuals who were victims or witnesses of intimate partner violence (IPV) during the COVID-19 lockdowns tended to have more difficulty isolating at home or to hold stronger authoritarian beliefs. Importantly, the association between authoritarian beliefs and IPV was moderated by perceived stress, suggesting that individuals who hold authoritarian views may be more affected by stress, which could increase the risk of experiencing or witnessing IPV. IPV incidents during the pandemic lockdowns may be partially explained by perceived stress, which is amplified by authoritarian attitudes. Further discussions on the causes of IPV and interventions are suggested.
... The next part of the survey features two pre-existing measures of individual and cultural differences in beliefs about raising children, which (we speculate) might influence how parents/caregivers transmit religious beliefs and behaviors to their children. The first measure that parents/caregivers are asked to complete is the widely-used Authoritarianism scale [97,98], in which parents/caregivers make forced-choice decisions about the most important qualities for a child to have; in our adaptation of this measure, the response options include the option, "I prefer not to choose one over the other" so that the scale is culturally appropriate for the wide range of sites included in this study. The second measure is the Family Cohesion scale [99], in which parents/caregivers indicate their agreement with a range of statements about their perceptions of support and togetherness within their family; in our adaptation of this measure, parents/caregivers provide agreement ratings on an 11-point scale ranging from [0] "I do not agree with this at all" to [10] "I completely agree with this." ...
The Developing Belief Network is a consortium of researchers studying human development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the interplay between general cognitive development and culturally specific processes of socialization and cultural transmission in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network’s first wave of data collection, which aims to explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior. This work is guided by three key research questions: (1) How do children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents? (2) How do children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity? (3) How are religious and supernatural beliefs transmitted within and between generations? The protocol is designed to address these questions via a set of nine tasks for children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, a comprehensive survey completed by their parents/caregivers, and a task designed to elicit conversations between children and caregivers. This study is being conducted in 39 distinct cultural-religious groups (to date), spanning 17 countries and 13 languages. In this manuscript, we provide detailed descriptions of all elements of this study protocol, give a brief overview of the ways in which this protocol has been adapted for use in diverse religious communities, and present the final, English-language study materials for 6 of the 39 cultural-religious groups who are currently being recruited for this study: Protestant Americans, Catholic Americans, American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and religiously unaffiliated Americans.
... This version of "authoritarianism" emphasizes socialized (ostensibly non-innate) personality traits that emphasize the need for security, deference to hierarchy, and opposition to social di erence-the core traits here being submission, conventionalism, and aggression. The second comes from Karen Stenner's renewed approach from the 2000s, in which she takes on much of the theoretical apparatus and many assumptions of the RWA approach and relabels the trait as an authoritarian "predisposition" which can be activated under conditions of social disruption, and then connects it explicitly to political movements (Stenner 2005). Karen ...
From the rise of populist leaders and the threat of democratic backsliding to culture wars, the rejection of open markets and the return of great power competition, the backlash against the political, economic, and social status quo is increasingly labeled “illiberal.” Yet, despite the increasing importance of these phenomena, scholars still lack a firm grasp on “illiberalism” as a conceptual tool for understanding contemporary trends. The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism addresses this gap by establishing a theoretical foundation for the study of illiberalism and showcasing state-of-the-art research on this phenomenon in its varied scripts—political, economic, cultural, geopolitical, and civilizational. Bringing together the expertise of dozens of scholars, the Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism offers a thorough overview that characterizes the current state of the field and charts a path forward for future scholarship on this critical and quicky developing concept.
... Note that the present new evidence for the genetic linkages between SDO, RWA, and political policy attitudes therefore does not preclude an important role for their flexible calibration in response to relevant socio-ecological input. For example, cues of external threat should shape an orientation toward hierarchy in the direction of RWA (see Stenner, 2005), while belonging to a dominant group of high rank, resources and military prowess should implement individual proclivities for hierarchy in the form of SDO, as demonstrated by decades of work in social dominance theory and the dual process model (Duckitt, 2001;Duckitt et al., 2002;Pratto et al., 2006;Sidanius et al., 2016;Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). ...
Objective
Political attitudes are predicted by the key ideological variables of right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), as well as some of the Big Five personality traits. Past research indicates that personality and ideological traits are correlated for genetic reasons. A question that has yet to be tested concerns whether the genetic variation underlying the ideological traits of RWA and SDO has distinct contributions to political attitudes, or if genetic variation in political attitudes is subsumed under the genetic variation underlying standard Big Five personality traits.
Method
We use data from a sample of 1987 Norwegian twins to assess the genetic and environmental relationships between the Big Five personality traits, RWA, SDO, and their separate contributions to political policy attitudes.
Results
RWA and SDO exhibit very high genetic correlation ( r = 0.78) with each other and some genetic overlap with the personality traits of openness and agreeableness. Importantly, they share a larger genetic substrate with political attitudes (e.g., deporting an ethnic minority) than do Big Five personality traits, a relationship that persists even when controlling for the genetic foundations underlying personality traits.
Conclusion
Our results suggest that the genetic foundations of ideological traits and political attitudes are largely non‐overlapping with the genetic foundations of Big Five personality traits.
... The next part of the survey features two pre-existing measures of individual and cultural differences in beliefs about raising children, which (we speculate) might influence how parents/caregivers transmit religious beliefs and behaviors to their children. The first measure that parents/caregivers are asked to complete is the widely-used Authoritarianism scale [97,98], in which parents/caregivers make forced-choice decisions about the most important qualities for a child to have; in our adaptation of this measure, the response options include the option, "I prefer not to choose one over the other" so that the scale is culturally appropriate for the wide range of sites included in this study. The second measure is the Family Cohesion scale [99], in which parents/caregivers indicate their agreement with a range of statements about their perceptions of support and togetherness within their family; in our adaptation of this measure, parents/caregivers provide agreement ratings on an 11-point scale ranging from [0] "I do not agree with this at all" to [10] "I completely agree with this." ...
The Developing Belief Network is a consortium of researchers studying human development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the interplay between general cognitive development and culturally specific processes of socialization and cultural transmission in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network’s first wave of data collection, which aims to explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior. This work is guided by three key research questions: (1) How do children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents? (2) How do children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity? (3) How are religious and supernatural beliefs transmitted within and between generations? The protocol is designed to address these questions via a set of nine tasks for children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, a comprehensive survey completed by their parents/caregivers, and a task designed to elicit conversations between children and caregivers. This study is being conducted in 39 distinct cultural-religious groups (to date), spanning 17 countries and 13 languages. In this manuscript, we provide detailed descriptions of all elements of this study protocol, give a brief overview of the ways in which this protocol has been adapted for use in diverse religious communities, and present the final, English-language study materials for 6 of the 39 cultural-religious groups who are currently being recruited for this study: Protestant Americans, Catholic Americans, American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and religiously unaffiliated Americans.
... Authoritarians perceive the world as inherently uncertain and threatening (Duckitt 1989;Feldman 2003;Lavine et al. 2002) and are thus motivated to adopt strategies (often punitive) that promote stability, security, and continuity (Duckitt and Sibley 2006;Filsinger and Freitag 2022). Authoritarians deep-seated desire to preserve the prevailing social order and oneness therefore represents the underlying motivation for behaviors commonly associated with authoritarians, such as deference to authority and aggression toward deviants and nonconformists (Feldman 2003;Feldman and Stenner 1997;Stenner 2005). ...
Government restrictions intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19—such as “lockdowns,” mask mandates, and vaccine passports—produced intense resentment among some groups and led to resistance, defiance, and social unrest in many countries. To better understand the roots of this opposition, we examine the role of dispositional authoritarianism as a psychological motivator of participation in anti-restriction protests and support for the groups that engaged in such actions. Because obedience to authority is commonly identified as a core feature of authoritarianism, existing studies have suggested authoritarians should be more likely to endorse pandemic restrictions and oppose anti-government dissent. However, we propose the alternative hypothesis: individuals with authoritarian dispositions are more likely to oppose pandemic restrictions and more likely to express support for pandemic dissidents (e.g., anti-vax and anti-lockdown groups). Data from three surveys deployed in the United States and United Kingdom support our hypotheses, demonstrating a counterintuitive relationship between dispositional authoritarianism and opposition to public health authorities during the pandemic. We further find that dispositional authoritarianism produces an intriguing misalignment between ideology and support for pandemic restrictions among those on the left, leading liberals who score high in authoritarianism to mirror the attitudes and behaviors of their conservative counterparts.
... Lastly, experiments in political psychology confirm that individuals subjected to events that threaten their existential security are more likely to develop authoritarian proclivities (Feldman and Stenner 1997;Stenner 2005). Latent threats that generate fear based on a disruption of the social order may cause people to deprioritize democratic values (Farrall, Jackson, and Gray 2009). ...
In developing countries, perceptions of crime and actual crime victimization have been linked to less public support for democratic regimes. In countries with weak democratic institutions and limited horizontal accountability, populist presidents can exploit this situation by promoting vertical accountability. This vulnerability of democratic institutions arises because some citizens perceive strong-arm rule as a solution to the perceived increase in social violence. This study focuses on the Philippines, where president Rodrigo Duterte was elected in 2016 on a “law and order” platform centered on an extralegal war on drugs. Analyzing data from two waves of the World Values Survey, I find that perceptions of crime significantly influenced Filipino respondents’ support for authoritarian rule and reduced support for democracy based on civil liberties; the effect became more pronounced under the Duterte administration. Notably, actual crime victimization was not statistically correlated with preference for authoritarianism.
... There is some tension in previous research between notions of negative relationships between the importance of different identities, i.e., as the importance of some increase, the importance of others decrease, and notions of "nested" identities-particularly place-based-that may increase or decrease in importance together. We showed what we have described as "groupiness, " borrowing from Stenner (2005), in which contextual increases in the importance of one group identity are accompanied by increases in the importance of several others-Europeanness being the exception in the survey. In Tajfel's terms, the value and emotional significance attached to group membership appears more general than previously thought. ...
Social identities, such as identification with the nation, are regarded as core variables in explanations of political attitudes and behaviors. In these accounts, increases in the importance of an identity such as “Englishness” are often seen to be accompanied by decreases in the importance of other, more inclusive, identities such as “British” or “European.” At the same time, increases in exclusive national identities like “Englishness” present challenges to democratic states because they are associated with preferences such as support for Brexit and intolerance of outgroups. Yet we know comparatively little about the relative importance to individuals of different social identities, the extent of changes in the strength of those social identities with contextual shifts, the interrelationships between different social identities, and the influences on different social identities. In this paper, we address each of these questions using a five-wave online panel study administered over two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in England from 2020 to 2022, in which we asked about the importance of eight identities—Europeanness, Britishness, Englishness, the local area, gender, age, race/ethnicity, and social class. We show that national identity is consistently less important to individuals than the social identities of gender and age, though more important than race/ethnicity and social class. We also show that there were general increases in identification with almost all these groups during COVID. We consider why and discuss the implications for our understanding of increases in the strength of national identity as a challenge to democratic states.
... The inclusion of these measures does not alter our main finding and it does not produce multicollinearity concerns (Appendix Tables A10-A12). Our controls include trust in people (Appleby & Federico 2018), authoritarianism (Stenner 2005) ...
Election skepticism has become a persistent feature of American politics since the Obama era. Such beliefs are most prevalent among White Americans and especially Republicans, and they are resistant to change. Conspiracy theory studies have shown that such beliefs are linked to feelings of ingroup victimization, at times associated with election loss. We draw on theories of White ingroup processes to argue that White grievance—the belief that Whites are victims of discrimination—is a key correlate of election skepticism among White Americans. White grievance was employed in the Obama era, but it was weaponized by Trump in the 2020 election. Our results based on four national datasets (2012–2020 ANES, 2021 YouGov) show that controlling for negative outgroup attitudes and other factors, White grievance is a significant predictor of election skepticism in all four studies. In 2020, the effect is stronger among White Republicans and independents. We also show that White identity/consciousness has the opposite effect, generally boosting trust in elections. Furthermore, a lagged dependent variable model using the 2016–2020 ANES panel shows that White grievance remains significant even after an LDV is included in the model.
... … In the torrent of newspaper, radio and magazine stories, reporting the discovery by American infantrymen of the Nazi concentration camps, the empirical remains of what had transpired were typified as "atrocities," part of the general horror of war. 28 The particularity of Jewish victimization and the suffering of Jewish survivors were opaque; and the photographic and film images that were taken by the Allies presented the victims (dead and alive) as a "petrified, degrading, and smelly" depersonalized mass of misery that generated revulsion rather than compassion. ...
... The perception of porous borders and the sense of losing control over immigration seem to tap into deep-seated fears of a foreigner takeover and the loss of national sovereignty. In the face of threat, people turn more toward their familiar in-group (Gelfand et al. 2011;Stenner 2005). Consistent with this conjecture, Angela Merkel's "open-door" policy was followed by the rise of the far right AfD party, while in the United Kingdom, "taking back control" over immigration policy after the Brexit referendum reduced anti-immigrant attitudes (Schwartz et al. 2020) and initiated the collapse of UKIP. ...
Security concerns about immigration are on the rise. Many countries respond by fortifying their borders. Yet little is known about the influence of border security measures on perceived threat from immigration. Borders might facilitate group identities and spread fear of outsiders. In contrast, they might enhance citizens’ sense of security and control over immigration. We test these claims using survey experiments run on a quota sample of over 1000 Americans. The findings show that allocating more government resources to border security increases desired levels of immigration. This effect is likely driven by a sense of control over immigration, induced by border security measures even when the number or characteristics of immigrants remain unchanged. Our findings suggest that border controls, which are widely considered as symbols of closure and isolation, can increase public support for immigration.
... 22. Instead of measuring value classes, other studies combine the 11 values into a single scale of authoritarianism (e.g. Kokkonen and Linde, 2023;Stenner, 2005;Tillman, 2013). 23. ...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some governments took measures to restrict political liberties, claiming that these restrictions were necessary to contain the spread of the virus. In this study, we scrutinize differences in citizens’ willingness to accept three types of political restrictions: restricting the media, banning protests, and introducing extensive state surveillance. We focus on two European countries: Austria and Hungary. While we find that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions, we also find that citizens differ in their willingness to support the three types of restrictions depending on whether the given measure affects them directly. We also find differences between Austria and Hungary concerning the way political trust and political values affect the acceptance of restrictions, which may be rooted in the larger polarization of Hungarian society. Furthermore, we observe that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions.
... Similarly, authoritarians with lower levels of vital cognitive resources (e.g. political knowledge) are also less likely to participate (Altemeyer, 1996;Stenner, 2005). Gutting (2020) offers a more detailed outlook and argues that authoritarians are averse to protests not because of violence but due to authorities' disrespect. ...
Several studies have investigated the effects of internet use on
protest participation behavior. However, fewer have explored
how personal dispositions of individuals moderate the impact of
the internet. This study explores the relationship between
political engagement, internet use, authoritarian orientation, and
protest participation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and
Myanmar. First, analysis of fourth-wave of the Asian Barometer
survey data suggests a political engagement-driven stratification
in protest participation across all settings. Second, internet use is
positively associated with protest participation but only in
authoritarian states, and citizens’ authoritarian orientation
reduces the likelihood of protest action. Third, high authoritarian
orientation subdues the participatory benefits of internet use for
politically engaged citizens. Overall, the study confirms that
politically engaged citizens are more capable of exploiting the
benefits offered by the internet. Still, authoritarianism can inhibit
the mobilizing potentials presented by the internet. The
theoretical importance of attitudinal factors in protest
participation is discussed.
Right-wing authoritarians in America today know that they need poetry for cultural legitimation but cannot seem to produce anything contemporary that would perform that function in intellectual life. Into this breach step Milo Yiannopoulos and Michele Malkin, with their “America First!” reading list, which includes, among other things, a fair bit of poetry. This article reads the poetry selection of the list in the context of its other recommendations, before turning to the sentimental nativist and neomedievalist Romanticism that emerges from this logic. A glance at the poetry of neo-Nazi hate website Stormfront indicates that the demotic and insular tenor demanded by the authoritarian personality today is difficult to reconcile with any plausible concept of intellectual life. The poetic efforts of less explicitly fascist poetry magazines, such as Atop the Cliffs and Rifts in Stone , confirm this by struggling to break free from the anti-intellectual Romanticism demanded by the cultural logic of right-wing authoritarianism today. Rather than recalling the line from Schlageter about culture, though, the essay concludes by remembering that authoritarianism’s relationship to high-powered assault weapons is anything but metaphorical, and that neo-Nazi verse is the lyric poetry of mass murder.
Does war deepen gender inequalities in politicians’ behavior or help erase them? We draw from the terror management theory developed in psychology to argue that the onset of a violent conflict is likely to push politicians to conform more strongly with traditional gender stereotypes because it helps individuals cope with existential fears. To test our argument, we use data on Ukrainian politicians’ engagement on social media (136,455 Facebook posts by 469 politicians) in the three months before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and interrupted time series analysis, to assess the effect of conflict on politicians’ behavior. We find that conflict onset deepens gender-stereotypical behavior among politicians in their public engagement. We also show that, consistent with our argument, gender biases among the public are magnified during war.
In recent years, reactionary movements have overtaken the politics of western democracies and developing countries alike. Using the United States is a case in point, we offer a theory of what motivates reactionary movements. While controlling for conventional individual‐level accounts of reactionary psychological dispositions, we offer a fresh explanation: status threat . We argue that status threat, a reaction to rapid sociocultural change on the part of dominant groups, pushes some members of these groups into joining and supporting reactionary movements and parties, respectively. We first outline the social psychology of the group (White, Christian, patriarchal, native born, heteronormative) that animates a movement (MAGA) that, in turn, has taken over a party (the GOP). We then test a wide range of hypotheses using two original data sets, finding robust evidence to support our claim: status threat is a major source of the increasing fractionalization of American society and politics, one that threatens American democracy.
In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat die sogenannte »neue« Rechte in Deutschland sowie in Europa und Amerika an Sichtbarkeit und Einfluss in Politik, Gesellschaft und Öffentlichkeit gewonnen. Diese Entwicklung ist eng mit dem Aufstieg des Rechtspopulismus und der Mobilisierung rechtsextremer Bewegungen verbunden. Die Beiträger*innen analysieren aus soziologischen, politik- und geschichtswissenschaftlichen sowie sozialpsychologischen Perspektiven die jüngsten Entwicklungen im Feld der »neuen« Rechten. Dazu nehmen sie sowohl globale Dynamiken als auch die Situation in lokalen Hotspots in Sachsen in den Blick und bieten so eine umfassende Zusammenschau neurechter Politiken über Ländergrenzen hinweg.
COVID-19 pandemic caused several lockdowns in most countries, enclosing together perpetrators and victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). Our study investigates psychological mechanisms associated with IPV. We supposed that stress provoked by the pandemic, as well as adhering to authoritarian beliefs will be a predictor of IPV. Using an online questionnaire, 1,659 individuals indicated whether they had been victim or witnessed IPV at home and filled a perceived stress scale, anxiety, depression, and aggressiveness scales. They were also asked to fill an authoritarianism scale, how they cope with the lockdown situations, and some demographical information. We found that individuals who were victims or witnesses of IPV during the COVID-19 lockdowns tended to have more difficulty isolating at home or to hold stronger authoritarian beliefs. Importantly, the association between authoritarian beliefs and IPV was moderated by perceived stress, suggesting that individuals who hold authoritarian views may be more affected by stress, which could increase the risk of experiencing or witnessing IPV. IPV incidents during the pandemic lockdowns may be partially explained by perceived stress, which is amplified by authoritarian attitudes. Further discussions on the causes of IPV and interventions are suggested.
When do people support government assistance for people with disabilities? Disability welfare programs account for large shares of national welfare budgets, but little is known about public attitudes toward disabled welfare claimants. Drawing on psychological research in stereotype content, we argue that attitudes toward welfare for people with disabilities are likely to be more conditional than previously acknowledged. In two nationally representative, preregistered survey experiments in Wales ( N = 3393) and Scotland (1707), we ask respondents to evaluate the deservingness of a fictitious disabled claimant to government assistance. We manipulate the claimant's outgroup status and the manner in which they acquired their impairment. We find that disabled claimants perceived as even somewhat responsible for their impairments are considered substantially less deserving of government assistance than those perceived not responsible, even when their needs for assistance are identical. Contrary to expectations, we find relatively modest and inconsistent outgroup penalties in perceived deservingness. Finally, we find large heterogeneous treatment effects among respondents holding to more authoritarian social values. These results challenge conventional wisdom regarding the universality of support for disability welfare and help explain why voters may not be inclined to punish politicians who propose cuts to programs for even stereotypically high‐deserving groups.
Das Ziel der vorliegenden Untersuchung ist die Analyse der ideologischen Basis rechter Einstellungen in Sachsen. Anhand einer quantitativen Onlinebefragung von N = 439 Personen wurde die Rolle von Autoritarismus (RWA) und Sozialer Dominanzorientierung (SDO) in Einstellungen gegenüber Geflüchteten und Politiker:innen untersucht. Entgegen der Annahmen des Dual Process Models, waren nicht die ideologischen Variablen (RWA, SDO) die stärksten Prädiktoren negativer Einstellungen gegenüber Geflüchteten und Politiker:innen, sondern der grundsätzliche Glaube an eine gefährliche Welt. Indirekte Effekte von kompetitiver Weltsicht über SDO auf Einstellungen gegenüber Geflüchteten sowie von dem Glauben an eine gefährliche Welt über autoritäre Unterwürfigkeit auf Einstellungen gegenüber Politiker:innen attestieren zwar weiterhin die Relevanz zugrundeliegender Überzeugungen auf ideologische Einstellungen, jedoch nicht in allen Fällen in erwarteter Weise.
This paper will reflect on empathy, not only as Einfühlung or 'feeling in' but a qualified embodied, affective, and neurocognitive response. That it may be given and withheld, sometimes at or in almost the same moment. I suggest that empathy is a complex and paradoxical response to the arousing action or event. As such, empathy needs to raise questions to distinguish it from sympathy or sentimentality and bathos. I will suggest that qualified empathy is characterised by vulnerability, can be given but with a sense of vicarious frisson. Such empathy allows and demands questions be raised and asked of us. As knowing spectators of (mimetic) empathetic moments, we look with a critical distance as well 'feeling in', 'there but for the grace...', or degrees of moral disengagement toward the other as subject-object. This other is an 'I' like me (I am subject-object to them) in reciprocal states of mutual homeostasis and shared affordances. I suggest we place ourselves 'beside' the character and event or action that not only qualifies but therefore enriches our empathy as a learning katharsis of understanding.
Tunus’ta başlayan baskıcı rejim karşıtı ayaklanmaların Suriye’yi etkilemesi ve ülkede bir iç savaşa dönüşmesi sebebiyle, 2011 yılından itibaren 3.6 milyondan fazla kayıtlı Suriyeli mülteci, can güvenliğinden endişe ederek Türkiye’ye göç etmiştir. Ani ve düzensiz şekilde gerçekleşen bu kitlesel göç hareketi Türkiye’de yaşayan yerel halk ve Suriyeli mülteciler arasındaki ilişkilerin gerilmesine ve toplumda gruplar arası çatışma ortamının oluşmasına neden olmaktadır. Yerel halkın mültecilere yönelik tutumlarının belirtilen gruplar arası ilişkilerde ve mültecilerin topluma uyum sürecindeki başarısında önemli bir rolünün olduğu alanyazınca bilinmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı ise Türkiye'de yaşayan Suriyeli mültecilere yönelik olumsuz tutumları saptamak ve etnik ve siyasi kimlikleşme ve olumsuz tutumlar arasındaki ilişkide mültecilere yönelik algılanan tehdit düzeyinin aracı rolünü incelemektir. Çevrimiçi ortamda gerçekleştirilen çalışmaya 18-33 yaş aralığında (Ortyaş = 22.36, S = 3.26), 368’i kadın ve 158’i erkek, lisans düzeyinde eğitim gören 526 üniversite öğrencisi katılmıştır. Yapısal eşitlik model testi bulgularına göre; Türk kimliğiyle özdeşleşmiş ve sağ-kanat siyasi yönelime sahip kişilerin Türkiye'de yaşayan Suriyeli mültecilere yönelik algıladıkları gerçekçi ve sembolik tehditler daha yüksek düzeylerdedir ve bu durumda Suriyeli mültecilere yönelik olumsuz duygulanım ve olumsuz kalıpyargılar güçlenirken, mültecilerle kurulan temasın kalitesi azalmaktadır. Bulguların, mülteci konularında çalışan bilim insanları ve bu konularda sosyal politikalar geliştiren ve uygulayan profesyoneller için faydalı olması beklenmektedir.
Artykuł odnosi się do ważnego problemu społecznego jakim jest wzrost postaw ksenofobicznych wobec imigrantów w wielu krajach europejskich. Jednym ze sposobów wyrażania się postaw ksenofobicznych może być deklarowany dystans społeczny. W tym kontekście została podjęta analiza wybranych uwarunkowań dystansu społecznego wobec imigrantów w małym środkowoeuropejskim społeczeństwie jakim są Czechy. W ramach analizy zostało zaproponowanych kilka modeli, które pokazywały różne oddziaływania wybranych faktorów na deklaracje dystansu społecznego. Badanie pokazało między innymi, iż istotnym mechanizmem generującym wpływ wybranych faktorów na deklarację dystansu społecznego jest poczucie zagrożenia.
The growth of heterodox ideological configurations, or ideological inconsistencies, among the electorate of Western countries, has been offered as one explanation for recent momentous political events, such as Brexit or the election of Donald Trump as US President. Previous research, however, suggests that ideological inconsistency has been typical for Central and Eastern European (CEE) states for the past thirty years after the fall of the Socialist regimes there. Based on a survey of 102 active members of local and national party structures in Bulgaria, followed by in-depth interviews with the same respondents, I develop a conceptual and methodological approach aimed at objectively measuring Bulgarians’ political values and ideological orientations. Building on previous research on the statistical independence of the social and economic dimensions of ideology, this study identifies three main models of ideological inconsistency at the party-elite level in Bulgaria, offering evidence of the “homogeneity in ideological inconsistency” in this post-Socialist country, with party elites and electorate following the same patterns of inconsistency. The existence of a conservative value complex, integrating traditionalist, statist, and nationalist attitudes regarding the social sphere, is another major finding of the study. I discuss the specific historical and socio-cultural background contributing to ideological inconsistency in Bulgaria and potential implications for the wider CEE region.
The focus of this study is bystanders’ behavior and their willingness to intervene in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) in three different countries (China, Italy, and Ethiopia), considering individual and social factors (i.e., right-wing Authoritarianism, masculinity ideology, and gender). The Italian sample was made up of 192 participants (56% male). The Chinese sample was made up of 274 participants (66% female). The Ethiopian sample was made up of 161 participants (53.3% female). Participants completed the Male Role Norms Inventory–Short Form, the Right-wing Authoritarianism Scale, and the Willingness to intervene in cases of IPVAW. The Chinese model suggested how masculinity ideology is negatively associated with “reporting the incident to the authorities” factor, and positively with “not my business” factor. Right-wing authoritarianism is positively associated with “reporting the incident to the authorities” factor. The Italian model suggested how masculinity ideology was positively related to the “reporting the incident to the authorities” factor, and gender was negatively related to “not my business” factor, and positively related to “personal involvement” factor. The Ethiopian model suggested how masculinity ideology is positively associated with “personal involvement in the case” factor and gender is positively associated with the “reporting the incident to the authorities” factor. Masculine ideologies, authoritarian personality characteristics, and gender are predisposing factors toward bystander attitudes when confronted with cases of intimate partner violence. Our findings highlight key areas of focus to help raise awareness related to IPV cases, and policy aimed at promoting prosocial society.
We investigated mean-level changes in social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) during (vs before) New Zealand's nationwide coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown at a time when New Zealand was led by a left-leaning government. The number of participants in the study ranged from (Ns = 24,065-24,653). Using propensity score matching to approximate experimental conditions , results show that both ideological motivations decreased slightly during the lockdown but rebounded after restrictions were removed several months later. We also tested whether the lockdown differentially moderated the associations SDO and RWA had with institutional attitudes. Lockdown conditions exacerbated the negative association between SDO and government satistfaction but attenuated the negative association between RWA and government satisfaction. Similar patterns emerged for trust in police and politicians but not trust in science. Although SDO and RWA fluctuated in similar directions during New Zealand's nationwide lockdown, our results indicate that people high in RWA may become more supportive of the government and police under such conditions-even in countries with a left-leaning political leader helming the pandemic response.
p style="text-align: justify;">Attitudes towards authoritarianism, social dominance, social competition and social trust are important regulators of social behavior. Therefore, correlating attitudes with commitment to various forms of activity is an important step towards understanding and specifying their role in behavior. The purpose of the study is to identify the role of attitudes towards authoritarianism and social trust in the manifestations of civic and on-line activity of Russian youth. Participants. The study involved young people aged 17-35 years (average age M=21.8; SD=6.2) in the number of 442 people (men - 33.5%, women - 66.5%). The sample is representative of the provincial regions of central Russia of economically different strata. Methods. The forms of social activity were measured using direct scaling, the types of activity were determined based on factor analysis. To determine the settings, the J. Dakkit’s scale was used in D.S. Grigoriev's adaptation. Indicators of trust are determined using the Scale of interpersonal trust of J. Rotter in the adaptation of I.Y. Leonova, I.N. Leonova. Correlations have been established between indicators of right-wing authoritarianism, institutional trust with commitment to civic (positive) and Internet network (negative) activity; belief in a competitive world — with a commitment to civic (positive) and protest (negative) activity. As a result of structural modeling, the hypothesis about the direct effect (directed connection) of right-wing authoritarianism and belief in a competitive world on commitment to civic and Internet network activity is confirmed. The role of different attitudes in adherence to certain types of activity varies. Their isolated contribution to activity can reach 16-19%, together with age, religiosity and trust - 19-26% of variations. Trust plays the role of a mediator of a direct connection between attitudes and activity, and at the same time, right-wing authoritarianism also plays the role of a mediator of a direct causal connection between age, subjective religiosity and civic and Internet network activity.</p
The presence and influence of peripheral elites in national political institutions is frequently handled by the press. But, oddly enough, the lack of a comprehensive vision of this issue tends to feed flashy titles alerting about the influence of some territorial groups in central institutions such as the “Scottish Raj,” the “Tartan mafia,” or the “Cosa Scotia” in London. This article aims to provide a general theoretical framework able to orient those fragmented researches. This literature review was led from May 2018 to June 2020. It presents those results in six sections. The ways in which peripheral elites get access to central institutions are analyzed in the first section. In the second section, we introduce the literature about the presence of peripheral elites in the state apparatus, before stressing the different networks representing the interests of peripheries in the city capitals in section three. Fourth, this article points out the various career orientations of peripheral elected officials. This leads us to question their policy influence in different fields. Lastly, a short section tackles the phobias provoked by the rise of peripheral elites occupying central political positions, before proposing a general framework for orienting future research on this topic.
Research in the wake of the contentious 2016 presidential primaries contends both Democrats and Republicans were internally divided along psychological lines. Specifically, MacWilliams (2016) finds authoritarian personality was strongly related to Trump support among Republican primary voters, and Wronski et al. (2018) finds authoritarianism was strongly related to Clinton support among Democratic primary voters. In this paper, I reassess the relationships between authoritarianism and 2016 primary candidate preferences for both Republicans and Democrats. I analyze two new large, probability-based surveys and generate random effects estimates using these surveys and two national surveys from Wronski et al. (2018) . Overall, I find authoritarianism was moderately associated with support for Clinton over Sanders among Democratic primary voters, but weakly associated with support for Trump among Republican primary voters. My findings indicate authoritarianism may have played a more limited role in shaping Americans’ candidate preferences in the 2016 presidential primary elections than past studies have suggested.
The volume Divided: Open-Mindedness and Dogmatism in a Polarized World provides a current scientific understanding of open-mindedness and dogmatism, illuminates the nature and causes of polarization, and provides clues regarding how one might attempt to reduce pernicious forms of polarization. To do so, this volume brings together a diverse group of leading psychologists, political scientists, and communication scholars who investigate dogmatism and open-mindedness within social and political contexts and who provide novel insight into these pressing topics. Chapter authors cover a wide range of topics including key definitions of dogmatism and open-mindedness, the emergence of affective polarization, how open-mindedness relates to attitude formation and change, the correspondence between intellectual humility and open-mindedness, how social norms and situations shape open-minded cognition, authoritarianism among liberals and conservatives, the relation between political conservatism and dogmatic thought, and the role of affect in guiding cognitive processes. Authors consider both the beneficial and more problematic features of open-mindedness, dogmatism, and polarization. Collectively, this volume provides a format that enables readers to learn about creative approaches to understanding dogmatism and open-mindedness and, potentially, to generate innovative solutions that reduce polarization and increase constructive social compromise in the future.
This article examines whether citizens’ political preferences toward radical right parties (RRPs) change after right-wing extremist violent attacks. It investigates this question in two ways. First, it presents a time-series study on public support for the RRP Alternative for Germany (AfD) between 2013 and 2019. Second, the article employs a quasi-experimental research design to examine the effect of a right-wing terrorist attack on citizens’ attitudes toward immigrants. Both studies indicate that public support for the AfD and its programmatic core positions increased after right-wing extremist attacks. Subsequent analyses suggest that former voters of the mainstream right, in particular, drive this effect. These findings shed light on the determinants of radical right party support, contributing to the long-standing debate on the consequences of political violence.
Objective
Why do democratic voters feel nostalgia for an authoritarian past? This article introduces a dispositional framework for authoritarian nostalgia, showing that in addition to situational factors, an enduring source of sentimental longing for the authoritarian past may very well be rooted in a person's core psychological structure.
Methods
I use mixed‐methods approach with data collection from South Korea and Taiwan. Using linear regression models with interaction terms, I analyze the contingent effects of personality traits on authoritarian nostalgia.
Results
I find that people high in emotional stability are likely to be nostalgic and that the trait's effects are greater than those from other traits traditionally associated with authoritarian ideology. Results from the interaction model show that these impacts are more pronounced with weak and moderate democrats but not with strong democrats.
Conclusion
People high in emotional stability are nostalgic due to their longing for the proven socioeconomic performance of the past. In addition, the democratic values of individual citizens can constrict how personality shapes voters’ view of former dictatorships.
This study reports on changes in the attitudes of authoritarianism and dogmatism among adolescents in West Germany and in the United States over a 33-year period. Surveys conducted in the United States in 1978 and in West Germany in 1979 are compared with surveys carried out in these countries in 1945 and in the 1960s. The survey instrument was a questionnaire composed of nine subscales, including items from the California F-Scale and from the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale. It focused on authoritarianism in relation to the state, the family, the school, and society in general. A significant decrease in authoritarianism scale scores over time was noted in each country. The changes were greater in West Germany than in the United States whereas German adolescents were far more authoritarian than their American contemporaries in 1945, American adolescents are somewhat more authoritarian than those in West Germany today, according to the scale scores. These findings also held when the analyses were repeated separately for each socioeconomic level.
It is pointed out that there is little evidence that authoritarian attitudes and authoritarian behavior are associated. An attempt is made to construct a new scale which will predict authoritarian behavior. Against a peer-rating validity criterion, the new scale (in behavior inventory format) correlated .54, compared to a correlation with the same criterion by an attitude scale of .19.
By building upon cascades literature, the author offers an explanation for rapid and massive polarization and applies it to the former Yugoslavia. The dominant images of ethnic categories in society change through cascades of individual reactions triggered by traumatic events, ideological shifts, or the activities of ethnic entrepreneurs. Polarization becomes self-propagating if the protagonists of a certain image of ethnic identities, called the divisive image, appear to have reached a critical mass. Downward ethnic preference falsification, people's concealment of their support for the divisive image in public, increases the severity of polarization. The article argues that downward falsification was significant in Yugoslavia before the 1980s due to policies that suppressed the public expression of the divisive image but insufficiently encouraged its elimination in private. In the 1980s, polarization reversed this trend and led to widespread upward ethnic preference falsification, the exaggeration of the support for the divisive image in public.
The literature on social movements and deviance has failed to recognize that social movement organizations also promote deviance in society. This oversight stems from a tendency in the dominant paradigm of social movement theory to normalize the activities of these movements by equating their activities with political behavior. Focusing on the modern militia movement, we discuss the explicit and implicit paths through which movements promote deviance and/or criminal behavior. Noting that the movement has both a “defensive” and an “offensive” wing, we find that they promote deviance both through their ideology, which legitimizes deviance, and through their organizational structures, which are unable to control either the actions of those who are part of the movement or the flow of movement-generated information.
This study investigates the effect of the race of the interviewer on self-reported voting, actual voting, and political attitudes of black respondents, based on the SRC/CPS National Election Studies (NES) of 1964, 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1984. The impact of race of the interviewer in the NES surveys has not been analyzed previously.
Over the course of the five studies, the proportion of black respondents who were interviewed by black interviewers declined sharply, particularly in the South. Almost all white respondents were interviewed by whites.
Except for southern blacks in the pre-Voting Rights Act election of 1964, black nonvoters in the presidential election surveys of 1964, 1976, 1980, and 1984 who lived in predominantly black neighborhoods and who were interviewed by black interviewers were more likely to report falsely that they voted than black respondents interviewed by white interviewers. Black respondents in black neighborhoods who were interviewed by black interviewers were also more likely actually to vote and to endorse civic norms than blacks interviewed by whites.
Hence, matching the respondent and the interviewer by race not only generates response effects—error in the answers—but it also, for many black respondents, appears to induce changes in actual behavior.
Threat results in higher authoritarianism and one aspect of authoritarianism is the tendency to identify with powerful figures. The present study was concerned with the possible interrelationships of the power motives of U.S. presidents; the degree of social, political, and economic threat evident prior to presidential elections; and the percentage of the popular vote obtained by presidents. We hypothesized that the power of presidents from Coolidge to Reagan would be positively correlated with indices of threat including the unemployment rate, changes in the GNP, the consumer price index, car registrations, and work stoppages, as well as subjective annual threat ratings of historians and social critics. All correlations were in the expected direction and most attained in acceptable significance level. A corollary hypothesis—if the power of the presidential election winner is discrepant from the degree of prevailing threat, the percentage of the popular vote he receives may be low—also gained some support from the correlations between power-threat discrepancy scores and the margin of victory.
Although Adorno et al. related F-scale authoritarianism to childhood socialization, substantial F scale/SES correlations have suggested alternative explanations in terms of SES or such concepts as breadth of perspective. Ray has also argued that the F scale only measures attitudinal authoritarianism and has therefore presented his directiveness scale as a behaviorally valid measure of authoritarian personality. The present study attempted to elucidate some of these issues by examining the prediction of F scale authoritarianism from directiveness scores, culture, class, and other demographic variables in a large community sample of white South Africans. The results indicated that culture (language group) was the best predictor of F-scale scores, SES was only weakly predictive, and directiveness had no predictive utility. A sex effect, with higher F scale scores for men, emerged for Afrikaans-speaking but not English-speaking Ss. These findings seemed to be reasonably compatible with a socialization explanation of F-scale authoritarianism but inconsistent with explanations in terms of SES or such concepts as breadth of perspective.
Hypothesized that heightening ingroup cohesion would increase discrimination toward an outgroup. This prediction was not supported. Instead, it was found that for the most part, only high cohesiveness elicits differential biases toward ingroup and outgroup. 44 male undergraduates were randomly assigned to pairs in either a low or high cohesiveness condition. The experimental task was a modified Prisoner's Dilemma game where the participants were 2 dyads rather than 2 individuals. Members of high-cohesive groups were more cooperative toward comembers than toward an outgroup; moreover, they evaluated their comembers more positively than outgroup members. In contrast, low-cohesive groups failed to exhibit either tendency toward greater ingroup favoritism. Results are tentatively interpreted in terms of a cognitive differentiation hypothesis suggesting that (a) cohesiveness leads group members to cognitively differentiate ingroup from outgroup and (b) ingroup-outgroup differentiation is a necessary and sufficient condition for eliciting intergroup bias. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Moral principles which are used to guide reasoning in situations of normlessness or moral uncertainty can be placed in categories corresponding to 2 classic traditions in social philosophy: "the ethics of personal conscience" and "the ethics of social responsibility." Through the use of a self-report measure, evidence was provided for the hypothesis that the tendency to adopt 1 or the other of these viewpoints is a result of the adherent's underlying personality structure. Proponents of the ethics of personal conscience, for example, tended to be progressive, rebellious, and unconventional, with pronounced tendencies toward social activism. Persons characterized by the ethics of social reponsibility were good-natured, thoughtful, and well-socialized, but somewhat conservative in their political orientation. (29 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
States that authoritarian attitudes and authoritarian behavior are generally not associated. A review of studies of Nazi Germany, police and army personnel, and educational methods found no evidence that authoritarian behavior is psychopathological. Ray's Directiveness Scale measuring authoritarian behavior, a political preference scale, short forms of the Eysenck Neuroticism scale and Marlow-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, and a balanced F-scale were presented to a random sample of 95 Ss in a doorstep survey. The authoritarian personality correlated with better mental health; there was no significant correlation between the balanced F-scale and neuroticism. The study made use of extensive controls against acquiescent response set and social desirability response set. (Afrikaans abstract) (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this paper we compare the performance of balanced and unbalanced Likert scales of two core dimensions of political attitudes: left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values. The balanced scales control for the effects of acquiescence response sets, whereas the unbalanced scales do not. Using data from two panel surveys, balanced and unbalanced scales are compared for reliability, stability and validity both with each other, and with other measures of political ideology and values (left-right self-placement and postmaterialism). Both balanced and unbalanced versions of the left-right and libertarian-authoritarian Likert scales are found to be more stable and strongly associated with social characteristics than are the other measures. The unbalanced scales have slightly higher reliability than the balanced scales; they are also orthogonal, whereas balanced left-right and libertarian-authoritarian scales are moderately correlated. Unbalanced scales also display a slightly stronger relationship with social characteristics, but they do not differ in their pattern of association with political preferences. Differences between balanced and unbalanced scales are attributed to the effects of acquiescence bias. This needs to be considered when using the scales for substantive analyses, but its effects are not problematic.
African and African American Studies Sociology Version of Record
Two-stage least squares (2SLS) is a statistical procedure that is used to correct for simultaneity bias and errors in variables.
When applied to certain kinds of models, however, 2SLS is itself susceptible to bias as a result of random and nonrandom measurement
error in the data. Using data from the 1980 Center for Political Studies panel, I show how different assumptions about measurement
error produce radically different impressions about the reciprocal relationship between party identification and presidential
performance evaluations.
Although much has been written about the moral basis of authoritarianism, empirical research on the relationship between moral judgment level and authoritarian and ethnocentric attitudes has been sparse. In this study, I hypothesized that higher levels of moral judgment are related to anti-authoritarian and anti-ethnocentric attitudes, whereas lower moral levels predict the presence of authoritarian and ethnocentric opinions. Dutch university students (n = 126) and high school students (n = 88) completed the Sociomoral Reflection Objective Measure (SROM) and scales for authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. Results in the two samples converge: Moral judgment level indeed appears to be related to authoritarianism in the expected direction and—to a lesser extent—to ethnocentrism as well.
The purpose of this paper is to present a review of those studies using the F scale in substantially its original form which appeared in the literature between 1950 and 1955. The studies were grouped into five major categories: (a) ideology; (b) personality correlates; (c) interpersonal behavior; (d) cultural and sub-cultural variations; and (e) studies of the instrument. It was concluded that "many questions still remain to be answered before its (the F scale) use would have much meaning in terms of predicting human behavior." 64-item bibliography.
Paris of Ss were told, individually, that their partners were congenial and they would probably like them (high like), or the converse (low like). Ss were then separated and given an artillery gunnery problem in which they were to judge the accuracy of their "observer's" range estimates. Both Ss in each pair thought the other 3 was the "observer," which was actually a taped recording piped to each S. High like Ss judged their "observer's" estimates as more accurate than low like Ss. Ss who had been led to believe that they had "observers" of high proficiency in range estimates tended to judge the estimate as more accurate than when they had low proficiency "observers."
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Political attitudes are widely regarded as the product of rational processes, despite a long-standing tradition in political psychology arguing that negative affect from childhood can be displaced onto adult political opinions (Lasswell, 1930/1960). Studies failing to demonstrate a relationship between childhood experience and adult political attitudes have neglected to take into account two important interacting variables, gender and therapy (e.g., Altemeyer, 1988). We conducted both a questionnaire study of undergraduates and a telephone survey of the general population and found that males with high punishment backgrounds without therapy were significantly more conservative than high punishment males with therapy. High punishment males were also more conservative than low punishment males. Results from an experiment embedded in the survey are consistent with the hypothesis that childhood affect can be displaced onto adult political attitudes.
This paper examines interrelationships among attitudes toward a wide range of political and social topics. The issue under
investigation is whether, and how, social attitudes are organized or structured among the general public. While many assume
that attitudes are organized in terms of a single underlying ideology of liberalism/conservatism, others argue that attitudes
show little organization, or that attitude structure is bidimensional. To address this issue, this study analyzes data from
two separate national surveys, each containing information about a large number of attitude topics. In both data sets, confirmatory
factor analyses support a bidimensional model. Social and political attitudes are organized along at least two uncorrelated
dimensions: economic welfare policy, on the one hand, and individual liberty, on the other. Results point to qualifications
in Kerlinger's (1984) criterial referents theory of attitude structure.
The anomie and differential association approaches to deviance and their reformulations present deviance as the product of the movement of actors across the moral boundaries of a particular social system. However, the work presented here suggests that deviance can be thought of as a product of the movement of moral boundaries in a social system, independent of the movement of the actors within that system. Our focus is upon the unresolved problems in the functional theory of social control and the labeling approach to deviance. Also, as an attempt to extend these two approaches, this research includes work on the definition of deviance. The main thrust of the work is to explain how it is that the definition and volume of deviance can change in a particular social system independent of the actions of the deviants within that system. The evidence from this study supports the contention that deviants, independent of their actions, will be more severely rejected and stigmatized following an external threat to their corporate social system.
This research sought to investigate the validity of Rokeach's two-dimensional model of political ideology. In two separate studies, samples of Australian adults and university students were asked to complete the Social Values Inventory, a newly derived instrument designed to provide a more detailed coverage of the political ideology domain. Factor analyses of each set of data revealed a basic two-dimensional structure defined as international harmony and equality and national strength and order. While this solution only partially supported Rokeach's model, it did bear some resemblance to a typology identified by Scott (1960). The implications of these findings for Rokeach's model are discussed, as are strategies for resolving the present lack of concordance between these conceptual schemata.
Important previous research indicates that white South Africans are extremely prejudiced and suggests that cultural norms might be the dominant determinant of these prejudices. In the present study it was argued that a distinction should be made between Afrikaans- and English-speaking whites and that a comparison with previous research would be justifiable only if similar measuring instruments were used. Consequently, 134 Afrikaans- (40 males and 94 females) and 112 English-speaking (21 males and 91 females) university students were used as Ss, while the 29 item F scale and final version of the E scale of Adorno et al., as well as Wilson and Patterson's conservatism scale, were used to measure authoritarianism, prejudice, and conservatism. The results indicate that only the Afrikaans-speaking Ss manifest a considerable amount of prejudice, authoritarianism, and conservatism. Although it is clear that cultural norms do influence the development of prejudice, factors such as conservatism and authoritarianism cannot be disregarded.
While the American electorate has been found less than fully capable of choosing among presidential candidates on the basis of their positions on the issues, there has been optimism that were that electorate encouraged to conceptualize politics on the basis of liberal and conservative ideological positions, the quality of vote choice would improve. Using ANES 1980's questions to assess the electorate's ability to lend correct definitions to the terms liberal and conservative , we find little basis for optimism that an ideologically sophisticated electorate would better select candidates reflecting the electorate's positions on the issues.
Theory: The theory of policy particularism attributes the greater popularity of race-neutral policies compared to race-specific policies not to the fact the former only benefit blacks or minorities but to the fact they target only a particular segment of the population. The theory, moreover, points to a neglected distinction - between how a policy is targeted and how it is justified. Applied to race, a policy may be particularistic or race-specific in its focus, yet universalistic or race-neutral in its justification, or universalistic in both, with politically significant consequences for the level of public support the policy wins. Hypotheses: If what limits the appeal of racially-specific politics is not that they are restricted to blacks specifically but that they aim to benefit only a particular and limited group, then policies targeted to an equivalently particularistic group of whites should be similarly limited in their appeal. There should be more support among whites, moreover, even for policies explicitly targeted to blacks if they are justified on more universalistic grounds. Methods: Regression analysis and analysis of variance is used in a survey-based experimental design that varies randomly both the target of the policy and the justification for it. Results: Public support for programs directed at an equivalently limited group of whites - new immigrants from Europe is not just as limited as support for blacks and minorities, but more so. Differentiating between the target of a policy and its justification is also important because even programs directed at blacks gain more support if justified on more universalistic grounds, although programs that are universalistic in both focus and justification gain the widest measure of support. Universalistic arguments in behalf of government assistance for minorities have a persuasive force for whites generally, very much including liberals. Only conservatives are relatively unaffected by altering the justification and focus of proposed government programs.
Theories demand much of data, often more than a single data collection can provide. For example, many important research questions are set in the past and must rely on data collected at that time and for other purposes. As a result, we often find that the data lack crucial variables. Another common problem arises when we wish to estimate the relationship between variables that are measured in different data sets. A variation of this occurs with a split half sample design in which one or more important variables appear on the "wrong" half. Finally, we may need panel data but have only cross sections available. In each of these cases our ability to estimate the theoretically determined equation is limited by the data that are available. In many cases there is simply no solution, and theory must await new opportunities for testing. Under certain circumstances, however, we may still be able to estimate relationships between variables even though they are not measured on the same set of observations. This technique, which I call two-stage auxiliary instrumental variables (2SAIV), provides some new leverage on such problems and offers the opportunity to test hypotheses that were previously out of reach. This article develops the 2SAIV estimator, proves its consistency and derives its asymptotic variance. A set of simulations illustrates the performance of the estimator in finite samples and several applications are sketched out.
I examine the place of self-interest in political life as given by a conception of politics that invokes ethics. This conception portrays each citizen as an individual with unique hopes and desires who is at the same time joined with others—part of, and continually giving shape to, a shared social and political life. It sees in political diversity and controversy not just conflicting interests but also competing claims about what “we”—unique individuals, linked to particular others through social roles and relationships, and together forming a single citizenry—ought to do or seek. Research that simply adopts a broad conception of utility or interest to admit nonselfish preferences or that employs typologies contrasting self-interested with non-self-interested motives will reveal neither the significance nor the limits of self-interest in this politics. Rather, we must explore how citizens' interests are both championed and challenged by the understandings of “good” and “right” to which our politics gives voice.
Reviews and integrates findings and measures available in the area of affiliation and the related field of conformity. Affiliative characteristics are represented in terms of a 2-dimensional scheme, based on generalized expectation of the positively and negatively reinforcing quality of interpersonal relationships. Treating each of these dimensions dichotomously, 4 categories of affiliator are obtained. These 4 categories are related to existing measures of affiliative tendency. Implications of available research are used to elaborate a model in which affiliative behavior, the dependent variable, is a function of affiliative characteristics, and attributes of the target of affiliation or the situation in which affiliation occurs. Conformity behavior, in a related model, is then expressed as a function of affiliative characteristics and target attributes. (2 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Meetings of from 3 to 5 shopkeepers in a number of small Netherlands towns were arranged to test the following hypotheses: (a) to the extent that a person feels threatened from outside, he will manifest a need to lean on strong leadership; (b) to the extent that threat results in a tendency to lean on a strong leader, it will also result in a tendency in the individual to counteract locomotions of other group members in the direction of the leader; and (c) to the extent that a person feels threatened from outside, a tendency will exist to associate with other persons. The data supported these hypotheses, but the theorizing is often not very strict. Supporting evidence from other studies is unclear or contradictory. (44 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Tested M. Rokeach's (1973) 2-value model of political ideology which predicts that socialists, conservatives, communists, and fascists can be differentiated according to their value for freedom and equality. The Rokeach Value Survey was administered to 306 respondents in working- and middle-class British neighborhoods and to members of Conservative, Labour, Communist, and National Front political parties. Results of both the politically active supporters and nonactive supporters of the 4 parties failed to uphold Rokeach's model. Whereas there was a distinction between left-wing party supporters (Labour and Communist) and right-wing (Conservative and National Front) on the value for equality, supporters of all 4 parties rated freedom highly. Results are discussed in terms of the need to distinguish between the various ideological concepts of freedom. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
WIDESPREAD USE OF THE CALIFORNIA F SCALE AS A MEASURE OF AUTHORITARIANISM CONTINUES DESPITE UNCERTAINTY CONCERNING THE FACET OF AUTHORITARIANISM IT MEASURES. THIS RESEARCH EXAMINED THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEER PERCEPTION OF AUTHORITARIAN BEHAVIORS AND F SCALE SCORES. ONLY A MINIMAL RELATIONSHIP WAS FOUND. NO RELATIONSHIP WAS FOUND BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF AUTHORITARIAN BEHAVIORS ON WHICH A PERSON WAS CONSISTENTLY RATED HIGH AND HIS F SCALE SCORE. IT IS CONCLUDED THAT IT IS UNLIKELY THAT THE F SCALE MEASURES VALIDLY AUTHORITARIAN BEHAVIOR AS IT IS USUALLY CONCEIVED, THOUGH IT SEEMED SENSITIVE TO SOME FORM OF AUTHORITARIAN SUBMISSION. (26 REF.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article develops a distinction between group-targeted tolerance (the focus of previous research) and individual-targeted tolerance, and proposes that individual-targeted tolerance deserves attention because, inter alia, of its important implications for group-targeted tolerance. Borrowing from recent psychological theories concerning the perception of people and groups, an argument is made and tested experimentally that the extent to which individuals of negatively stereotyped political groups will be tolerated depends not only on their group membership but also on the extent to which they fit their group's stereotype or, in Lippmann's words, the “pictures in our heads” (Lippmann 1922). The influence of group membership and fit to the group stereotype on individual-targeted tolerance are predicted to vary as a function of the activity in question and respondents' prior attitudes toward the group. Substantial support for all these hypotheses is found and discussed.
In recent years there has been a resurgence in interest in the cross-national study of public opinion. A significant component of this rekindling of attention has been the specific area of public support for the fundamental values of democracy. John Sullivan and his various colleagues have reported on political tolerance in the United States, Israel, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In conjunction with a smattering of more limited cross-national studies, and newly-completed studies that are just now emerging, a wealth of comparative data is now available.
The author revisits his contemporary review of The Authoritarian Personality (TAP) in the light of subsequent developments in research and theory. In spite of warranted criticism of the F-scale, the major substantive findings of TAP have held up well. Whether they are better understood in terms of psychoanalytic psychodynamics or Bandura's social learning theory remains controversial. The role of the four authors is briefly examined.
In this paper three experimental studies are reported in which leaders were given a choice between intergroup competition or -cooperation under the threat of being deposed or not by their followers.
Consistent with our predictions, threatened leaders were more likely to opt for intergroup competition, especially when their group was internally divided and when they had a strong bargaining position. However, they only chose intergroup competition, regardless of their chances of bringing the intergroup conflict to a successful conclusion, when their tenure of power was very precarious.
Seventy-two male subjects from lower technical schools were divided into groups of three and assigned to three conditions in which they expected to work together in competition with another group, to work together but independently of the other group, or did not anticipate to work together at all.
Subjects who anticipated working together showed a more favorable attitude toward their group and its members than subjects who did not. Moreover, actual social interaction increased in-group attractiveness.
Intergroup competition led to a more differentiated leadership structure and a greater consensus about the distribution of influence in the group.
Contrary to our predictions, intergroup competition produced no greater in-group solidarity, nor any over-evaluation of the group's product.
Low influence persons felt comparatively more positive about their group even before they actually had the opportunity to work together. An attempt was made to relate this finding to the ordinal position of the low status figure, his affiliative tendencies under stress, and his greater social dependence.
In this paper a direct comparison is made between the cognitive content of ideological and partisan belief systems. A quasi-experimental design was used in a two-part study. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a partisan or ideological condition and asked to categorize and then scale contemporary leaders, groups, and issues as either Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. Results indicate that the meanings of partisan and ideological belief systems are quite similar — their cognitive attributes (issues, groups, and leaders) are interchangeable at the categorical level and highly correlated (r=0.86) in their degree of typicality. Political sophistication is determined to contribute significantly to the degree to which partisan and ideological belief systems are related. For politically sophisticated subjects (Ss) the two belief systems are highly related (r=0.90), whereas for low sophisticates, the belief systems are only moderately related (r=0.50). Sophistication also plays an important role in structuring Ss'' own issue preferences. High sophisticates in both the liberal-conservative and Democratic-Republican conditions exhibit a greater level of issue constraint, which can be interpreted as either ideological or partisan constraint.
Survey research on political tolerance has consistently found situational and activity-based differences in levels of support for the rights of political opposition. The present inquiry is based on three studies that explore these differences. These studies reveal two distinct factors related to situational and activity-based variation in tolerance. First, attitudinal tolerance tends to be less when the activity in question may affect a respondent's loved ones or home community, particularly in situations where there is relatively little consensus on whether an activity should be allowed. Second, attitudinal tolerance is less in situations where greater threat is associated with the consequences of the activity in question.
The latest revisionism in the study of political tolerance has produced some of the most provocative well-designed research in the field of political science. In particular, the work by Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus offers one of the most fully specified and rigorously executed models of public opinion formation. Yet this contemporary revisionism is flawed. This paper argues that these researchers misconceptualize tolerance, that this misconception contaminates their measurement process, that the resulting model is misspecified, and that the political conclusions offered are not supported in fact or principle. More generally this paper argues that the field of public opinion as a whole has been trapped by limited conceptions about the nature of cognitive constraint and by simplistic and inadequate methods for measuring and identifying this constraint. To remedy this, a developmental measure of cognitive moral stages is fashioned along lines suggested by Kohlberg. This measure satisfies a number of tests for both validity and reliability and appears to be one of the most powerful predictors of tolerance and intolerance — if not the most powerful single predictor.
All forms of political tolerance—political, racial, religious, and social—involve a measure of social adjustment to unconventional groups, ideas, and activities. Tolerance does not depend entirely on the generosity of those who are willing to restrain themselves from punishing and repressing those who deviate from society's norms. Rather it depends also on the ability of people to assuage fears and anxieties and to reconcile themselves to social change. Because people are able to adapt psychologically to changes in norms and practices, increases in tolerance are not necessarily accompanied by increases in self-restraint, social strain, or tension. Several illustrations of social adjustment drawn from diverse arenas are presented as well as a more exact dynamic model of how this process works.
Thesis (M.A.)--University of Minnestoa. Bibliography: p. 87-89.
Bias arising from the race-of-interviewer effect was found to occur among both black and white high school seniors living
in the South. The magnitude of the effect was comparable to that observed among non-Southern adults. Such bias was limited
to items mentioning the race of the interviewer, and the direction of bias was always toward deference to the interviewer's
race. Low status respondents showed a sporadic tendency toward increased deference. The magnitude of the effect of the interviewer's
race rarely exceeded 3 percent of variance explained.
Psychoanalytic theory describes the mechanisms of ego defense which serve to protect the individual against external and internal threat. Many attitudes are acquired and maintained in the service of such mechanisms. Where people cannot escape from threatening forces from without, they will often incorporate the hostile forces and identify with the aggressor, as in the case of some members of a minority group taking on the prejudices of the majority toward them. Or people will maintain old attitudes by denying and distorting the reality of existing dangers. Threatening internal impulses may be repressed and projected onto others, or sometimes may lead to the appearance of attitudes directly opposed to the repressed wishes.
The author explores the era of restrictive abortion policy in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the 1950s and 1960s in an effort to understand the sources of its demise in 1972. She examines the social and policy background to the legalization of abortion as well as the arguments and actions of physicians influential Communists and citizens....Abortion reform in East Germany she argues...has to be placed within the domestic framework of changing relations between a Communist state and its society and the international context of a rising appreciation of the link between abortion law and womens rights....[The author] contends that the causes course and content of abortion reform in the GDR were strikingly similar to those in Western industrial democracies despite antithetical political circumstances. The main data sources were the archives of the Ministry of Health and the Socialist Unity party which contain "reports by Communist and health officials at the national and local levels transcripts of discussions between physicians and party bureaucrats and individual pleas to state officials from women throughout the GDR who wanted an abortion." (EXCERPT)