Halfway through Altemeyer’s The Authoritarian Specter I realized that I should get guidance to be certain I understood the material correctly, because the information he had developed was exactly what I needed to comprehend the personalities now dominating the conservative movement and Republican Party. For instance, he asked a very troubling question at the outset of The Authoritarian Specter: “Can there really be fascist people in a democracy?” His considered answer, based not on his opinion but on the results of his research, was: “I am afraid so.”[12] Altemeyer’s studies addressed not only those people mentioned by Alan Wolfe, along with my muses Chuck Colson and Gordon Liddy, whose behavior had provoked my inquiry, but all conservatives. Altemeyer graciously agreed to assist me in understanding his work and that of his colleagues.[13]
To study authoritarians Altemeyer and other researchers have used carefully crafted and tested questionnaires, usually called “scales,” in which respondents are asked to agree or disagree with a statement such as “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us,” or, “A ‘woman’s place’ should be wherever she wants to be. The days when women are submissive to their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past.”[14] As a professor of psychology Altemeyer has tested (usually anonymously) tens of thousands of first-year students and their parents, along with others, including some fifteen hundred American state legislators, over the course of some three decades. There is no database on authoritarians that even comes close in its scope, and, more importantly, these studies offer empirical data rather than partisan speculation.
Since the “authoritarian type” was first introduced in 1950, the question of the relationship of authoritarianism to ideology has been an ongoing investigation. Extensive research, and overwhelming evidence, shows “that authoritarianism is consistently associated with right-wing but not left-wing ideology.”[15] To underscore the fact that his questionnaire does not address the left, Altemeyer specifically calls his scale a survey of right-wing authoritarianism. “I have tried to discover the left-wing authoritarian, whom I suspect exists, but apparently only in very small numbers,” he told me. He is not testing for political conservatism per se, however. Nonetheless, he finds that those who score highly on his right-wing authoritarian scale are by and large “conservatives,” as journalists and the general public understand that term. Other social scientists have reached the same conclusions.[16]
In one of Altemeyer’s recent articles—“What Happens When Authoritarians Inherit the Earth? A Simulation”—he describes right-wing authoritarians as “political conservatives (from the grass roots up to the pros, say studies of over 1500 elected lawmakers).” He explained what can be a confusing distinction between a right-wing authoritarian and a political conservative:
When I started out, and ever since, I was not looking for political conservatives. I was looking for people who overtly submit to the established authorities in their lives, who could be of any political/economic/religious stripe. So in the Soviet Union, whose Communist government we would call extremely “left-wing,” I expected right-wing authoritarians to support Communism because that was what the established authorities demanded, and they did. So when I use “right-wing” in right-wing authoritarianism, I do not mean the submission necessarily goes to a politically “right-wing” leader or government, but that it goes to established authorities in one’s life. I am proposing a psychological (not political) meaning of right-wing, in the sense that the submission goes to the psychologically accepted “proper,” “legitimate” authority. That’s the conceptualization.
Now it turns out that in North America persons who score highly on my measure of authoritarianism test tend to favor right-wing political parties and have “conservative” economic philosophies and religious sentiments. This is an empirical finding, not something that conceptually has to be, that was conceptually assumed or preordained. So my statement about authoritarians being political conservatives is a statement of what turns out to be true according to the studies that have been done. To put it in a nutshelclass="underline" Authoritarianism was conceptualized to involve submission to established authorities, who could be anyone. But it turns out that people who have “conservative” leanings tend to be more authoritarian than anyone else. (Incidentally, I put all those tiresome quotation marks around “conservative” and “liberal” because I don’t want people to think I know what I’m talking about. Good definitions are very difficult here, especially from place to place and era to era.)
While there is no question that a satisfactory definition of conservatism is elusive, it is not surprising that right-wing authoritarians are conservatives under almost any current definition, based on the items found in the principal tool for measuring authoritarianism, the RWA (right-wing authoritarian) scale.[17] For example, in the RWA scale (see a full sample in Appendix B), the following questions would surely be answered in varying affirmatives (strongly agree or agree as opposed to disagree or strongly disagree) by social conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives:
Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.
The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers who are spreading bad ideas.
“Old-fashioned ways” and “old-fashioned values” are the best guide for the way to live.
God’s laws about abortion, pornography, and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished.
Once our government leaders give us the “go-ahead,” it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within.
Social conservatives would just as likely very strongly disagree with these statements from the RWA scale:
Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.
Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly.
12.
Bob Altemeyer,
13.
Bob Altemeyer is an American scholar who went to Canada to teach psychology at the University of Manitoba, where for several decades he has been a relentless researcher. An article written for
14.
A person being tested is typically asked to indicate the extent to which he or she agrees or disagrees with each statement by being given the following options: very strongly disagree (-4), strongly disagree (-3), moderately disagree (-2), and slightly disagree (-1), and corresponding positive values for agreement (ranging from +1 to +4). If the respondent feels neutral about a statement, he or she can give an answer that has no value—a zero. If he or she strongly agrees with part of a statement (+3), but slightly disagrees with another part of the statement (-1), the respondent would be in moderate agreement (+2) after doing the math.
15.
Stanley Feldman, “Enforcing Social Conformity: A Theory of Authoritarianism,”
16.
“In a detailed review of the research…[it has been] shown that authoritarianism is consistently associated with right-wing but not left-wing ideology.” Feldman, “Enforcing Social Conformity: A Theory of Authoritarianism,” 42.
17.
“A large array of studies…document high correlations between Authoritarianism and Conservatism.” Gerard Saucier, “Isms and the Structure of Social Attitudes,”