Post-Racial or Most Racial?: Race and Politics in the Obama Era. <\/em>Chicago: University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\nSides, J., Tesler, M., & Vavreck, L. (2018). Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle For the Meaning of America..<\/i> Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n
Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2010). Winner-Take-All Politics.<\/i> NY: Simon & Schuster.<\/p>\n
Pape, R. A. (2005). Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.<\/i> NY: Random House.<\/p>\n
Kruglanski, A. W., Belanger, J. J., & Gunaratna, R. (2019). Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives and Networks.<\/i> NY: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n
Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future<\/i>. NY: Viking.<\/p>\nSession 1 (7\/3\/19)<\/b><\/h2>\n
The RWA (Right Wing Authoritarianism) Scale<\/b><\/p>\n
The test you took was the latest edition of the short form of the RWA Scale by Bob Altemeyer. Since the first two items are \u201cwarm-ups\u201d and are discounted, it has twenty items. For half the items, agreement is the authoritarian response, and for others, disagreement. Each item is accompanied by a 9-point scale, from \u201cstrongly agree\u201d to \u201cstrongly disagree.\u201d (In class, I mistakenly referred to this as a 7-point scale.) <\/i>Scores vary from 20 (low authoritarian) to 180 (high authoritarian), with a theoretical midpoint of 100.<\/p>\n
The test you took reported your score as a percentage of authoritarianism, between 0% and 100%. The midpoint is 50%. 25% is halfway between the minimum possible score and the midpoint. 75% is halfway between the midpoint and the maximum.<\/p>\n
While Altemeyer taught at the University of Manitoba, the scale has been administered to thousands of Americans and Canadians over a period of almost 50 years. A typical college student scores about 75 on the RWA; a typical adult, about 90. In interpreting your own score, it\u2019s a good idea to remember that you already knew what the test was attempting to measure. However, when people are asked to guess the purpose of the test, only about 5% answer correctly.<\/p>\n
The RWA Scale has a test-retest reliability of .95 after one week and .85 after 28 weeks, which is impressive. It is also highly internally consistent; that is, all the items are highly correlated with the test as a whole.<\/p>\n
Right Wing Authoritarianism is said to involve three attitudinal clusters:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- \n
Authoritarian submission<\/i>\u2014a high degree of obedience to authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which we live.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n- \n
Authoritarian aggression<\/i>\u2014a general aggressiveness directed toward various persons, when that aggression is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities. Authoritarians are predisposed to control the behavior of others through punishment.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n- \n
Conventionalism<\/i>\u2014a high degree of adherence to social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nCritics have argued that an extreme left-winger can be just as authoritarian as a right-wing person. <\/span>However, research doesn\u2019t support this hypothesis, at least in North America. Altemeyer constructed a Left Wing Authoritarianism Scale, but only 2% of respondents scored above the midpoint. Other researchers have tried to construct measures of closed-mindedness independent of ideology, <\/span>i.e.<\/i><\/span>, a Dogmatism Scale. But literature reviews find that conservatives are more dogmatic than moderates and liberals, who do not differ.<\/span><\/p>\nSome history: The Authoritarian Personality<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nResearch on authoritarianism began in the late 1940s as an attempt to understand the rise of fascism, and especially anti-Semitism, in Germany in the 1930s. This research program was undertaken by four scholars at the University of California at Berkeley: Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt Sanford. Their research was published in The Authoritarian Personality<\/i> (1950).<\/span><\/p>\nThe centerpiece of their research program was the development of a test to measure authoritarianism\u2014the California F (for Fascism) Scale. Since many Americans scored high on the F Scale, the authors warned that a fascist takeover could happen here.<\/span><\/p>\nThere have been many criticisms of the F Scale and it is not widely used today. <\/span><\/p>\n\n- Some of the items are out-of-date. <\/span>The RWA Scale was an attempt to update the F Scale using items that are meaningful to contemporary respondents. <\/span><\/li>\n
- On the F scale<\/span> the agree response is the authoritarian response to all items. Thus, authoritarianism is confounded with the agreement or acquiescence response set. <\/span>The RWA eliminates this response set.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- The items don\u2019t all hang together very well. Some of them are not correlated with the others, suggesting that the scale is not measuring a single trait.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The original theory of authoritarianism proposed that it had nine symptoms:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- authoritarian submission<\/span><\/li>\n
- authoritarian aggression<\/span><\/li>\n
- conventionalism<\/span><\/li>\n
- anti-intraception\u2014a general opposition to subjective or imaginative tendencies<\/span><\/li>\n
- superstition and stereotypy<\/span><\/li>\n
- power and toughness<\/span><\/li>\n
- destructiveness and cynicism<\/span><\/li>\n
- projectivity\u2014the belief that wild and dangerous things go on in the world, a projection of their own unconscious impulses<\/span><\/li>\n
- sex\u2014an exaggerated concern with promiscuity<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Through repeated testing, Altemeyer found that items intended to measure authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression and conventionalism were all highly correlated with one another. Items intended to measure the other six symptoms were not strongly related to these three core characteristics, and he suggested that they be dropped from the definition of authoritarianism.<\/span><\/p>\nAdorno and his colleagues explained authoritarianism using a psychoanalytic model of behavior that traces adult authoritarianism back to events in early childhood. Future authoritarians were said to be raised by strict, domineering parents who threaten and punish their children harshly. This generates hostility in the child, but since anger toward their parents is unacceptable, it is repressed, or driven from consciousness. This anger is then unconsciously projected onto various outgroups, creating prejudice toward Jews and other minorities.<\/span><\/p>\nThis theory is difficult to test, since important precipitating events are said to be inaccessible to consciousness. Altemeyer found that authoritarians report no greater parental anger than nonauthoritarians, but a critic could always say: \u201cOf course, they\u2019ve repressed it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nA third measure of authoritarianism: NES (National Election Study) Authoritarianism Index<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nThis scale has been used in a number of national public opinion surveys. It reads:<\/span><\/p>\nAlthough there are a number of qualities that people feel that children should have, every person thinks that some are more important than others. I am going to read you pairs of desirable qualities. Please tell me which one you think is more important for children to have.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0_____ independence or _____ respect for elders<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0_____ obedience or _____ self-reliance<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0_____ curiosity or _____ good manners<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0_____ being considerate or _____ being well-behaved<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nRespondents receive a score between 0 and 4 depending on how many of the authoritarian choices (respect for elders, obedience, good manners, and being well behaved) they make.<\/span><\/p>\nThe main advantage of this measure is brevity, which is essential in a telephone survey. Since it doesn\u2019t refer to any political issues, and can be said to be independent of political ideology. However, one could question whether it captures the full meaning of authoritarianism. It seems to measure conventionalism and authoritarian submission, but not authoritarian aggression. This scale correlates .68 with the RWA.<\/span><\/p>\nDemographics of RWA<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nA word of caution:<\/b>\u00a0If I tell you that Martians are higher in authoritarianism than Earthlings, that doesn\u2019t mean that every Martian is high in RWA and every Earthling is low. There may be considerable overlap between the two groups. It merely means that the average Martian gets a higher score on the RWA scale than the average Earthling.<\/span><\/p>\nGender:<\/b> There are no consistent gender differences in RWA scores.<\/span><\/p>\nIntelligence:<\/b> RWA scores show no relationship with IQ test scores or with college students\u2019 grades.<\/span><\/p>\nEducation:<\/b> High scorers on the RWA scale tend to be less educated. When university freshmen are retested as seniors, there is a significant drop in RWA scores due to a college education. The drop is greatest among liberal arts students, second greatest among nursing majors, and there is no change among business majors.<\/span><\/p>\nAge: <\/b>Altemeyer finds that the older people are, the higher their RWA scores. This can be interpreted two ways: The longitudinal hypothesis<\/i> states that people become more authoritarian as they get older. The cross-sectional hypothesis<\/i> attributes the difference to older people having grown up at an earlier (presumably more authoritarian) time. Consistent with the cross-sectional hypothesis, the RWA scores of successive generations of college freshmen vary over time. They appear to be influenced by the country\u2019s political climate.<\/span><\/p>\nAltemeyer recontacted some college freshmen 12 years later. Their scores were similar to the scores of college seniors, suggesting that most of their decline in authoritarianism occurred during college. The RWA scores of married and unmarried people were the same, but those with children had higher RWA scores than those without children. This may suggest that the behavior of exercising authority (over one\u2019s children) can lead to the development of authoritarian attitudes.<\/span><\/p>\nReligion: <\/b>Religiosity and authoritarianism are positively related, even when excluding items on the RWA Scale that refer to religious practices or beliefs. Non-religious people have the lowest RWA scores; next lowest are Jews, followed by Catholics, while Protestants have the highest scores. Among Christians, authoritarianism and fundamentalism are highly correlated. Fundamentalism also predicts the authoritarianism of Jews, Muslims and Hindus.<\/span><\/p>\nA number of religious beliefs and behaviors are positively related to RWA scores, including self-reported frequency of church attendance, frequency of prayer, strength of belief in God, belief in heaven and hell, and belief that there is a devil who actively fights God\u2019s will. Authoritarians are less<\/i> likely to believe that \u201cit is more important to be a good person than to believe in God.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nPrejudice: <\/b>The RWA is correlated with racial and ethnic prejudice. For example, it is correlated with an Ethnocentrism Scale, which measures negative attitudes toward Blacks, Jews, Asians, Arabs and Native Americans. The correlation is about .50, so authoritarianism and prejudice are not the same thing. RWA scores are correlated .60 with negative attitudes toward gay people.<\/span><\/p>\nConservatism: <\/b>RWA scores are positively related to measures of political conservatism\u2014in one study, r = .57. However, authoritarianism not the same thing as conservatism. There are two dimensions of liberalism-conservatism, social and economic. The RWA is more closely related to social conservatism. Republicans get higher RWA scores than Democrats, and this relationship has gotten much stronger in recent years.<\/span><\/p>\nAltemeyer has sent RWA Scales to hundreds of North American legislators, with a request to fill them out and send them back. Response rates tend to be about 25% for Republicans and 30% for Democrats. (Of course, there is no guarantee that the legislators themselves filled out the scale; it could have been a staff member.) <\/span>Republican legislators score about 40 points on the RWA scale, a highly significant difference. Democrats show a wider range of scores than Republicans. Legislators from the South score higher than those from other regions.<\/span><\/p>\nThe RWA Scale at the time of this study contained what Altemeyer calls his \u201cHolocaust premise:\u201d \u201cOnce our government leaders and the authorities condemn the dangerous elements in our society, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0 26% of American legislators agreed with this statement.<\/span><\/p>\nSession 2 (7\/10\/19)<\/strong><\/h2>\nValidity<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nValidity refers to whether a scale like the RWA actually measures what it claims to measure. The RAW claims to measure authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression and conventionalism.<\/span><\/p>\nAuthoritarian submission<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nAn example of authoritarian submission is submitting to illegal actions by your government. Altemeyer has given participants a number of different scenarios describing abuses of power by the police or the government, i.e.<\/em>, illegal wiretapping by the FBI. High authoritarians rate these abuses of power as less serious than lows.<\/span><\/p>\nWinters (2005) found that high RWAs were more likely to believe that the invasion of Iraq was a just war, and were more likely to believe a variety of (mostly false) claims made by the Bush administration about Saddam Hussein and Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\nAuthoritarian aggression<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nSome of the few social psychological studies of real<\/i> aggression were Milgram\u2019s (1962) studies of obedience, in which participants were ordered by the experimenter to deliver painful and potentially dangerous shocks to another person as part of a (fictitious) learning experiment. (The shocks were not real, but the subjects believed they were.) He found that 62.5% of participants were fully obedient, a result that has disturbing implications for the potential of average Americans to submit to fascism. In a followup study, Elms and Milgram found that obedient subjects scored significantly higher on the California F Scale than disobedient subjects.<\/span><\/p>\nIt is no longer possible to do experiments like Milgram\u2019s due to ethical concerns about potential harm to partcipants. Altemeyer did a \u201cMilgram-light\u201d study, in which, each time the learner made a mistake, could choose to deliver one of five shocks, labeled from \u201cvery slight\u201d to \u201cvery strong.\u201d People who scored high on the RWA Scale delivered significantly stronger punishments.<\/span><\/p>\nA number of studies have shown that high RWAs tend to punish disapproved behavior more severely. <\/span>In one study, Altemeyer presented participants with a scenario in which \u201cWilliam Langley,\u201d the leader of a group of pro-gay activists, clashes with a group of 30 anti-gay demonstrators. Langley is convicted of incitement to riot, the penalty for which is 0 to 18 months in prison. Participants are asked to assign an appropriate penalty. In another version of the scenario, Langley is the leader of an anti-gay group that clashes with a pro-gay group. All other facts in the scenario are the same.<\/span><\/p>\nHigh RWAs exhibit a double standard by giving a significantly longer sentence to the pro-gay Langley than to the anti-gay Langley. The sentences given to the different Langleys by the low RWAs do not differ significantly. This demonstrates the tendency of authoritarians to punish unconventional people more severely.<\/span><\/p>\nConventionalism<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nWe expect a conventional person to conform more to social norms. Altemeyer gave participants the RWA Scale. One week later, he asked them to complete the scale again. They were told the average scores on each item by the previous week\u2019s participants, along with the note: \u201cMany students wonder how their attitudes compare with those of others. You may take into account the average response printed alongside each statement, or you may ignore it completely.\u201d Both high and low authoritarians shifted toward the center, but the highs conformed about twice as much as the lows.<\/span><\/p>\nGlobal Change Game<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nThe Global Change Game is a complex and realistic simulation in which large groups of participants are asked to role-play as citizens of various countries, and to negotiate their way though a series of environmental and political problems. The game was run twice, once with a group of 67 low authoritarians and again with 68 highs. Using the number of deaths as a criterion of success, the low authoritarians did a much better job of solving global problems. The high authoritarians started a nuclear war which ended all life on Earth. When given a second chance, they still performed more poorly than the lows.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Development of Authoritarianism<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nGeorge Lakoff\u2014<\/b>Moral Politics<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/p>\nAt fundamental result of research in in cognitive psychology is that most human thought is unconscious, not in the Freudian sense of being repressed, but simply because we are unaware of it. \u00a0<\/span>What we call \u201ccommon sense\u201d usually has a conceptual structure that is unconscious. Apparent differences of opinion between liberals and conservatives are the result of different models of the family that were taught in childhood. Conservatives have learned strict father morality<\/i>, while liberals have learned nurturant family morality<\/i>. Differences in political viewpoint are due to the automatic, unconscious application of these models to the nation\u2014the nation-as-family metaphor<\/i>. Failure to understand these models may help to explain failures of liberals and conservatives to communicate effectively.<\/span><\/p>\nStrict Father Morality<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nThe strict father model takes the background view that life is difficult and the world is fundamentally dangerous. This model posits a traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family. He has authority to set overall policy, to set strict rules for the behavior of children, and to enforce the rules through punishment. It is typically corporal punishment. <\/span>According to the model, this exercise of authority is itself moral; it is moral to reward obedience and punish disobedience. Punishment is good for children because it builds moral strength.<\/span><\/p>\nThe mother has the day-to-day responsibility for care of the house, raising the children, and upholding the father\u2019s authority. <\/span><\/p>\nChildren must respect and obey their parents; by doing so they build character, that is, self-discipline and self-reliance. Only if a child learns self-discipline can he or she become self-reliant later in life. <\/span>Once children are mature, they are on their own and must depend on their acquired self-discipline to survive. Survival in this dangerous world is a matter of competition, and only through self-discipline can a child learn to compete successfully. <\/span><\/p>\nCompetition is a crucial ingredient in this moral system. It is through competition in a free market that we discover who is moral. Success in life is a measure of one\u2019s moral strength. The nation-as-family metaphor is that it rules out any explanation of financial success as caused by social class or other situational forces. In this model, people always get what they deserve and deserve what they get.<\/span><\/p>\nJust as the strict father has a duty to protect his family, those who have risen to positions of power and leadership in society have a responsibility to exercise their legitimate authority for the benefit of those under their authority. They have moral authority.<\/span><\/p>\nThere is a natural hierarchical moral order. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n- God has moral authority over human beings. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Human beings have moral authority over nature (animals, plants). \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- Adults have moral authority over children.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- Men have moral authority over women. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- The rich have moral authority over the poor. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- Not mentioned by Lakoff: White people have moral authority over other races.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
It follows from this model that helping the poor is fundamentally immoral. It merely encourages them to be dependent. People must accept the consequences of their own lack of self-discipline. They will never become responsible adults if they don\u2019t face those consequences.<\/span><\/p>\nDeviant behavior is also a threat to the moral order, since it calls into question traditional moral values.\u00a0<\/span>Someone who transgresses moral boundaries, i.e.<\/em>, smokes marijuana or engages in premarital sex, arouses justifiable anger and deserves to be punished by the society.<\/span><\/p>\nNurturant Parent Morality<\/b><\/span><\/p>\nIn nurturant parent model, love, nurturance and empathy are primary. Children become responsible, self-disciplined and self-reliant as a result of being cared for, respected, and caring for others, both in their family and their community. The obedience of children comes out of the love and respect for their parents and their community, not from fear of punishment. <\/span><\/p>\nGood communication is critical. If their authority is to be legitimate, parents must explain why their decisions serve the cause of protection and nurturance. Questioning by children is seen as positive, since children need to learn why their parents behave as they do, and because children sometimes have good ideas that should be taken seriously. (Ultimately, of course, responsible parents have to make the decisions, and that must be clear.)<\/span><\/p>\nThe principal goal of nurturance is for children to be fulfilled and happy in their lives. A fulfilling life is, in significant part, a nurturant life\u2014one committed to family and community responsibility. What children need to learn most is empathy for others, the capacity for nurturance, and the maintenance of social ties. When children are respected, nurtured and communicated with from birth, they enter into a lifetime relationship of mutual respect, communication and caring with their parents and their community.<\/span><\/p>\nIn this nation-as-family model, the ideal world is one of cooperation, not competition. People are expected to be interdependent, and interdependence is a nonheirarchical relationship\u2014hence, there is no heirarchical moral order. The legitimate authority of leaders comes from their acquisition of wisdom rather than their financial success. <\/span><\/p>\n