Psychopathy and the positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS) as the predictors of totalitarian political ideology

Abstract

The present study has two goals. The first goal is to investigate whether a high need for the government-imposed security and social regulation, the acceptance of living in a dictatorship, the limitations and denial of individual freedom and the support to repressive methods and procedures are in such high mutual correlations that they form a coherent latent dimension of the Totalitarian Political Ideology (TPI). The second goal is to examine whether and which of the psychopathy traits (Interpersonal manipulation, Callous affect, Erratic lifestyle, and Antisocial behaviour) and the PANAS (Positive and Negative affect Schedule as a measure of general affectivity) underlie Totalitarian Political Ideology. The research was carried out on a convenience sample of undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Zagreb (N=386). It has been found that the Totalitarian Political Ideology is an internally coherent and reliable pattern of political orientations and values. In order to explore how psychopathic traits and positive and Negative affect are associated with the internalization of the Totalitarian Political Ideology (TPI), multiple regression analysis was conducted. Interpersonal manipulation, Callous affect and Negative affect proved to be significant predictors of the TPI scale in positive directions, whereas Erratic lifestyle was a significant predictor of the TPI scale in the negative direction. About 15% of the variance of the Totalitarian Political Ideology was explained by these personality characteristics. The findings can have both theoretical and practical contributions in understanding the endorsement of totalitarian beliefs.