The curious case of left‐wing authoritarianism: When authoritarian persons meet anti‐authoritarian norms

Abstract

Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) has a controversial history in psychology. Some researchers have expressed skepticism about the existence of LWA, whereas others have argued that LWA is a valid construct. In the present article, we offer a framework to reconcile these two perspectives by proposing that ideologically-based authoritarian norms are sometimes in conflict with the processes that create authoritarian individuals.In Western political contexts, authoritarian norms are more likely to occur on the conservative side of the political spectrum; but authoritarian persons can occur in both conservatives and liberals. In our model, left-wing authoritarians thus often occupy the space where forces influencing authoritarianism are in conflict. We review existing evidence related to the model, derive four hypotheses from the model, and discuss criteria for falsifying the model. We conclude by considering the model's place in current research on the complexities of ideology.

Clarifying the structure and nature of left-wing authoritarianism.

“…5 Most recently, Conway et al (2018) constructed a measure of LWA by rewriting RWA Scale items to confound submission to established authority and liberal political views. This measure found extensive support from a large, multifaceted construct validational investigation, providing strong evidence that elements of authoritarianism are present in ideologically left-wing U.S. samples (Conway et al, 2020). Nevertheless, because Conway and colleagues' LWA Scale directly parallels Altemeyer's RWA Scale, this line of scholarship excludes the possibility that the tripartite conceptualization of authoritarianism (i.e., aggression, submission, conventionalism) is not an accurate conceptualization of LWA.…”

“…Nevertheless, the prevailing psychological account of authoritarianism (i.e., RWA) is largely interchangeable with social conservatism. Consistent with this impression, little systematic evidence of LWA as an individual difference variable is present in the literature (but see Conway et al, 2020) and many contemporary scholars continue to deny or minimize the importance of LWA (e.g., Nilsson & Jost, 2020).…”

“…In contrast, the content of fascism is wholly authoritarian. If this is so, individuals may initially be drawn to far-left and far-right authoritarianism for different reasons (e.g., with the hopes of eliminating injustices vs. exacerbating them), even if they ultimately act in similarly authoritarian manners (Rokeach, 1960; see also Conway et al, 2020).…”

“…In contrast, jangle fallacies entail the erroneous assumption that two measures with different names reflect different constructs. It could be argued that "authoritarianism" may not be an appropriate term for describing the shared core of LWA and RWA/SDO, at least insofar as authoritarianism is understood to entail deference to established authority (but see Conway et al, 2020). Future research could evaluate the psychological appropriateness of the term authoritarianism by using a version of Meehl et al's (1971) recaptured item technique, whereby one group of raters independently generates candidate factor names, based on a subset of items, and then a second group of raters attempts to "recapture" items by assigning them to their appropriate factor name, using a second subset of items.…”

“…Combining measures of LWA, RWA, and SDO into a single item pool and drawing on this approach may be especially informative. Relatedly, recent evidence suggests that both left-and right-wing individuals report knowing many left-wing authoritarians (as well as right-wing authoritarians) in their everyday lives (Conway et al, 2020). Similarly, future work drawing on lexical approaches, which have been extensively used to clarify the structure and nature of personality traits and have even been adapted to the study of values (e.g., De Raad et al, 2016), may be a useful means of better understanding authoritarianism.…”