The Rise of American Authoritarianism

[Ocelot II]

This article from 2016 turns out to have been alarmingly prescient.

The American media, over the past year, has been trying to work out something of a mystery: Why is the Republican electorate supporting a far-right, orange-toned populist with no real political experience, who espouses extreme and often bizarre views? How has Donald Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly become so popular?...

Last September, a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst named Matthew MacWilliams realized that his dissertation research might hold the answer to not just one but all three of these mysteries.

MacWilliams studies authoritarianism — not actual dictators, but rather a psychological profile of individual voters that is characterized by a desire for order and a fear of outsiders. People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders and prevent the changes they fear...

He polled a large sample of likely voters, looking for correlations between support for Trump and views that align with authoritarianism. What he found was astonishing: Not only did authoritarianism correlate, but it seemed to predict support for Trump more reliably than virtually any other indicator.

https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism

[alwaysinasnit]

1. Great article! Thanks for posting.

I had already read Bob Altmeyer's book, "The Authoritarians." The info in this article takes that material even further.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. Yep, I read the study in 2016.

Right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personality was the best indicator of a Trump supporter during the GOP primaries.

There's a lot of overlap with that trait and Christian evangelicals too, as the questions (and answers) in this RWA test make obvious:
https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RWAS/

Edit: Actually, this Vox article is far more in-depth than what I read over 5 years ago. Thanks!!
The gradual sorting of authoritarians towards the GOP is interesting too!

[Maraya1969]

5. I got 17.61% But one question about getting rid of the bad apples, so to speak

reminded me of the insurrectionists and I'd love for them to be thrown out of the country so I agreed with it. I think they were aiming at a different group altogether though.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

6. That's still a low score, so not RWA.

My score was very low, but I think some of the questions weren't well-worded. Maybe not even good indicators of the trait.

For example, I tend to trust the consensus among scientists and I'm not likely to accept alternative ideas without strong evidence to support them. (At which point, I'd expect most scientists to accept them too.)

So some of the questions about authority figures and "rabble rousers" could make me seem more like a RWA, if I'm thinking about science.

[Midnight Writer]

3. This is no accident. Right Wing messages are designed to appeal to certain personality profiles.

Influencers now have an incredible amount of individualized data thanks to social media.

Now they are using sophisticated advertising and influencing techniques to strike straight at folk's basic personalities, bypassing the logic and thinking of the brain.

[Jim__]

4. It sounds like these people won't be dropping their support for Trump any time soon.

From MacWilliams February 2016 article in Vox (my bolding):

Individuals with a disposition to authoritarianism demonstrate a fear of "the other" as well as a readiness to follow and obey strong leaders. They tend to see the world in black-and-white terms. They are by definition attitudinally inflexible and rigid. And once they have identified friend from foe, they hold tight to their conclusions. This intransigent behavioral tendency of authoritarians may help explain why Trump’s support can seem, as a strategist for Marco Rubio complained in the New York Times, like "granite."

[MustLoveBeagles]

7. K&R