Left-wing authoritarianism exists and is a key predictor of psychological and behavioral outcomes

[untermensche]

It's real simple.

You want democracy and more democracy then you want as much equality and freedom as possible.

You want less democracy you are an authoritarian.

 

[Trausti]

Sadly, I recognize these LWA characteristics in several members of this forum.

And for some perverse reason they deny it.

Well, Lenin was quite open that it is okay to lie; indeed, a duty to lie.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

^So basically the only way to get the Left-Wing Authoritarians around here to confess is to torture them and get them to name the other 12 Left-Wing Authoritarians in their commune.

 

[Trausti]

Malicious envy was the strongest predictor of support for coercive economic redistribution, followed by instrumental harm (it is morally right to harm an innocent in order to help several other innocent people), self-interest, and fairness.

Each is to count for one and none for more than one: Predictors of support for economic redistribution

*shocking*

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The table Trausti pulled out of a study is in regard to coercive redistribution, not something anyone around here is supporting....but we're still hearing all this talk that all the left-leaning forum participants are secret Left-Wing Authoritarians who will deny it because Lenin told them to.

Here is how the study authors were measuring coercive redistribution (pages 9-10):

Finally, support for coercive redistribution was measured with a 19-item coercive redistribution scale generated for this study (see supplementary material detailing development of this scale and the refined, 5-item short version used in study 2).Example items include “People questioning redistribution of wealth should be punished” and “If the wealthy try to avoid tax, it would be permissible to use mild torture to reveal the money they are hiding from the poor”. Responses were on a Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). In study , factor scores on the first component of a factor analysis of the 19-item coercive redistribution scale were used to score subjects.

It isn't surprising as the authors note themselves that coercive redistribution has some related factor of malicious envy and an alternative factor of compassion is not present at all. Even if the noise from their model is very bad at R^2=26.5%. When redistribution itself was looked at compassion and communal fairness were very significant factors and the R^2 was a bit higher.

 

[Metaphor]

It isn't surprising as the authors note themselves that coercive redistribution has some related factor of malicious envy and an alternative factor of compassion is not present at all. Even if the noise from their model is very bad at R^2=26.5%. When redistribution itself was looked at compassion and communal fairness were very significant factors and the R^2 was a bit higher.

An r-squared of .265 is not 'very bad' for explaining the variance in a multiply caused social or personality phenomenon.

 

[Bomb#20]

As to Communism and authoritarianism, look at the people who inhabit Communist regimes and who defend those regimes. They act very much like the right-wing sorts of authoritarians.

Thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev (Thanks so much, Mikhail!) I can show you how thoroughly some high RWAs sop up the teachings of another set of authorities, their government. As soon as Gorbachev lifted the restraints on doing psychological research in the Soviet Union an acquaintance of mine, Andre Kamenshikov, administered a survey to students at Moscow State University with the same freedom that western researchers take for granted. The students answered the RWA scale and as well a series of questions about who was the “good guy” and who was the “bad guy” in the Cold War. ...

We found that in both countries the high RWAs believed their government’s version of the Cold War more than most people did. Their officials wore the white hats, the authoritarian followers believed, and the other guys were dirty rotten warmongers. ...

I.e., he's labeling these people's mentality as "high RWA" -- "right-wing authoritarian" -- based on measurement of their authoritarianness. That's just a vanilla no-true-Scotsman fallacy. He's using "right-wing" as a pejorative without regard to what the phrase actually means; he's redefining these people's mentality as not left-wing based on their attitude toward their government, without regard to their attitudes about economics. It isn't disbelieving your own side's leadership and propaganda that makes you left-wing; what makes you left-wing is hostility to private property rights, profit, private employment, non-labor-or-need-based income, and rich people. A right-wing communist is a contradiction in terms.

So right-wingers were sore losers back then also. What they claimed about 2020 they also claimed about 2008, that the reason that their side lost was because of massive voter fraud.

I.e., exactly the way left-wingers behaved in 2016 -- claiming it was Putin and not the American people who elected Trump. A plague on both your houses.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

An r-squared of .265 is not 'very bad' for explaining the variance in a multiply caused social or personality phenomenon.

An r-squared of 26.5% is not great. It is weak.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

... what makes you left-wing is hostility to private property rights, profit, private employment, non-labor-or-need-based income, and rich people....

That isn't the definition of left-wing.

 

[Metaphor]

An r-squared of .265 is not 'very bad' for explaining the variance in a multiply caused social or personality phenomenon.

An r-squared of 26.5% is not great. It is weak.

If an r-square of .265 was "weak" and not worth talking about, pretty much the entire psychological and medical literature would disappear.

If four particular measures explained 26.5% of the variance in a particular kind of cancer, the association of those would not be dismissed as 'weak'.

In fact, for this kind of research, the multiple correlation coefficient (the square root of r-square, which in this case would be about 0.51) would be considered a 'small' effect at 0.2, a medium effect at 0.3 and a strong effect at 0.5 or greater

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

An r-squared of .265 is not 'very bad' for explaining the variance in a multiply caused social or personality phenomenon.

An r-squared of 26.5% is not great. It is weak.

If an r-square of .265 was "weak" and not worth talking about, pretty much the entire psychological and medical literature would disappear.

If four particular measures explained 26.5% of the variance in a particular kind of cancer, the association of those would not be dismissed as 'weak'.

In fact, for this kind of research, the multiple correlation coefficient (the square root of r-square, which in this case would be about 0.51) would be considered a 'small' effect at 0.2, a medium effect at 0.3 and a strong effect at 0.5 or greater

This is exactly why so many social science studies are bunk. You have so many unaccounted for variables, not to mention biased authors. People like you are just adding fuel to the fire when you claim R^2 of 26.5% is not weak.

 

[Bomb#20]

au·thor·i·ty
noun
1.
the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.
"he had absolute authority over his subordinates"

Metaphor posted this thread to insinuate that "both sides are the same" and that the left just as violent and rabid as the right, and linked to an article about some, at best, disingenuous "research" and presenting it as just offering interesting scientific information.

It's actually pretty comical, though. Their "three primary dimensions" for identifying authoritarianism among the left actually describe anti-authoritarianism. I think the bulk of the effort put into this research was trying to find definitions that make anti-authoritarianism sound like authoritarianism.


"Anti-hierarchical." Does that sound authoritarian to you? Yeah, ordinary citizens fighting back against corrupt power and rich people is authoritarian. Anyway, no one's anti-hierarchical. There's just people who don't need to worship narrow social and organizational structures. I wonder if the researchers themselves actually believe this and if they really believe making up new definitions for words really counts as honest research.

The second is top-down censorship. People who score high on this dimension agree with statements such as “I should have the right not to be exposed to offensive views” and “Getting rid of inequality is more important than protecting the so-called ‘right’ to free speech.”

In other words, "cancel culture," another made up boogieman. Not sure what authority figure they think sits at the top of this cascade of censorship against affluent cis het white men who were raised to love Jesus.

The third is anti-conventionalism. People who score high on this dimension agree with statements such as “All political conservatives are fools” and “The ‘old-fashioned ways’ and ‘old-fashioned values’ need to be abolished.”

Yeah, threatening convention is sooo authoritarian, man.

Still wondering if the researchers wrote this <expletive deleted> with a straight face. I'm guessing some rich right wing organization paid them big bucks to find "authoritarianism" on the left.

And the rest is full of such disingenuous shell game of definitions and outright lies
<etc.>

I think I see what the problem is. AF appears to have decided that "authoritarian" refers only to the power to enforce obedience to the orders of a specific person, of an authority figure. So censorship can't possibly be an exercise of authoritarianism unless there's a figure to attribute the authority to. The power of a mob and the power of an ideology need not apply, even when the mob and the ideology give people orders and enforce obedience. She has a new idiosyncratic definition in mind and woe to anyone who won't go along with it. Anyone who assumes the meaning of "authoritarian" still has something to do with the meaning of "authority" is to be accused of disingenuousness, of making up new definitions, of dishonesty, of being in the pay of villains, of lying.

 

[Metaphor]

If an r-square of .265 was "weak" and not worth talking about, pretty much the entire psychological and medical literature would disappear.

If four particular measures explained 26.5% of the variance in a particular kind of cancer, the association of those would not be dismissed as 'weak'.

In fact, for this kind of research, the multiple correlation coefficient (the square root of r-square, which in this case would be about 0.51) would be considered a 'small' effect at 0.2, a medium effect at 0.3 and a strong effect at 0.5 or greater

This is exactly why so many social science studies are bunk. You have so many unaccounted for variables, not to mention biased authors. People like you are just adding fuel to the fire when you claim R^2 of 26.5% is not weak.

Okay luv.

 

[lpetrich]

Looking in "LWA and RWA/SDO: Similarities and Differences" I find

By and large, LWA and RWA/SDO seem to reflect a shared constellation of traits that might be considered the “heart” of authoritarianism. These traits include preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.

SDO = Social Dominance Orientation, while RWA is about submissiveness.

There were some differences.

On the personological front, the most pronounced differences between LWA and RWA were negative affect (larger for LWA), confirmatory thinking (larger for RWA), and the DOG Scale (larger for RWA) Further, RWA was more strongly related to cognitive rigidity and low openness than was LWA prior to controlling for political ideology.

Personological differences for LWA and SDO included coldheartedness (positive for SDO, null for LWA) and need for closure (positive for LWA, negative for SDO).

Unlike RWA and SDO, "LWA, in contrast, consistently predicted neuroticism in our data."

By and large, though, LWA and RWA/SDO demonstrated far more personological similarities than differences. For instance, after controlling for political ideology, personological point estimates for LWA and RWA were within r = .05 for psychopathic meanness, cognitive reflectivity, the Dogmatism Scale, conscientiousness, need for closure, disinhibition, and psychopathic boldness. For SDO, point estimates were within r = .05 for antagonism, the DOG Scale, openness, extraversion, disinhibition, and psychoticism.

Seems to support the horseshoe theory of politics, where the far left and far right resemble each other much more than one would expect from their positions.  Horseshoe theory

What is more, political violence, a key component of folk and historical theories of authoritarianism (Wintrobe, 2006), is well-represented in the LWA Index and RWA Scale. Political violence can be directed either against the system (e.g., violent protests, terrorism) or to support the system (e.g., police brutality, support for war, state sanctioned torture of prisoners). LWA emphasizes anti-state violence, whereas RWA/SDO emphasize pro-state violence (Webber et al., 2020). Consistent with this possibility, LWA uniquely predicted participation in use of force for a political cause within the last five years, as well as support for, and participation in, anti-state violence during the summer of 2020. The fact that anti-state political violence has heretofore been largely excluded from the authoritarianism construct exemplifies the shortcomings of an exclusively right-wing account of authoritarianism.

That's good. If one wants to talk about political violence, one ought to include violence in opposition to existing systems as well as in support of existing systems.

 

[lpetrich]

Bomb#20 seems to think that a Communist cannot fit the right-wing-authoritarian profile because Communism is about left-wing policies rather than right-wing ones. But look at what the RWA profile consists of: support of an existing system no matter what that system is.

Far-left and far-right ideologies (e.g., communism and fascism) are similarly authoritarian in their structure—both exert powerful pressures to maintain discipline among members, advocate aggressive and censorious means of stifling opposition, believe in top-down, absolutist lead- ership, and so on. The content of communism, however, is arguably humanitarian and anti-authoritarian (e.g., the ideological aim is to remove economic inequities and take care of individuals per the doctrine, “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”). 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).

... Accordingly, left-wing authoritarians may come to believe that authoritarianism is “a necessary evil,” rather than an end unto itself. Some individuals who score highly on the LWA Index may be well-intentioned idealists seeking to build a better and a more equitable society by tearing down the establishment.

...
Left-wing authoritarian ideologies may also appeal to individuals with greater cognitive complexity, because endorsing both authoritarianism and egalitarianism arguably involves reconciling two (seemingly) mutually contradictory beliefs. Indeed, embrace of contradiction is a key element of Marxist dialects (i.e., the ideological foundation of the Soviet Union and other left-wing authoritarian regimes; Hanson, 1997).

Good comments. One might also ask what idealistic motives some right-wing authoritarians might have. Defense of legitimacy as good in itself?

 

[Bomb#20]

Yeah, sure, holding power accountable is "left wing authoritarianism." All those poor politically powerful people and their wealthy backers behind the scenes!

If you succeed in getting the government to dismantle the NRA, that will prove that you and those who share your ideology are in fact the politically powerful people. Who will get to hold you accountable?

Those left wing "authoritarians" are anti-establishment and anti-convention!!111!! Sooo authoritarian!!!!1!!!

When the orders you give and the obedience you enforce are making others stop following the previous established convention, and instead have to follow whatever new convention you decide to establish for them, that magically makes your exercise of authority over them not count as authoritarian. Got it.

Hold power accountable and protect the least among us. Such a scary world view!

I.e., respect the human rights of whichever people you care about. Those whose human rights you violate with impunity must have had it coming, because they were so powerful. Got it.

 

[lpetrich]

PsyArXiv Preprints | Is the Myth of Left-Wing Authoritarianism Itself a Myth?

Is left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) closer to a myth or a reality? Twelve studies test the empirical existence and theoretical relevance of LWA. Study 1 reveals that both conservative and liberal Americans identify a large number of left-wing authoritarians in their lives. In Study 2, participants explicitly rate items from a recently-developed LWA measure as valid measurements of authoritarianism. Studies 3-11 show that persons who score high on this same LWA scale possess the traits associated with models of authoritarianism (while controlling for political ideology): LWA is positively related to threat sensitivity across multiple areas, including general ecological threats (Study 3), COVID disease threat (Study 4), Belief in a Dangerous World (Study 5), and Trump threat (Study 6). Further, controlling for ideology, high-LWA persons show more support for restrictive political correctness norms (Study 7), rate African-Americans and Jews more negatively (Studies 8-9), and show more domain-specific dogmatism and attitude strength (Study 10). Study 11 reveals that the majority of the effects from Studies 3-10 hold when looking only within liberals, thus revealing these effects are about liberal authoritarianism. Study 12 uses the World Values Survey to provide evidence of Left-Wing Authoritarianism around the globe. Taken in total, this large array of triangulating evidence from 12 studies comprised of over 8,000 participants from the U.S. and over 66,000 participants world-wide strongly suggests that left-wing authoritarianism is much closer to a reality than a myth.

The authors argue that Bob Altemeyer's definition of left-wing authoritarianism is too restrictive.

First, Altemeyer’s LWA scale requires participants who score high on the questionnaire to support a revolution to overthrow the established government. In fact, twenty of the twenty-two items on Altemeyer’s LWA scale reference a revolutionary movement. For example: “The members of the Establishment deserve to be dealt with harshly, without mercy, when they are finally overthrown.” By contrast, none of the items on any of Altemeyer’s RWA scales makes a single reference to violent upheavals overthrowing the establishment. Second, whereas the RWA and LWA scales both use vigorous authoritarian, negative, dogmatic, and punitive language, only the LWA items leave absolutely no doubt that the endorsement of violence is explicitly required to score high on the scale. For example: “The conservative right-wing Establishment will never give up its power peacefully, so a revolutionary movement is justifying in using violence to crush it.”

Another approach is to create a mirror image of right-wing authoritarianism by changing authorities and targets. I mentioned a paper with that in a previous post (Conway et al.).

The authors conclude

Finally, we also must be careful to not present this debate as a false dichotomy between perfect symmetry and validity. As we have outlined, there almost certainly will be some asymmetry between LWA and RWA, either in the frequencies those persons occur, their psychological properties, or both. However, these asymmetries do not undermine the larger empirical validity and theoretical relevance of the LWA construct. Because one can identify state-or-trait asymmetries between two introverts does not mean either of them is not introverted. That is a separate question that is dependent on the specific properties of the introvert. As we have shown in Studies 1-12, there is ample evidence to believe that authoritarians exist on the left side of the political spectrum just as they do on the right side.

So a LWA profile can be real even if LWA's and RWA's are not mirror images of each other.

 

[lpetrich]

I wish to note a LWA joke.

Two revolutionaries were conversing.
R1: "Come the revolution, we will have strawberries and cream."
R2: "But I don't like strawberries and cream."
R1: "Come the revolution, we will have strawberries and cream, and you will enjoy it."

 

[untermensche]

Communism is free when it is democratic.

And it is not free when it is authoritarian.

The only remedy for authoritarianism is democracy.

You know the authoritarians when they bad mouth democracy and call the people a mob.

 

[Angry Floof]

If you succeed in getting the government to dismantle the NRA, that will prove that you and those who share your ideology are in fact the politically powerful people. Who will get to hold you accountable?

First of all, the NRA dismantled itself.

Second, I am not a right wing authoritarian follower, so my world view does not rely on top down authoritarian control of everything. I support democracy and all the checks and balances of power possible. Our democracy exists because some founders recognized that we not only do not need a king, but it is imperative that we do not have a king. Maybe right wing authoritarian followers can't fathom a world without a king?

Anyway, the NRA was a corrupt political machine that used to be a gun owners' association and it dismantled itself.

When the orders you give and the obedience you enforce are making others stop following the previous established convention, and instead have to follow whatever new convention you decide to establish for them, that magically makes your exercise of authority over them not count as authoritarian. Got it.

Except that is not how I think at all and does not in the least represent my world view. This is a cartoon in your own head.

Once again, I'm not a right wing authoritarian follower. I do NOT propose or support that kind of top down authority driven social structure that you guys do. I support democracy and all the checks and balances that come with it. I would not support a King Obama any more than I would a King Trump.

Hold power accountable and protect the least among us. Such a scary world view!

I.e., respect the human rights of whichever people you care about. Those whose human rights you violate with impunity must have had it coming, because they were so powerful. Got it.

And whose human rights would I violate in your cartoon world?

And again, that us vs. them framework is a right wing authoritarian mental prison that I do not hold. And if you do, then I can see how you would insist that everyone else also maintains such a framework and why you'd be scared of Them doing the same to your group as you would do to the world. Or rather, as you would have your king do to the world.