Emily L. Fisher

Can Values Moderate the Attitudes of Right-Wing Authoritarians?

This investigation explored how right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and endorsement of egalitarian beliefs may interact to determine attitudes toward immigrants, homosexuals, and African Americans. Study 1 (N = 239) found that RWA was negatively related to evaluations of immigrants for those who weakly endorsed egalitarian beliefs. In contrast, endorsement of egalitarian beliefs was associated with positive evaluations of immigrants for both low and high RWAs. RWA did not interact with egalitarianism to determine attitudes toward homosexuals or African Americans. Study 2 analyzed data from the 1992 National Election Study and replicated these effects in a young adult (age= 24) sample (n = 102) using moral traditionalism as a proxy for RWA. Partial support for the hypotheses also was found in the adult (age= 25) sample (n = 1,257). It is concluded that when tradition and/or social norms offer unclear positions, endorsement of egalitarian beliefs influences the attitudes of authoritarians.

The Authoritarian Left Withdraws from Politics: Ideological Asymmetry in the Relationship between Authoritarianism and Political Engagement

In this article, we argue that authoritarianism will be associated with reduced political interest and participation to a greater extent among those who identify with the left rather than the right because left-leaning politics—which challenges the status quo—threatens more instability and flux. Using data from the United States, we provide evidence for this first hypothesis. Using multinational European data, we also provide support for a second hypothesis that this interaction would be more evident in “Westernized” contexts, where the traditional left-right difference is clearly defined, than in Eastern European countries, where its meaning is less distinct; and we conceptually replicate the authoritarianism results using a measure of support for “conservation” values favoring security, conformity, and tradition. Together, these results suggest that the lower visibility of left-wing authoritarianism relative to its counterpart on the right may be due in part to greater withdrawal from politics among left-leaning authoritarians.