Personality and emotional correlates of right-wing authoritarianism

Social Behavior and Personality, 2000 by Bulter, J Corey

As in previous research, conscientiousness did not correlate consistently with the RWA Scale. Study I demonstrated a modest association between these two variables, but this disappeared in Study 2, which utilized the more reliable, fill version NEO PI-R. Study I also found that openness mimicked authoritarianism by correlating with anti-gay attitudes and ethnocentrism, whereas conscientiousness did not. Thus, although there is sonic tendency for authoritarians to be conscientious, it is low openness to experience which represents the fundamental personality component of authoritarian ideology. Why is conscientiousness making an appearance at all? Perhaps because in American culture, right-wing attitudes are associated with hard work and individual responsibility, traits very similar to the conscientiousness facets of achievement striving and self-discipline (Costa & McCrae, 1992a).

Contrary to McCrae's (1996) suggestion, low agreeableness is not an important component of the authoritarian personality. In Study 2, there was indeed a tendency for authoritarians to be lower on the agreeableness Wet of tender-mindedness. On the other hand, the RWA Scale was positively correlated with trust in that data set. The important finding is that the other facets, and the overall trait of agreeableness, do not correlate with authoritarianism in this research. Furthermore, none of the other published research has found a correlation between these dimensions. It would seem that the link between authoritarianism and low agreeableness, while intuitively sensible, does not pass the empirical test. The aggression Oow agreeableness) of highly authoritarian individuals may be based, not directly on personality itself, but on the interaction of low openness and certain situations. Thus, authoritarians may be generally closed-minded and intolerant, but within their own groups of family and friends they are as caring and prosocial as anybody else.

Tomkins' proposal that right-wing ideology is associated with negative affect was the least successful hypothesis in this research. Study 3 clearly demonstrated no relationship at all between any of the affect measures and authoritarianism. That is to say, there were no global self-report differences in emotion between high and low authoritarians. As stated previously, it is possible that authoritarian emotional differences are present only in specific situations. It also seems likely that the mechanisms underlying authoritarianism are more cognitive than emotional. This is consistent with research showing that extraversion and neuroticism, not openness, are the primary determinants of positive and negative affect, and consequently, emotional well-being (Costa & McCrae, 1980; Myers & Diener, 1995; Pavot, Diener, & Fujita, 1990). Altemeyer (1996) has suggested that authoritarians are uncritical, contradictory thinkers, and this too suggests that the ultimate roots of the authoritarian personality are more cognitive than emotional.

Prior to this study, one of the most comprehensive investigations of the authoritarian personality structure was conducted by Kline and Cooper (1984). These researchers used a factor analytic design which included such instruments as the EPQ the 16PF Test (a questionnaire measuring anality), and the Balanced F scale. Authoritarianism was (as usual) independent of extraversion and neuroticism, but it did cluster with the traits conscientiousness, conservation, rigidity, and "anality" or obsession. These findings are easily interpretable within the context of my data on openness to experience. Measures of mental rigidity (flexibility) are known to correlate with various facets of openness at r= -.30 to r= -.40 (Costa & McCrae, 1992a). Furthermore, the connection between rigidity and authoritarianism was suggested from the very beginning (Adorno et al., 1950) and has been revisited recently by Schultz, Stone, and Christie (1997). My own unpublished data also shows that the RWA Scale correlates with both CPI flexibility 35, p