11/16/10
Comments:
Our troll has been working industriously sending posts to this site. As soon as they appeared I'd delete them and ban the IP source. But he would just use a different IP and re-post a minute later. I've got better things to do with my time. So I've had to fall back upon an "Approval Required" system.
When you submit a posting, it no longer will instantly appear here. Instead you'll see a message saying I have to approve the posting. At that time, your message is sent to me, and I'll approve its posting ASAP. Unless you are our busy troll.
11/16/10
Comments:
I was more curious about the general shape...is it a flat bell, is it skewed? Are the high RWA folks in a long tail or closer to the center
11/16/10
Comments:
To Miguel:
Those vary of course from sample to sample. If you tell me which study you're interested in, I'll dig them out.
11/15/10
Comments:
Dr. Bob...what's the skew and kurtosis on the data?
11/15/10
Comments:
To Scott: Thank you very much for your support. Yes, I can be faulted for not "taking charge" of the Comments section sooner. It was something I did not want to do. And yes, your point about authoritarian followers being inclined to follow the largest bird moving in their environment (using imprinting as an analogy), be it left-wing or right-wing, is difficult for some to grasp.
To Miguel: Glad to have you still on board. Yes, RWA scale scores are normally distributed in the populations typically sampled, within the usual limits created by measurement error.
Someone (I can't find the message right now) asked me the other day if I thought religion/belief in God was evolutionarily adaptive. I don't think anyone knows the answer to that. On the plus side, the belief system may bring enormous comfort, lessen fear of death making one braver, encourage the growth of community, and promote altruism. On the other hand, religion still promotes wars between various faiths, and to the extent that it encourages belief over reason, it may promote irrationality. I've presented evidence that the ethnocentrism that marks high RWAs appears to build upon an Us vs. Them template that some children first learn from the home religion.
One can make this list of pros and cons much longer.
I am myself an agnostic, and/but I found tons of people in my studies who believed in God and were affiliated with a religion AND who were low RWAs. It's not religion that creates the problems so much as it's authoritarianism and fundamentalism, I think.
11/15/10
Comments:
Dr. Bob...One would expect the RWA scores (as well as the other metrics) to be normally distributed, is this the case?
11/15/10
Comments:
Dr. Bob,
Glad to see you back and taking control of the comments. What fascinates me is how some of the regulars leaving comments lately don't seem to get that it is a personality type that is authoritarian and it doesn't matter what the particular political system is that they live in. They would be at home in a communist system, a democracy, a fascist one, or a follower of Pinochet, or of the Shah or Castro.
Your book and John Dean's have really helped me understand what is happening in the U.S. with more insight than I would have had otherwise, especially concerning the right, the GOP and Tea Party.
Just wanted to say thank you.
11/15/10
Comments:
To Hugh G. Thank you for your comment, especially about the epiphany. It have to point out that it was John Dean who gave me a similar epiphany several years ago when he suggested that the people I had been studying had taken over the Republican Party.
1) Do Intelligence services use the RWA scale, etc. to screen recruits? If they do, I suspect it would only be at a very preliminary stage. I'm sure their selection procedures are very sophisticated, situational, and do not involve many questionnaires.
2) What about those who score extremely low on the RWA, RF, and SDO scales? Well, if you're talking about extremes, you're necessarily dealing with small numbers and it's risky to generalize. It's safer to look for "curvilinear" trends in the correlations, which let you generalize based on the whole sample. A curvilinear trend means that (if we're talking about a positive correlation, in the context of your question, such as that between RWA and prejudice), very low scorers are more prejudiced than low scorers, but from low RWAs on up the prejudice scores rise.
You can simply look at the data and see if there's a flip-flop at the low end. And you can perform more objective statistical tests for a significant curvilinear trend. I've never found one with the RWA, RF, or SDO scales. The relationships have been straight-forward-linear, meaning that as the RWA scores go up, so generally do the other thing you're looking at such as prejudice. (And the linear relationships have usually been rather powerful, as these things go, making it very hard for there to be little curly-cues in the plot.)
This does not mean all very low RWA subjects are very unprejudiced. You could probably find very-low-RWA-but-highly-prejudiced individuals somewhere in any of my large samples. It's just a generalization that low RWAs are relatively unprejudiced. But it does mean that there's no significant tendency for very low RWAs to be more prejudiced than low RWAs. In general, very low RWAs are the least prejudiced people in the sample (i.e. a linear relationship).
Another question in a similar vein would be, who are the people who are low in RWA but high in SDO. That, I think, is a good question that needs research.
I hope this long answer does not make you hesitant to comment further.
11/14/10
Comments:
Dr. Altemeyer.
I understand your desire to remove all contrarian points of view in this forum, after all it shows your true colors. Your book is presented as "research", but it's conclusion is a political. This is of course a typical problem with social scientists, you must appease your puppet-master. The sad part is that you corrupt young minds with your slanted work.
You are a joke, and your political call to action I'd biased and breaks your covenant to not use government resources to produce biased political speech.
As with many simple minds, when shown the facts, your only recourse is to silence those who challenge you.
If you read my threads, you will see multiple posts bringing others back on topic. Your oversight of this fact again proves your contemptuousness. Your desire is only to be surrounded with brain-dead, brain-washed anti-intellectuals.
I plan to continue to post. You will need to review, delete, add ip blocks, whatever. Good luck. You will quickly realize that your hope to ban someone from a resource you don't own leaves you with no legal recourse.
I also plan to re-double my effort to hold you accountable to your government.
Gary: You need to get a backbone. A simple tactic is to overwhelm you with personal attacks, at which point you crawl back in your shell. I do think you had good references on the near-periphea of authoritarianism. You need to next analyze the author's bias, lest you become a proxy like Dr. Altemeyer. For example the UW CHOICE study is funded through the Joyce Foundation by George Soros. The JF has a core focus to show bias against Latinos. To keep the funds flowing UW would need to provide meaningful results. There is a huge discrepancy of groups calling others "intelligent". Libtards want everyone to be special and view many more to be, whereas conservatives hold the word for far fewer minorities and Caucasian...
Miguel: You remind me of myself. In 1988 I worked the mean streets supporting Dukakis. As you find out about the world, you will find that conservatism is the only sustainable path forward for a republic. Ever-increasing government is ultimately evil. It always fails and usually with disastrous consequences.
Assorted neo-communists: Your contempt of my liberty is duly noted.
11/14/10
Comments:
To Doug:
I asked readers to indicate if they wanted to see more debate between you and Miguel. No one except you has said s(he) does. Miguel has said he will stop. You however continue. So I am going to give you one last posting, and then I am going to exclude you from further participation at this forum.
I invite you, in your last submission, to give an e-address where people can contact you if they want to talk with you and hear more of your ideas.
11/14/10
Comments:
Miguel.
I realize that in you're perverted world we need to not use common sense and profile people. We all need to have our sex organs felt by the Obama/TSA police at the airport. In your world, the genetalia of 8 year olds needs to be "patted-down" as we can learn nothing from the profile of people who have attacked the US.
Profiles matter in law enforcement. You say so in your final comment.
All kinds of people break all kinds of laws. The socialist libtards are always the most murderous, most oppressive, and you throw your support in their corner.
11/14/10
Comments:
I had an epiphany while reading "The Authoritarians"- many disparate thoughts, impressions and ideas suddenly came into focus. I have two questions- 1) Do intelligence services (e.g. CIA, Mossad) use the RWA test to screen recruits? and 2) What can be said about those who score extremely low on the RWA, Religious Fundamentalism and The Authoritarian Leader scales? Many Thanks! HJG
11/14/10
Comments:
Gary...I found the following to be particularly telling. Similar results obtain for racial profiling and the ability for authorities to detain people without putting them on trial. Again, controlling for ideology (conservatism) and partisanship, support for the Tea Party increases the probability that individuals agree that it's okay to “racially profile someone on account of their race or religion” by approximately 27 percent. Support for the Tea Party also increases the probability, by 28 percent, that the authorities should have ability todetain individuals without being charged, for as long as authorities like. Of course, in both cases, conservatism also matters: increasing the likelihood that people will agree with racial profiling and indefinite detention by 30 and 33 percent, respectively.
Art. Sec9 US Const. ..."The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." Of course this only applies where public safety agrees with the "Authority", In this case conservative ideology. One has to wonder if detention of Christian Conservatives because they tend to be the ones who murder doctors applies under the "profiling based on religion" element.
11/13/10
Comments:
Gary.
Get a tissue and clean out your underpants. Your "excitement" is a bit pre-mature.
At first glance the study is ANES and/or GSS - based. It is not based on Altemeyer's RWA nonsense.
Secondly it is intentionally geographically-limited. There is no universality that can be claimed. It has inherent flaws.
Lastly, it studies a support for the tea-party. It does not study those who identify themselves as tea-party patriots. Does your support of men who have anal sex mean that you are a member with those members' members being poked in your backside?
11/13/10
Comments:
Yet more confirmation....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
University of Washington Study Concretely Links Tea Party Members With Authoritarianism, Racism, Homophobia
The University of Washington Institute For The Study Of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality (WISER) recently published its 2010 "Multi-state Survey on Race & Politics". According to WISER, the study, "Led by Prof. Christopher Parker... examines what Americans think about the issues of race, public policy, national politics, and President Obama, one year after the inauguration of the first African American president." In this study, Tea Party adherents were found to be the most dismissive of racial oppression, and the most accepting of government intrusion into the private lives of citizens, in the areas of sexuality, religion, race and politics. The study is available here: http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/racepolitics.html |