06/19/11
Comments:
It's been a while since I posted anything here, and most of the issues raised seem to have taken care of themselves without any confusion-inducing input from me. So I'll just comment on the last two messages. If anyone would like me to respond to something I'm skipping over, just say so.
To J.W. I am one of the people who supports a ban on pit bulls as a dangerous breed, and I'm glad they're not permitted in my city. (And yes, I'd support extending the ban to other dangerous breeds and species as well.) But in the context of "The Authoritarians" I think you're calling me out for saying that pit bulls were bred to be a particularly aggressive species, and I think that's true. The original intention (in the British Isles) may have been prosocial, but the whole idea was, as a PETA spokesperson said, was to make a weapon specifically designed to fight other animals and kill them. Some of the offspring of mixing terriers with bulldogs were then selectively bred for their fighting ability, as I understand it, to produce animals for dog fighting. I have not read the book you referred me to, but is that not where the "pit" in pit bull came from?
I'm not saying, of course, that a pit bull's aggressiveness is just a matter of its genes, nor that it attacks humans (or other animals) more than any other species does.
I hope the rest of the book did not offend you so much as this part did.
To David Kerner: Thank you for your kind words.
If you're a naive youngster, then I'm probably a naive oldster. I do hope you are right that the studies, past and future, can show ways to bridge the communication gaps between liberals and conservatives. It's certainly not going to be easy, as one camp is pretty good at shutting out what it doesn't want to hear.
06/14/11
Comments:
I just wanted to thank you for the excellent book. I have frequently come across discussions regarding personality differences between liberals and conservatives. After looking into the subject deeper I found "The Authoritarians,' and was so enthralled I finished it in a single sitting.
A quick look at politics around the globe (and in particular America) show that the issues you bring up seem to have accelerated over the last ten years. As I am but a naive youngster, I did not live through the dramatic American social upheavals of the 60's and 70's, so I have little personal experience in the matter. However, it appears that ideological rifts have at this point almost completely conquered objective truth! I do not believe there is a precedent for this occurrence and it is highly worrying.
Communication will be key to healing this divide, and the description of RWA's you elucidate in your work can (and has) provided a scientific base to better strategies... and has personally helped me look out for Double Highs!
06/07/11
Comments:
Professor Altemeyer, I am enjoying your book immensely, but have just run across the following on p 64: "We know from breeding experiments that one
can turn out increasingly dominant, or increasingly submissive offspring by
controlling who mates with whom. That’s where pit bulls came from, on the one hand, and gentle laboratory rats, on the other."
If you are meaning to imply that's where pit bulls - uniquely aggressive compared to other dogs - come from, I must take exception to this example.
You are doing a great disservice to a much maligned breed of dog, which is discriminated against purely by appearance and breed categorization. While it is true that you can breed for more or less aggression (dog-to-dog, which is very different than dog-to-human) in pit bulls, this is true in any breed. Singling out the pit bull as an example of high aggression (versus lab rats with low) unnecessarily perpetuates a stereotype, furthers unfounded fear and myths about these dogs and leads to yet more cruelty perpetrated against a breed that is already subject to extreme acts of cruelty and discrimination.
Aggression in pit bulls -- as it is in any dog -- is primarily if not almost entirely a product of cruelty, neglect and poor socialization, it is NOT a breed-specific genetic disposition. Any dog can become aggressive, pit bulls no more nor less than others in given circumstances.
Since you have generously given out your book free on the 'net, I will refer you to another whose author had similar educational and service motives: http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/ncrc-publications/
Given that Winnipeg has breed-specific legislation in place which has seen thousands of healthy animals destroyed and thousands of responsible owners unfairly penalized and discriminated against, the voice of a well-informed behavioural scientist speaking out against the misguided arguments for maintaining this legislation, I know, will go far.
Thank you so much ... now, back to reading your otherwise excellent book.
Regards,
Jennifer Watson
05/05/11
Comments:
Yes, I read the blogs and reader comments on news articles quite frequently and I agree that people's undestanding of the political spectrum suffers greatly from the subjective bias of that sees the GOP = right-wing, and Dem = left-wing. Add to that the rampant inability to separate totalitarianism from the ideological or economic aspect of each state, and it isn't a very big step from there before you get these wingnuts who now equate fascism wth socialism, socialism with dictatorship, and now that ever-popular notion that a "librul" conspiracy is afoot whereby the left hopes to introduce sheria to America by legislating islamic legal codes they then insist we all must observe as the law of the land.
That they seriously worry about such an extremely unlikely thing as a few deluded suicide bombers guided to America by religious kooks able to somehow achieve in America what Soviet nuclear-armed submarines stealthily being guided to US shores by unseen satelites far overhead yet still could not compel us to accept socialized medical care out of fear that would introduce communist tyranny while we slept.....I believe tells us a lot more about their own authoritarianism and obedience/observance of codified law, no matter the origin or ethics of them once established. It may also say something about their obstinant refusal to even consider a trial run of legislation giving these poor stupid bastards the same acess to universal health coverage the rest of the civilized world long ago made available to their own citizens. Let 'em suffer.....
05/02/11
Comments:
I sure wish folks would stop using "liberal" to mean Left. In the world historical context american liberals/democrats are moderate conservatives, and moving further to the right all the time. Liberals are not interested in true equality and they favor a strong centralized state that supports private tyrannies (corporations). I suppose liberals are "authoritative" which seems to me to be the same thing as authoritarian in the end; the results are the same. Liberals are all for letting people blow off some steam by criticizing their betters and they are willing to compromise a little bit, but in the end the strict hierarchy must be maintained and capitalism must not be hindered in its course of bringing humanity ever closer to ultimate destruction. For a witty description of the various political ideologies, check out this blog entry:
http://prolecenter.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/political-philosophies-simple-definitions/
04/28/11
Comments:
DAJ - followed your input to quite a body of related bits:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1342239/Brain-study-reveals-right-wing-conservatives-larger-primitive-amygdala.html http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900289-2 - http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ne.15.030192.002033?journalCode=neuro Thicker right amygdale increases susceptibility to conditioned fear ?? - - http://www.allmanlab.caltech.edu/PDFs/AllmanHakeemHofetal2001.pdf read the abstract - - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH9-4DPCBW3-3&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F01%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1734457232&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bcb2d413ad3b8dc98f7ce060ee498a90&searchtype=a smaller acc = reduced ability to recognize conflicts in data processing ?? Would help explain RWA retention of conflicting convictions. - - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-457D9NJ-8&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F2001&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1734460425&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4d3dd2c881b8a543e09e8dcb7ba04ab0&searchtype=a Confirms role in conflict detection http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027161452.htm Seems like there is a major brain structure/chemistry correlation with conservative/liberal and high/low RWA leanings. Wow!!
04/28/11
Comments:
DAJ, thanks for the reply. I quite agree, which is why I used genetic or traumatic. Even a genetic source would not necessarily be passed on, and the genetic inheritance could be no more than a predisposition that could be reenforced or reduced by experience. I guess my real question is how much of the RWA character is likely to be nature and how much nurture, where nature would necessarily include the effect of prenatal trauma.
One other thought has occurred to me. Anthropologists have recently concluded that human evolution has accelerated in the last 10,000 years, since the advent of large social groups. It seems likely that memes would be evolving also. Given the right wing character of 19th century "classical liberalism", anf the left wing character of modern "social liberalism", it would seem that social liberalism is an evolutionary advance on the liberal meme.
Along the same line, modern web based social networking might be accelerating this evolution, thus reducing the ranks of the RWAs in today's youth. (Hope springs eternal). Maybe the malevolent influence of the RWAs on current American politics is destined to wane rapidly.
04/28/11
Comments:
Murray,
There is a much more to what constitutes something being "genetic" than you are outlining. First, if a condition occurs due to problems with the mother's labor or during birth, it is not necessarily genetic, i.e., the condition is not the result of the child's genes. Second, it is very easy to reduce a complex issue, such as personality development, to something more simplistic, like genetic inheritance. But if that were true, then RWAs would not be losing their offspring to other worldviews and would not need to recruit, as Bob has described in his book. I can't find a link, but there was a recent article on research into how certain brain structure differences seem to correlate with political views in that conservatives tend to have enlarged amygdalas and are much more fear-based, while liberals tend to show differences in the parts of the brain that are associated with processing complexity. The research did not address any genetic inheritance behind this and raised the question of which preceded which. If there is a "genetic" component, it could be connected to this kind of thing, i.e., differences in brain development making people more likely to adopt various worldviews. But it is definitely far from clear at this point.
04/27/11
Comments:
Dear Dr. Altemeyer,
Thank you muchly for this book. I have had a small project under way to try to understand the weird thinking of a part of the American political right as evidenced by eg the 45% of Republicans that believe Obama was not born in America. My quest culminated yesterday when I found your opus, and much has now been clarified.
I would like to offer a couple of observations.
I scored 39 on your scale, and consider myself a social liberal. However I was brought up in a Progressive Conservative (U of M BScEE '56 - On Manitoba!) household with a father that disliked no few liberal values, but especially detested unions. Luckily for me he was more authoritative than authoritarian, and had a pretty strong "resistance to misguided authority" streak, which to some degree rubbed off on me. When I came to the USA as a young adult, I joined the Young Republicans, and I suspect I would have scored over 100 on your scale. I also campaigned for Barry Goldwater, although he was a little to my right. My career has led to me living and working in 9 countries on 4 continents, and working with a wide range of ethnicity's, religious persuasions, and political leanings, and I am confident that it is this experience that has lowered my score. A great many folks on Americas coasts are transplants, while the vast majority in the heartland have never moved much, and therefore have very limited experience. I think it is this isolation/insulation that enforces their high scores so strongly.
I have found an odd exception to your authoritarian=fearful factor. To a very strong degree it is liberals who both promote and accept fear of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW), while it is conservatives who constitute the great bulk of the skeptics. On the blog www.wattsupwiththat.com one finds many of these non-fearful (on this issue) conservatives are clearly high RWAs, given the political views they express, and how they express them. If you really dig into this issue, you will find that AGW, let alone catastrophic AGW, is bad science to very near the point of being a scam. Yet it is the low RWAs who are fearful, and the high RWAs who are not. I guess every reasonably good statistical generalization has to have exceptions.
I recently got into an exchange with a small group of highly articulate and clearly intelligent Conservatives, and had just described the most active of the group to my wife as a borderline autistic, based only on his responses. He is a guy that researches the hell out of things, and comes up with all kinds of references to support his pov, but is totally unable to see that he is being very selective in what he chooses to support his position. He perceives himself as being holistic, but when I follow his references it is clear to me that he takes quotes out of context and has no ability to understand the background for the things he writes about. He is very defensive and responds to very short comments casting doubt on his position with very long, less than coherent responses. Now the nice part. Shortly after I reached my conclusion, he described himself as a "high performance Aspe". Bingo!! Asperger's Syndrome. We had a short discussion on that subject, and 3 of the other participants chimed in with the claim that they were also Aspes.Three of the 4 then mentioned that they either suffered trauma in childbirth, or that their mother had a very difficult last trimester. You touched lightly on the idea that some of the RWA problem might be genetic. I wonder if a major part of it might be genetic, or at least traumatic. It is not hard to believe that 20% or so of the American population are far enough out on the autism spectrum to constitute most of the RWAs.
Do you know a graduate psych student that could use some financial support and would be interested in pursuing this conjecture as a thesis project? What is your response to this idea.
Please excuse the long input, and many thanks if you have stayed with me this far.
Respectfully yours, Murray Duffin
04/26/11
Comments:
Kristy Griffin Green, Both you and Mr. Altemeyer have objected to my use of "abstinence" in place of "nudists" on the basis that it's not a concept that sufficiently distinguishes liberal vs conservative ideals. When I conjured that word up, I was really trying to invoke the current dialogue over "abstinence only sex-education" which is, as I bet you know a moderately hot topic between social conservatives and liberals. I actually shortened the term to "sexual abstinence" to make it fit more neatly in the sentence as a replacement. Perhaps trying to "short-hand" a visceral response with that particular work would not have worked. I should have just used the entire phrase. I applaud your sensitivity to those persons who hold different views than you. But remember, in terms of respondents we are not talking exclusively about persons like yourself with a keen interest in the topic and a well developed sense of principal which is perhaps even heightened by the fact that we're in the midst of a dialogue about these matters. I wonder how many respondents self-critique and go back over their responses tweaking numbers for fear they've idealized themselves as opposed to giving perfectly honest answers (as you did). Many I'm sure but certainly not most. Over the course of thousands of respondents, I think you can reliably say that using abortion (of all things, really) in the context of "admiration" is going to slant the "authoritarian results" in favor of the ideology on the protesters' side. See, those two sentence were worse than anything you've typed in your life so you needn't be so hard on yourself. I'm not sure I'm following you on the tea partiers. I assume they are protesting the acts and intentions of a massive centralized government they oppose. JUst like the war protesters of the last decade were. Is there a tendency for each side of our binary political conception to view protesters they agree with as revolutionaries and protesters they disagree with as authoritarians in waiting? The point is...why use any politically identified value. Why not just say, "Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, and ignoring the 'normal way things are supposed to be'" and "You have to admire those who challenge the law and the majority's view through protest"? Why wouldn't you want to replace values like "nudity" or "abstinence" with neutral wording like "alternative lifestyle".
04/26/11
Comments:
Bob Altemeyer, Yes, sorry. I took your question initially to ask if the responses to the questions in the RWA survey itself meant that the conservatives identified suffered those negative traits. You meant the subsequent research on whatever population of people you have identified. You were clear enough, I simply didn't read carefully enough. The short answer is yes. I would say that you probably have a group of authoritarian leaning social and religious conservatives and whatever subsequent research performed relates back to that population. But I don't know how you've judged prejudice or persecution of minorities, etc. If there exists in the research the same ideological blindspot I see in the survey, these characteristics may simply be a failure to embrace orthodox North American liberal ideals in which case the headline is really that we found a group of social conservatives and guess what...they don't hold liberal views. And yes, you'd either find the same characteristics in the liberal authoritarians or the characteristics don't stem from authoritarianism right? You could've just titled the book "Those Terrible Conservatives". Assuming that you are using the term "left-wing authoritarians" in an ideologically neutral way ("new fangled psychological") as opposed to the modern conventional way, I have no reason to doubt that you couldn't find a significant population of left-wing authoritarians. Could it be that what I'll call "revolutionaries" or perhaps more tamely "the protest culture" is less prone to authoritarianism? Sure. But should we believe that teaparty protesters who object to, for instance, health insurance mandates are any more inclined to authoritarianism than anti-war protesters who object to interceding in far flung military conflicts? I don't know why.
| Kristy Griffin Green | Email |
04/24/11
Comments:
Dear Mr. (Dr.?) Altemeyer,
I'm not yet done with your book, not even close. (I just got the link for it a couple hours ago.) I wanted to comment, though, because I found something very interesting to me, personally.
In the first footnote of chapter 2, you discuss the characteristics of the conservative girl-child (as opposed to the liberal.) I was struck by this, because... you were describing me. Shy and reserved, compliant, yielding, indecisive, immobilized by stress - it's like you were going through a checklist of my earliest childhood memories. (At least among my peers. I'm told that, to adults, I was quite mouthy.) And yet... on your RWA test, I scored a 24. (And that was after second-guessing myself and raising a few of my answers by a point or two in the interest of being honest.)
Part of that may be due to my upbringing. (To illustrate: a few years back, my kid brother was pulled over for speeding. The cop asked to search his car. After a moment, my brother replied, "You know... it'd be easier to say yes. I know I don't have anything illegal in there, and honestly, I have places to be. But my dad's the president of the local ACLU, and I couldn't look him in the eyes if I let you search my car without a warrant. So no. Sorry." Hmm... if your primary authority figure wants you to be anti-authoritarian, how does that even calculate?) But I'd like to think that for some of us who were shy and reserved little girls, the moment just naturally came where we quietly, and without much fanfare, decided that we'd just rather not follow rules we didn't agree with anymore, thanks so much.
Anyway. I just thought it was interesting.
For the record, I really like what I've read so far. I'm trying to wait until I finish the whole thing before forwarding it to a dozen or so people, but I'm already making the list.
Also, for Mr. Morrison below: I think you're making some assumptions that are simply not true. For example, while I truly don't think there is anything wrong with nudist camps, I also don't think there is anything wrong with sexual abstinence. I don't choose to practice it, but if you do, it's your choice and ain't nobody can tell you you're wrong.
For question 13: while I do think those protesting against abortion or in favor of prayer in schools are wrong, in the sense that they are deeply misunderstanding, among other things, the principles upon which this country is founded, I can and do appreciate the courage it takes to demonstrate in favor of an unpopular opinion. (Wow, that sentence wasn't nearly so run-on in my head.) Obviously I think my views are right (otherwise they wouldn't be my views), but a country where everyone agreed with what I think would just be scary. (For the record, that last sentence would be true no matter what I believed.) I like dissent; I like people with the guts to challenge the status quo. That's the only way change ever happens. I'll argue against pro-prayer-in-school activists, but I'd never for a moment suggest they should just shut up and go home.
For question 15: ok, you got me there. I don't think the Tea Partiers decrying taxation represent the "best people in our country," and I do think it would be interesting to see if the results of the test changed any if that question were reworded. I do wonder, though, if the question is disingenuous. What, precisely, are the Tea Partiers protesting for (or against)? Is it just taxation? Or is it taxation to pay for things they don't approve of? If so, what are those things? What does that say about their real position on the authoritarian scale?
[Edit: due to my computer's shameful lack of internet access, I'm getting the chance to comment as I actually read the book. For example: the first question regarding experiences, the one about families having strong father figures, caused me to derail a bit. Because, honestly, my answer had to be yes, but only because of a limited sample pool. Based on the entirely unscientific method of comparing how much other people complained about their families against how much my brother and I did, I'm concluding that our family is one of the very few that actually got it right. And my family did have my father as the (more or less, generally speaking) head of household. However, looking at other families I know personally, the lack of a strong father figure seems to be a symptom rather than a cause of deeper troubles, which seems to indicate that the presence or absence of a father figure is not in and of itself a deciding factor. Maybe a more telling factor is whether a person attributes familial problems to an absent father figure, or to other issues?]
04/24/11
Comments:
Thanks for returning to the site. It’s a pleasure to discuss this issue with you. Hmm. Why can’t one conclude, if you are right about the RWA scale capturing conservative political sentiments (as opposed to right-wing authoritarian ones), that the accumulated findings therefore show that political conservatives tend to be more prejudiced, etc. than most people? It seems that’s what they would directly show. I gather your answer would be: If the wording of the items were changed so that they captured liberal political sentiments instead, and you got the same correlations with prejudice, submission, conformity and so on, that would show that liberals are also authoritarian, but the bias in the wording of the items on the RWA scale blackens only conservatives. If this is the case, I would respond: 1) IF you could come up with an edited scale that captured authoritarianism (i.e. authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism) with politically liberal issues, high scores on it would not correlate positively with prejudice, etc. because political conservatives score much higher on those variables than political liberals do. The connection between political conservatism and prejudice, to pick the most-researched example, is one of the oldest and best-established findings in social psychology. And in my research it shows up in Canada and the United States, and it shows up whether you are measuring people’s statement of their political party preference, or their political philosophy (liberal to conservative), and it shows up whether you are looking at samples of ordinary people, or looking at samples of political leaders (legislators). It’s just there. And from the beginning, research in authoritarianism has been motivated by the desire to explain this relationship. (And it’s been true for other variables too, such as tolerance for government injustices, “Posse,” dogmatism, use of double standards, hypocrisy, and so on, which has increased the motivation to understand political conservatives.) So a test that captures liberal political sentiments is going to have a negative correlation with prejudice and the other variables that one finds are correlated with conservative political sentiments. 2) It’s not as easy as it looks to edit the items on the RWA scale so they’ll capture whatever liberal authoritarianism there may be. To use your first example, getting opinions about sexual abstinence is not, I predict, going to separate political liberals from political conservatives particularly well. A goodly number of political conservatives are going to weakly endorse abstinence, and so are a goodly number of political liberals. There used to be an item on the RWA scale that went, “There is nothing wrong with premarital sexual intercourse.” But I had to replace it because over time, because as more and more people agreed with it, it lost its ability to correlate strongly with other things. Most political conservatives agree with it now, and among student populations, there is only a small connection between being a political conservative and sexual behavior. 3) If one is going to write a scale that captures liberal authoritarianism, one needs an underlying conceptualization of what authoritarianism is. I have found that defining the trait as the covariance of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism works pretty well, and when the authorities in question are those a person considers the established, proper authorities, I’ve called it right-wing authoritarianism. Anyone who wants to can define it some other way—and I’m sure that some day a better conceptualization will emerge. But to be most useful, scientifically, the concept should hold true for all the different kinds of authoritarianism one is interested in understanding. Accordingly I tried defining left-wing authoritarianism as authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism when the authorities being submitted to are trying to overthrow the established authorities in society. I developed the LWA scale to measure this conceptualization. It had items such as, “People should do whatever a left-wing revolutionary movement against the Establishment decides.” This scale had alpha reliabilities of .85 or so, so it was apparently consistently tapping the sentiments I was trying to capture. But left-wingers—students, parents, and New Democratic Party candidates in a provincial election—did not score highly on it. In fact, out of over 1200 subjects, there was not a single high-scoring person in the bunch, whereas you find lots of high scoring RWAs in sample after sample. Neutral responses would have produced a score of 100, on a scale that could go from 20 to 180. The highest score obtained was 117. None of the "socialist" political candidates scored at high as 100. I probably tried harder to find scientific evidence for the “authoritarian on the left” than anyone else, which means I’ve failed more than anyone has. I know they’re out there, because (as I say in the book) I’ve met some liberals/revolutionaries who seemed quite authoritarian to me. But there are very few such people, so far as I can determine. (You’ll find the account of my search for the "authoritarian on the left" in Chapters 8 and 9 of The Authoritarian Specter, 1996, Harvard University Press.) I’ll be glad to have your response to my thoughts here.
04/22/11
Comments:
Dear Bob:
Thank you for your response and yes, as you can see...I've read it. But you're not correct that if one accepts that your survey is slanted to identify political conservatives as "authoritarian" that one must "conclude that political conservatives are all of the unsavory RWA things we have discovered". In fact, I can't distinguish that argument from a simple restatement of your original error in conducting the study.
If you replaced "nudist camps" in question 8 with "sexual abstinence" or some other minority value a conservative was more likely to endorse or sympathize with, suddenly the respondents with more liberal sensibilities would become the authoritarians on your scale.
If question 13 becomes "You have to admire those who challenge the law and the majority's view by protesting against abortion or in support of school prayer", suddenly the liberal respondents would become the authoritarians on your scale.
If question 15 becomes "Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, protesting taxes and ingoring the 'normal way things are supposed to be'", again the liberal respondents would climb the authoritarian scale.
Now is that because liberals are, in fact, more authoritarian? No, it's because I have crafted the questions to lead people of liberal sensibilities to answer in a way we have predetermined is "authoritarian". In other words, I've done the exact opposite of what your original RWA scale survey does.
In both your original survey and in my imaginary edits you'd have to cleanse the questions of all references to politics and known ideological correlaries. You can't let me tailor the question so that people who support abortion rights reflexively respond toward the "authoritarian" end of the scale.
I do appreciate you putting your work out for consumption and, in my case and others, criticism and I admire your publishing my comments. if there's anything else it would help you to know about me in terms of your studying people who make this argument, please don't hesitate to ask. You are free to use my email address though I will attempt to glance back here from time to time as well.
04/22/11
Comments:
To Michael B. Thank you very much for your very kind words. I'm proud this book is in your "personal top 10." And I'm glad you are recommending it to others.
I'm afraid there's no chance a publisher would be interested in printing a book that is available for free on the Internet. And while there seems to be a steady, unending, (and to me) amazing supply of new readers coming to the site and reading the book, thanks to advocates such as you, most of the people who would probably be interested in spending money on a book about authoritarianism have probably already read it here.
I know a self-published book "smells," but I'm pretty sure far more people have read it here for free than would have read it had it appeared in book stores three or four years ago. The best you can do is just send people the website, and ask them to give it a try.
To Miriam: Thank you also for your very kind words. There have been a few studies done in the United Kingdom, where the RWA scale seems to hold together all right and has predictive power. But no one has, to my knowledge, asked Members of Parliament to answer the scale. The door is wide open to anyone who wants to do that study.
As for the Five Factors tests, as you surmise, I and others have found significant (and sometimes large) negative RWA correlations with the Openness factor. I don't think Neuroticism scores correlate with RWA however.
To Jim Mulligan: Thank you for your comment. It is quite plausible that the wording of many items on the RWA means the test ends up measuring political conservatism, and someone asks about that every three months or so on this site.
You'll find my response in Endnote 7 of Chapter 1. But if you are right, then I think you have to conclude that political conservatives are all the unsavory RWA things we have discovered, such as more prejudiced, more conforming, more likely to persecute minorities, more likely to use double standards, more likely to be hypocrites, and so on. And as a generalization, I think that case can be made against the current batch of "political conservatives" on the American scene. But I would say that's because so many of them are authoritarians, not because they are "conservative" per se. As I state in Endnote 7, I doubt a nonauthoritarian political conservative, such as Barry Goldwater, would score very highly on the RWA scale.
One last thing. If you read this note, would you please let me know here that you have. I'm doing a little study of people who make the point that you made, and similar points. It seems they make their point and go away, in a "hit and run" fashion. They seldom come back to see what the response was. So if you "come back" I'd like to put a check mark in that column.
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