Opinion | Is There Such a Thing as an Authoritarian Voter? - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...-voters-political-science.html
evil freedom rationality morality authoritarian social science Research psychology culture politics
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Jonathan Weiler, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has spent much of his career studying the appeal of authoritarian figures: politicians who preach xenophobia, beat up on the press and place themselves above the law while extolling “law and order” for everyone else.
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He is one of many scholars who believe that deep-seated psychological traits help explain voters’ attraction to such leaders. “These days,” he told me, “audiences are more receptive to the idea” than they used to be.
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“In 2018, the sense of fear and panic — the disorientation about how people who are not like us could see the world the way they do — it’s so elemental,” Mr. Weiler said. “People understand how deeply divided we are, and they are looking for explanations that match the depth of that division.”
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a glance at the Christian group Focus on the Family’s “biblical principles for spanking” reminds us that your approach to child rearing is not pre-political; it is shorthand for your stance in the culture wars.
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for more than half a century — social scientists have tried to figure out why some seemingly mild-mannered people gravitate toward a strongman
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the philosopher (and German refugee) Theodor Adorno collaborated with social scientists at the University of California at Berkeley to investigate why ordinary people supported fascist, anti-Semitic ideology during the war. They used a questionnaire called the F-scale (F is for fascism) and follow-up interviews to analyze the “total personality” of the “potentially antidemocratic individual.”
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The resulting 1,000-page tome, “The Authoritarian Personality,” published in 1950, found that subjects who scored high on the F-scale disdained the weak and marginalized. They fixated on sexual deviance, embraced conspiracy theories and aligned themselves with domineering leaders “to serve powerful interests and so participate in their power,”
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“Globalized free trade has shafted American workers and left us looking for a strong male leader, a ‘real man,’” he wrote. “Trump offers exactly what my maladapted unconscious most craves.”
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one of the F-scale’s prompts: “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” Today’s researchers often diagnose latent authoritarians through a set of questions about preferred traits in children: Would you rather your child be independent or have respect for elders? Have curiosity or good manners? Be self-reliant or obedient? Be well behaved or considerate?
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Moreover, using the child-rearing questionnaire, African-Americans score as far more authoritarian than whites
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“All the social sciences are brought to bear to try to explain all the evil that persists in the world, even though the liberal Enlightenment worldview says that we should be able to perfect things,” said Mr. Strouse, the Trump voter
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Attitudes toward parenting vary across cultures, and for centuries African-Americans have seen the consequences of a social and political hierarchy arrayed against them, so they can hardly be expected to favor it — no matter what they think about child rearing
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The child-trait test, then, is a tool to identify white people who are anxious about their decline in status and power.
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new book, “Prius or Pickup?,” by ditching the charged term “authoritarian.” Instead, they divide people into three temperamental camps: fixed (people who are wary of change and “set in their ways”), fluid (those who are more open to new experiences and people) and mixed (those who are ambivalent).
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“The term ‘authoritarian’ connotes a fringe perspective, and the perspective we’re describing is far from fringe,” Mr. Weiler said. “It’s central to American public opinion, especially on cultural issues like immigration and race.”
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Other scholars apply a typology based on the “Big Five” personality traits identified by psychologists in the mid-20th century: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience. (It seems that liberals are open but possibly neurotic, while conservatives are more conscientious.)
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Historical context matters — it shapes who we are and how we debate politics. “Reason moves slowly,” William English, a political economist at Georgetown, told me. “It’s constituted sociologically, by deep community attachments, things that change over generations.”
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“it is a deep-seated aspiration of many social scientists — sometimes conscious and sometimes unconscious — to get past wishy-washy culture and belief. Discourses that can’t be scientifically reduced are problematic” for researchers who want to provide “a universal account of behavior.”
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in our current environment, where polarization is so unyielding, the apparent clarity of psychological and biological explanations becomes seductive
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“Trump’s electoral strength — and his staying power — have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations,” wrote Matthew MacWilliams, a political consultant who surveyed voters during the 2016 election
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as the social scientific portrait of humanity grows more psychological and irrational, it comes closer and closer to approximating the old Adam of traditional Christianity: a fallen, depraved creature, unable to see himself clearly except with the aid of a higher power
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The conclusions of political scientists should inspire humility rather than hubris. In the end, they have confirmed what so many observers of our species have long suspected: None of us are particularly free or rational creatures.
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Allen Strouse is not the archetypal Trump voter whom journalists discover in Rust Belt diners. He is a queer Catholic poet and scholar of medieval literature who teaches at the New School in New York City. He voted for Mr. Trump “as a protest against the Democrats’ failures on economic issues,” but the psychological dimensions of his vote intrigue him. “Having studied Freudian analysis, and being in therapy for 10 years, I couldn’t not reflexively ask myself, ‘How does this decision have to do with my psychology?’” he told me.
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their preoccupation with childhood and “primitive and irrational wishes and fears” have influenced the study of authoritarianism ever since.