As we showed in our analysis of the Clinton/Obama primary fight in 2008, in our book, as well as in analysis of election data from 2010 and 2012, what distinguishes Democratic from Republican voters among whites isn't education level or income level. It's authoritarianism. The data are consistent in this - low authoritarian white folks with less than a college education, or who earn less than the median income, overwhelmingly support Democrats. Conversely, whites with high incomes and high education levels but who also score high in authoritarianism strongly support Republicans. In other words, it's not "working-class whites" per se, who support very conservative candidates. It's authoritarians, whether they are working class or not. This, too, is consistent with the composition of the (not-so-mysterious) Trump coalition.
I was first introduced to the concept of the Authoritarian personality via research conducted by Robert Altemeyer, a now-retired Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba [although that concept was broached earlier by, among others, Erich Fromm and Theodore Adorno.]. His report was both disturbing and fascinating, and when one understands the basic components of the authoritarians [leaders and followers], it’s fairly easy to spot most if not all of those traits across a wide swath of those occupying today’s far Right.
Altemeyer even joked at one point that the authoritarians lodged firmly on the Right appeared to behave as they consistently do solely to confirm his research. It is amazing how clear the findings of Altemeyer and others [as we’ve seen in recent weeks] match the behaviors and psychological inclinations of a large segment of the Right—specifically Donald Trump’s loyal followers.
While admittedly an ungracious characterization, Altemeyer described the authoritarian follower this way [applicable also to fundamentalist members of the Religious Right, who are typically considered to be authoritarian followers]:
They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority, and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason, and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times, and are often hypocrites. But they are also Teflon-coated when it comes to guilt. They are blind to themselves, ethnocentric and prejudiced, and as closed-minded as they are narrow- minded. They can be woefully uninformed about things they oppose, but they prefer ignorance and want to make others become as ignorant as they. They are also surprisingly uninformed about the things they say they believe in.
Adorno et al. listed nine characteristics associated with the ‘authoritarian personality’ (a concept first posited by the psychologist and sociologist Erich Fromm). The nine traits were: rigid adherence to convention; submission to the authorities of the in-group; aggression against those who deviated from convention; opposition to imaginative, subjective or soft-hearted experience; superstition and rigid belief categories; obsession with strength and powerful father figures; generalized hostility and anger at humanity; the tendency to believe that wild and dangerous things are going on in the world, a projection of repressed emotions; and an obsession with sex.
When coupled with the various characteristics both attributed to the typical conservative personality and as leading conservative writers [such as Russell Kirk] have themselves acknowledged, a picture develops of a fairly steadfast proponent of certain clear-cut beliefs and principles—whether justified or not.
When one’s beliefs are relied upon as the source for behaviors and the principles themselves, rarely will they be dislodged by facts. And so here we are.
No doubt those on the Right have their criticisms of the progressive personality—justified or not—but when their inclination is to avoid ambiguity and instead come to quick conclusions about even the most complex social and political issues without wasting much time on those subtleties, it becomes difficult if not impossible to find a bridge even minimally wide-enough to find common ground. Fear-mongering by both certain elements of the media and political leaders with agendas distinct from those of the average citizen only widens the divide.
How does any of this help? For all of the doubts and denials fostered about important issues of the day such as climate change, peak oil, inequality, the highly-polarized nature of public discourse itself, and the various social/cultural issues creating even more disagreement, reality remains unmoved by the various rationales and psychological short-cuts adopted.
If we don’t begin finding ways to tone down the divisive nature of our social and political conversations but instead continue our headlong insistence that only our side is correct and the other side is evil incarnate, no one will be satisfied when we’re all forced to address those many significant challenges with limited options left to any of us.
Trump’s legion of fact-averse sycophants will be properly--horribly—dismayed to find out that his vulgarity and bullying persona represent the sum total of what he has to contribute to problem-solving. That ain’t much!
Perhaps asking themselves What Happens Then? before they fill out their ballots might be worth considering.
More to come…
Adapted from a recent blog post of mine.