Why do some individuals adhere more strongly than others to forms of organization characterized by hierarchy, dominance, and obedience?
Social psychology, a branch of experimental psychology that studies the influence of the social context on emotions, cognition, and behavior, has been addressing this issue for several decades. In particular, research has led to the emergence of the concept of “authoritarian personality.” What exactly is it?
One consequence of the severity of the unequal distribution of resources and oppression in human societies is a high level of conflict between social forces that reinforce hierarchy—such as racism or sexism—and others that undermine hierarchy—such as socialism or feminism.
According to American biologist Robert Sapolsky, who teaches neurology at the prestigious Stanford University in California, nothing in animal social behavior involves a form of domination as aggressive as “the human invention of poverty.”
According to American psychologists Jim Sidanius and Félicia Pratto, human social hierarchies are organized into three main systems: the age system (disproportionate power held by adults over young people), the gender system or patriarchy (disproportionate power held by males over females), and the arbitrary group system (socially constructed groups based on criteria such as ethnicity or social class).
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This latter system, characteristic of industrial societies, is distinguished in particular by the significant role that aggression plays in maintaining dominance. However, in this context, not all individuals react in the same way.
The first seminal study on the “authoritarian personality” was published in 1950 by the German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno and his colleagues. The aim at the time was to understand the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s.
According to the authors, this phenomenon cannot be explained by any single field of research (clinical psychology, sociology, economics, etc.). Adorno hypothesizes the existence of an “invariant” that depends neither on individuals nor on context: every person possesses a “stable, potentially fascistic mental structure.” This structure is said to be particularly active in certain circumstances among certain people, with the main social consequences being antisemitism, conservatism, and ethnocentrism.
Adorno and his colleagues conducted several studies involving both quantitative measures (attitude scales, questionnaires) and qualitative measures (interviews, projective tests), and observed a relationship between various tendencies: conformity, submission to authority, hostility, aggression, superstition, mental rigidity, a desire to exercise power, cynicism, and a belief in a dangerous world.
The authors interpreted this relationship as an expression of an “authoritarian personality” that could be measured using their “F scale” (F for fascist). Adopting a psychoanalytic perspective, the authors proposed that the authoritarian personality is an expression of emotional vulnerability stemming from a punitive upbringing.
Since that research, the concept of authoritarianism has undergone significant theoretical and psychometric refinements.
In the 1980s, American psychologist Bob Altemeyer developed the first reliable measure of authoritarianism withthe Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale.
This concept comprises three interrelated aspects: strict adherence to social norms, a strong emphasis on obedience and respect for authority, and a punitive attitude toward those who deviate from social norms.
Authoritarian individuals have religious, traditionalist, and conservative views. They value social control and support the right of authorities to use force against people whose behavior poses a threat to security and order; they are more likely to advocate for the use of violence by institutions (such as the death penalty), by security forces, and by private individuals (including lynching).
In the 1990s, Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto developed a new concept: social dominance orientation. This concept refers to a general preference for unequal intergroup relations. Research shows that this trait is particularly pronounced among members of dominant groups.
People with high social dominance tend to care little about fairness and the well-being of others. They value competition and support their group’s right to dominate other groups; they are more likely to make unethical decisions, break the law, and use intimidation, harassment, or even aggression to achieve their goals.
Along with right-wing authoritarianism, dominance orientation is the most robust predictor of a wide range of political phenomena: racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnic persecution, political conservatism, support for the death penalty, militarism, and nationalism. A significant common feature of these two authoritarian attitudes isaggression toward subordinate groups.
Social psychologists have sought to determine whether certain personality traits may predispose individuals to develop authoritarian attitudes. Research has shown that right-wing authoritarianism is associated with low cognitive openness and high conscientiousness. People who exhibit these traits tend to be intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and resistant to novelty.
Right-wing authoritarianism is also associated with dogmatism. A recent study, published by the team of British neuroscientist Stephen Fleming, reveals that dogmatic people seek out less information before making a decision—even though they are no more confident in its accuracy. As a result, they make more mistakes. Dogmatic people are less sensitive to uncertainty and seek out less information before taking a position, which encourages them to rigidly hold onto their beliefs, regardless of their accuracy.
A social dominance orientation, on the other hand, is associated with a deficit in empathy, as demonstrated in particular by a study based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) published by Joan Chiao and her colleagues. fMRI allows researchers to record brain activity while a task is being performed. In participants with high scores on the social dominance orientation scale, the researchers observed a weaker response to others’ distress in brain regions important for empathy.
This attitude is also associated with antisocial personality traits such as narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. People who exhibit these traits tend to be manipulative, have very high self-esteem, and display impulsive, sometimes aggressive, and even violent behavior.
The hypothesis that a person’s personality leads them to develop certain political attitudes is based on the simple correlation between personality traits and political attitudes, as well as on the observation that personality traits are genetically influenced and develop in early childhood. Studies have shown that political preferences develop as early as childhood and are also influenced by genetic factors. Research in behavioral genetics suggests that the correlation between personality traits and political attitudes is based on a common genetic factor.
Norwegian psychologist Thomas Haarklau Kleppestø and his colleagues have observed that a tendency toward social dominance and support for policies that reinforce inequality share common genetic origins. According to these researchers, these factors may underlie a behavioral syndrome related to the distribution of resources.
At the population and species levels, a behavioral syndrome refers to a set of behavioral traits that are correlated across different situations. The phenotype of the behavioral syndrome is an individual’s behavioral type. An individual may exhibit a greater or lesser degree of hierarchy within this behavioral syndrome, and this hierarchical or egalitarian phenotype constitutes that individual’s behavioral type.
An individual’s egalitarian or anti-egalitarian phenotype is believed to be determined by both dispositional factors (such as personality) and “ecological” factors (such as the severity of social inequalities).
Individuals’ social environment also influences their susceptibility to authoritarianism. In a study spanning 27 countries, Norwegian psychologist Jonas Kunst and his colleagues observed a relationship between structural inequalities and approval of intergroup hierarchy: the more unequal the national context, the higher the population’s level of social dominance orientation. This psychological response at the individual level—rather than sociocultural norms—in turn fosters hostile attitudes and behaviors that reinforce hierarchy (intolerance, discrimination, intergroup aggression).
In a study covering 33 countries, American psychologist Michele Gelfand and her colleagues observed that norms of cohesion and intolerance are reinforced by factors such as resource scarcity, territorial threats, and the threat of infectious diseases.
The impact of this latter threat has been documented by British psychologist Leor Zmigrod and her colleagues. Their study, which covered 47 countries, revealed a link between infectious risk and authoritarianism: a higher prevalence of pathogens exacerbates authoritarian attitudes, encourages conservative voting behavior, and leads to more aggressive governance.
The current health crisis appears to confirm these findings. A study by British psychologist Todd Hartman and his colleagues has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated nationalism and xenophobia. Other research, conducted by Italian psychologist Michele Roccato, suggests that COVID-19 has strengthened some people’s preference for an anti-democratic political system.
New Zealand psychologists John Duckitt and Chris Sibley recently proposed that authoritarian attitudes are an expression of needs or motivations that are chronically emphasized in individuals by their personality and social environment.
Right-wing authoritarianism is said to reflect a need for security, order, stability, and cohesion. A social dominance orientation is said to reflect a motivation to use coercion or aggression to assert oneself at the expense of others in the competition for resources. “Social conformity” is said to predispose individuals toward right-wing authoritarianism, while a “tough mindset” is said to predispose them toward social dominance.
Sociopolitical instability and the risk of violence are said to foster right-wing authoritarianism by promoting a view of society as dangerous, threatening, and unpredictable; structural inequalities are said to foster social dominance by promoting a view of society as a competitive jungle where “the strong win and the weak lose.”
In a recent study discussed in a previous article, we observed that the higher people’s scores were on the scales measuring right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, the stronger their physiological response to stress was, and the weaker their post-stress physiological recovery was.
These findings suggest that authoritarian attitudes are associated with lower “physiological flexibility”—a concept referring to an organism’s ability to adjust its arousal level in response to the situation. This manifests as sustained stress, a state of hypervigilance, a chronic overestimation of threat, reduced prosocial tendencies, and the rigid expression of defensive behaviors.
People’s physiological flexibility is determined by genetic and environmental factors. In particular, a stressful environment (one characterized by inequality, uncertainty, or violence) can impair physiological flexibility and thereby foster authoritarian attitudes, discrimination, and intergroup aggression.
It is important to note that while recent research has blurred the artificial boundary between the natural sciences and the social sciences, we must not confuse a factual statement (all human societies are hierarchical; authoritarianism increases in the face of a threat) with a moral judgment (“hierarchy is the best form of organization,” “authoritarianism allows us to cope with threats”). The term “naturalistic fallacy” is used to describe this logical error, which jumps from “x does y” to “x must do y.”
The distribution of resources is a crucial issue for all social species. Social organization among many nonhuman primates is shaped by issues of hierarchy and power. In humans, children recognize people’s social status at a very early age and spontaneously establish dominance relationships.
However, egalitarianism also has deep roots in evolution. Among a number of non-human primates, lower-ranking individuals form coalitions to improve their access to resources. The formation of coalitions aimed at preventing despotic control of resources has also been observed among prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Situations in which resources are distributed inequitably among third parties particularly capture the attention of infants, a sign that they violate the infants’ expectations of fairness.
Recent research in social psychology suggests that support for or opposition to inequality is rooted in a universal adaptation for navigating social hierarchies, while exhibiting variations, much like a behavioral syndrome. From this perspective, individual levels of authoritarianism account for variations in support for different types of strategies (hierarchical versus egalitarian) for navigating the distribution of resources.
