Scan barcode
A review by curgoth
The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer
4.0
It took me a long time to read this, not because it was bad, or even difficult. It took me forever because Altemeyer distributes it for free from his website as a PDF, and I do my reading on my Kobo, which will read PDFs, but does so awkwardly. I did eventually get back to it, though, and it's worth the effort.
The Authoritarians looks at what Altemeyer calls "Right Wing Authoritarians". He's got a test that puts people on a scale that he's been giving to people since the 70s. Which means he's had a lot of time to correlate high and low scores on the test with other characteristics.
The name "Right Wing Authoritarian" is, in retrospect, sort of a terrible name, since what it's really testing for is "Authoritarian Submission" - the personality type that thinks the government is always right, no matter how many people it kills, that protesters should have "just stayed home", etc. The flip side to the RWAs are the folks who tell them what to do - the Social Dominators, measured by a different test that another researcher has spent his career working on. These are the folks who go after power, say things like "life is a jungle, eat or be eaten", etc.
Some of the connections Altemeyer talks about seem pretty obvious. Some were surprising. Taken as a whole, the traits and tendencies are pretty terrifying. This isn't about "right vs left" or "conservative vs. liberal", though - not all conservatives are RWAs or Social Dominators. Just the scary ones.
It's a really interesting look at a segment of humanity that seems to be gaining an awful lot of influence in the world lately. And that's pretty worrying.
(edited to add: It's also worth reading because Altemeyer is hilarious while telling you about terrifying things)
The Authoritarians looks at what Altemeyer calls "Right Wing Authoritarians". He's got a test that puts people on a scale that he's been giving to people since the 70s. Which means he's had a lot of time to correlate high and low scores on the test with other characteristics.
The name "Right Wing Authoritarian" is, in retrospect, sort of a terrible name, since what it's really testing for is "Authoritarian Submission" - the personality type that thinks the government is always right, no matter how many people it kills, that protesters should have "just stayed home", etc. The flip side to the RWAs are the folks who tell them what to do - the Social Dominators, measured by a different test that another researcher has spent his career working on. These are the folks who go after power, say things like "life is a jungle, eat or be eaten", etc.
Some of the connections Altemeyer talks about seem pretty obvious. Some were surprising. Taken as a whole, the traits and tendencies are pretty terrifying. This isn't about "right vs left" or "conservative vs. liberal", though - not all conservatives are RWAs or Social Dominators. Just the scary ones.
It's a really interesting look at a segment of humanity that seems to be gaining an awful lot of influence in the world lately. And that's pretty worrying.
(edited to add: It's also worth reading because Altemeyer is hilarious while telling you about terrifying things)