Resolved: You cannot understand Trump's support without understanding RWA and SDO

Politics & Elections
1

For anyone who doesn’t know what right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) they are personality metrics.

People high in RWA tend to see the world as threatening, they feel that social cohesion is necessary to keep society safe and stable, and they see marginalized groups as threats. They do not want an egalitarian society because they think it’ll cause society to fall apart and will make it easier for foreign and domestic threats to hurt them.

People high in SDO see the world as a dog eat dog world, and they like the relative privilege and status their skin color, religion, gender, nationality, etc gives them over others. They do not want an egalitarian society becuase they will lose advantages.

Bob Altemeyer, the Canadian-American social psychologist who first coined the term and its meaning in 1981, defined right-wing authoritarian as someone who exhibits:[4]

  1. a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
  2. a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities.
  3. a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities.
    Authoritarian Tendencies in the American Electorate (Part 1) | Monmouth University Polling Institute | Monmouth University

Individuals who score high in SDO desire to maintain and, in many cases, increase the differences between social statuses of different groups, as well as individual group members. Typically, they are dominant, driven, tough, and seekers of power.[citation needed] People high in SDO also prefer hierarchical group orientations. Often, people who score high in SDO adhere strongly to belief in a “dog-eat-dog” world.[3] It has also been found that men are generally higher than women in SDO measures.[4][5] A study of undergraduates found that SDO does not have a strong positive relationship with authoritarianism.[2]

In the US, about 25% of adults score high on RWA, vs about 10-15% in other developed nations.
I’m not sure what % score high in SDO, but it may be around the same range, about 15-20%.

These two articles from 2020 are interesting.

Especially this part (it won’t let me post photos, but it discusses how the vast majority of people who strongly support Trump score high on RWA and/or SDO, and the vast majority of people who disapprove of Trump score low on RWA and SDO.

78% of Americans who strongly approved of Trump scored high in RWA, SDO or both.

Among people who scored low in both RWA and SDO, 74% disapproved of Trump. Only 5% of people who scored high on RWA, SDO or both approved of Trump.

This helps make it easier to understand why this country is so fucked up, but the question is what can be done? I have read that attitudes about RWA and SDO are fairly stable over time.

There really wasn’t much middle ground. 463 people strongly disapproved, 346 strongly approved. And 43 somewhat disapproved and 119 somewhat approved.

The vast majority of people fell into the strongly disapproved category or the strongly approved category, and they were largely sorted by whether they scored high or low on RWA and/or SDO.

I don’t know what the answer is, or if there is an answer. But it sucks that this is society, where about ~40% of voters score high on RWA or SDO and they are overwhelmingly republicans now.

In 2020 when Trump ran, about 40% of his voters scored in the highest quartile for RWA, while virtually none of Biden’s voters scored in the highest quartile of RWA.

2

This is interesting, and has obvious parallels in Canadian politics, too. Presumably these people are made, not born, and so social measures may help reduce their numbers. Of course such social measures–health, education, non-authoritarian teaching, greater social equality–are exactly what those folks oppose.

3

You can’t understand Trump’s support without understanding patriarchy, feminism, and why this is patriarchy’s last stand.

They’re doing a terrifyingly good job of a last stand, I have to say. But they’re doomed.

4

I think we should take over Greenland and then send all those people there. Maybe the same thing will happen to them as happened to the Viking settlement.

Also, this is not patriarchy’s last stand. We wish.

5

Yes, and? People with certain personality traits tend towards certain political parties. That’s obvious. And we have a label for the personality traits that tend towards the modern Republican party. What does that buy us? Even if it’s occasionally useful to have a label, we already had one of those: “Republican”.

6

Your summary is mostly not supported by your link. One could certainly be RWA without seeing the world as being threatening (for example, using SDO to justify it), and one could view the world as threatening without supporting RWA (say, if one were a legitimately oppressed minority).

I’m not sure there’s even a RW association here, let alone RWA. There’s plenty of admiration for the social cohesion of the Nordic countries, which is associated with egalitarianism, not authoritarianism. It’s sort of strange to consider social cohesion RW.

There might be a correlation here between RWA and the things you mentioned but you haven’t demonstrated it.

7

Social cohesion is also especially valued by minority groups, and is supported by the left.

8

You also must understand the general Republican philosophy that they are the natural leaders of the hoi polloi, and that when circumstances conspire to put them out of power, the natural world order is upset and must be restored. Any Democrat holding office is an affront to the way things should be.
This leads them – in a “the ends justify the means” reasoning with a strong dose of entitlement – to gerrymander districts, disenfranchise voters, and just generally lie and cheat to win elections.
Charles Blow had a great column in the NYT on this 3-4 years ago, but I’m having trouble with Googling it.
He had a term for it, which escapes me now. It’s not manifest destiny, but it’s something close to that spirit.