My impression of Vox is that it’s a left-leaning blog. Nothing wrong with that, especially since… Well, one of my Righty co-workers when I was working behind the Orange Curtain gave me a Lenin pin. But it never struck me as being especially rigid in its investigations. To be fair, I haven’t read all that many articles on the site, and I can’t remember following their linked citations. I did read this rather long article though.
While not written like a scientific paper, it does lay out the methodology that was used, and offered references. The gist is that ‘authoritarians’ (they admit it’s not a great name for the group) are more fearful than non-authoritarians. They are afraid of change, and afraid of the Other. They gravitate(d) to the Republican Party because that is the party of ‘law and order’ and of maintaining the status quo. The article discusses latent authoritarianism, which may not become active until a triggering event. It says that authoritarian voters have been moving toward the Republican Party since the 1960s, when the Republicans went with their Southern Strategy. Until recently, they were a fringe group in the party. But with the advent of the Tea Party, they have become a very large faction of the Republican Party. ‘Tea Party candidates have challenged moderates and centrists, leaving the GOP caucus divided and chaotic.’ It’s pretty amazing to me that some Tea Party favourites are seen as ‘too liberal’.
The article supports what I have seen in real life. Far-right conservatives I know (friends and some family) often say ‘fear’ or ‘afraid’ in their communications. ‘I’m afraid Obama is going to declare martial law and there will be no more elections.’ ‘I fear for the United States.’ ‘I’m afraid of Muslims instituting Sharia law.’ That sort of thing. I think I’ve posted in the past, that conservatives seem to think ISIS (at the time, I think I said Osama bin Laden) is going to go door to door beheading Americans. I am not afraid of terrorism or terrorists. I’m not afraid of muggers, either. I’m not afraid the government it going to take away my guns. So it seems to me that conservatives are fearful people. (No offence to conservative Dopers. ‘Broad brush’, and all that.) And this fear is driving people toward authoritarianism and nationalism.
Help me out here. Isn’t the fear of martial law a fear of authoritarianism? You seem to be saying that fear is pushing them toward the thing they fear?
That seems to be correct. But look at other contradictions. They preach individual freedom, but they do not want women to be free to control their own bodies. They preach individual freedom, but they object to the people smoking weed. They demand the freedom to practice their religion, but want to ban other religions.
Authoritarians have a blind spot that says “The authorities will choose to enforce the stuff I want to see enforced. And nothing else.”
They’re usually pleasantly rewarded at first as the authorities tackle some obvious Thems. Then they’re unpleasantly surprised when the authorities slip their leash and start being radically authoritarian against anyone who’s not utterly conformist to their evolving ideal of a subjugated populace.
I remember that being one of the more popular Vox articles earlier in the year. I saw it passed around on liberal blogs a lot.
There’s been a lot of interesting studies into the psychology and biology of different ideologies. Some of these are more controversial than others, especially since most social scientists are liberals so it’s easy to say there’s a bias. Generally, conservatives have a high sensitivity to disgust, a high negativity bias, and a larger amygdala. Liberals score high on openness to new experience (not always a good thing) and are more comfortable holding multiple or uncertain beliefs on a topic.
You may also be interested in Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundation theory, which posits each group focuses on different moral intuitions.
Liberals focus nearly exclusively on the first two. Conservatives factor in all of them. Liberals often have trouble identifying statements from the other stances as moral claims at all, especially sanctity and authority.