The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer
Chapter 02
The Roots of Authoritarian Aggression, and Authoritarianism Itself
I said in the Introduction that we would dig up the roots of authoritarian aggression. We’re going to do that now for authoritarian followers (and we’ll take up the hostility that roars so relentlessly from their leaders in a later chapter). After we have exposed the psychological causes of the followers’ aggression here, we’ll wrestle with the issue of how they became authoritarian followers in the first place.
Since followers do virtually all of the assaulting and killing in authoritarian systems—the leaders see to this most carefully—we are dealing with very serious matters here. Anyone who follows orders can become a murderer for an authoritarian regime. But authoritarian followers find it easier to bully, harass, punish, maim, torture, “eliminate,” “liquidate,” and “exterminate” their victims than most people do. We saw in chapter 1 that high RWAs are more likely to inflict strong electric shocks in a fake learning experiment in which they choose the punishment level, are more likely to sentence common criminals to long jail sentences, are more likely to be prejudiced, are more willing to join “posses” organized by authorities to hunt down and persecute almost any group you can think of, are more mean-spirited, and are more likely to blame victims of misfortune for the calamities that befall them. So while on the surface high RWAs can be pleasant, sociable, and friendly, they seemingly have a lot of hostility boiling away inside them that their authorities can easily unleash. Indeed, this authoritarian aggression is one of the three defining elements of right-wing authoritarianism. What causes it?
https://steemit.com/@rogueintel
https://busy.org/@rogueintel
https://d.tube/#!/c/rogueintel
https://www.facebook.com/Rogue-intel-199510644152096
