Running head: ATTACHMENT, RWA, AND SDO
Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, and Attachment: An Italian Study
Michele Roccato University of Turin, Italy
Abstract
The paper presents the results of a theoretical and empirical study of the relations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and attachment. A study on 353 Italian university students in Turin was conducted. A correlation between RWA and SDO was found, and a structural equation model of the origins of RWA and SDO was built using attachment style as a principal predictor of the two constructs. Several
psychosocial variables (course of studies undertaken, group participation, and importance of religion) were also used as predictors. The major results were: (a) RWA and SDO correlate positively, but not very strongly; (b) attachment styles directly and/or indirectly influence RWA and SDO; and (c) RWA and SDO each have specific predictors, but also share one predictor, importance of religion, which raises RWA scores, but lowers SDO scores. The limits and future developments of this research are discussed.
Keywords: right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, attachment, political psychology
After many years of theoretical and methodological weakness, researchers can now use an extremely sound approach to the investigation of authoritarianism, namely, Altemeyer’s (1981, 1988, 1996) approach to right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), which was developed in the last few decades for the study of people’s tendency to submit to an antidemocratic
authority. In recent years, Sidanius, Pratto, and colleagues (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) conceptualized another construct: social dominance orientation (SDO). According to Altemeyer (1998), RWA and SDO are two distinct constructs. However, their integration might be useful as SDO may represent an operationalization of the tendency to subject other people to one’s own antidemocratic authority. In the 1990s, Hopf (1993) explicitly postulated and Marris (1991, 1996) implicitly suggested the existence of a link between attachment style and authoritarianism. In this article, I will attempt to construct a model for the prediction of RWA and SDO, using the participants’ attachment style as the principal predictor of the two constructs.
Altemeyer defines RWA as the covariation of three attitudinal clusters: “(a)
Authoritarian submission – a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimated in the society in which one lives; (b) Authoritarian
aggression – a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities; (c) Conventionalism – a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities” (Altemeyer, 1996, p. 6). Research has shown that RWA is positively linked with prejudice, support of the death penalty, punitive attitudes towards unconventional individuals, approval of the injustice perpetrated by governing authorities, and obedience in Milgram-style
experiments (Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996). Moreover, RWA is positively and reciprocally linked with religiousness: At least in Western societies, RWA encourages religiousness and, at the same time, being religious increases RWA (Altemeyer, 1988, 1996). In effect, Christian
religions tend to foster the three attitudinal clusters defining RWA: authoritarian submission, since they positively influence obedience to a supernatural authority and to the Church; authoritarian aggression, since they teach their members self-righteousness; and
conventionalism, since they defend conventional social norms (Altemeyer, 1988).
Recently, Sidanius and Pratto (1999; Pratto et al., 1994) developed a social dominance theory to explain intergroup conflicts and the oppression, discrimination, brutality, and tyranny which characterize many human societies. According to Altemeyer (1998), the connection between RWA and this theory could be fruitful since it might allow researchers to study two different facets of authoritarianism, namely, submission to antidemocratic
authorities and the tendency to become an antidemocratic authority. SDOl, defined as “the extent to which one desires that one’s in-group dominate and be superior to out-groups” (Pratto et al., 1994, p. 742), is at the psychological core of the theory. Individuals with a high SDO develop and support hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths (HELMs), which are attitudes, values, beliefs, stereotypes, and ideologies that provide moral and intellectual justification for practices that asymmetrically allocate social values among groups. Thus, they help to legitimize social stratification, minimize group conflict, and contribute to affirming and maintaining consensus on the fairness and justice of social inequality. Research showed that SDO strongly correlates with prejudice, racism, sexism, cultural elitism, political and economic conservatism, meritocracy, protestant ethic, just world beliefs, and nationalism (Pratto, 1999). On the contrary, individuals low in SDO support hierarchy-attenuating
legitimizing myths (HALMs): Among those myths are socialism, communism, feminism, and many Christian values (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Moreover, research has shown that SDO is associated with in-group favoritism among members of high-status groups, whereas it is associated with reduced in-group favoritism or even with out-group favoritism among
members of low-status groups (Federico, 1999; Pratto & Shih, 2000). On the other hand, no stable relationship was found between SDO and religion.
According to Altemeyer (1998) and Whitley (1999), right-wing authoritarians and social dominators share three important characteristics: (a) They tend to be very prejudiced, (b) they tend to be right-wing, and (c) they tend to believe that the world should be dominated by certain groups of people. The main difference between them is that right-wing
authoritarians want to be dominated whereas social dominators want to become the dominating authority themselves.
Duckitt (2001; Duckitt, Wagner, du Plessis, & Birum, 2002) developed a complex dual process model of the impact of personality (assessed as social conformity and
tough-mindedness) and social world view (assessed as perception of the world as dangerous and threatening and as an amoral, competitive jungle characterized by a Darwinian struggle for resources and power) on authoritarianism (assessed as RWA and SDO) and in-group and out-group attitudes. For the purposes of the present empirical study, the most interesting part of Duckitt’s model is that, concerning the correlation between RWA and SDO, Duckitt
hypothesized that in countries characterized by strong ideological contrast, ideology tends to be organized along a left-right dimension. In countries like these, people with a leftist orientation are characterized by low scores for both RWA and SDO and those with a rightist orientation by high scores for both RWA and SDO. In countries characterized by minor ideological contrast, political attitudes and behaviors are less structured and, accordingly, people’s scores for RWA and SDO are often independent of each other. Moreover, according to Duckitt, ideology, and accordingly the relationship between RWA and SDO as well, do not crystallize until the end of adolescence when, in order to meet a strong need for coherence, they begin to influence each other. Thus, according to Duckitt, two variables exert an influence on the correlation between RWA and SDO. The first is the degree of ideological
contrast of the country in which the analysis is performed: The more pronounced the ideological contrast, the stronger the correlation. The second is the age of the interviewees: The older the participants, the stronger the correlation. Several studies have confirmed Duckitt’s theory on the mechanism governing the correlation between RWA and SDO (see Aiello, Chirumbolo, Leone, & Pratto, 2005; Altemeyer, 1998; Duriez & Van Hiel, 2002; McFarland & Adelson, 1996; Pratto et al., 1994; Whitley, 1999).
According to Altemeyer (1988), individual differences in RWA develop in adolescence. At that age, people who will not be very authoritarian have the opportunity to experience life directly and come into contact with many objects of their RWA-related attitudes (and thus to realize that they do not threaten the social order). Future authoritarian individuals do not have this opportunity due to self-selection, self-denial, and self-exclusion. Thus, they tend to “travel in tight, ethnocentric circles” (Altemeyer, 1998, p. 75), unable to come into contact with different people and different visions of the world. By means of his Experiences scale, Altemeyer was able to explain large percentages of RWA variance (about 50%).
In addition to life experiences during adolescence, researchers have identified several other psychosocial variables that can influence the individual level of RWA:
1. Societal crises, which raise RWA scores (Altemeyer, 1988) by fostering threat and anxiety, which in turn produce higher levels of authoritarianism (Feldman & Stenner, 1997; Peterson, Doty and Winter, 1993; Rickert, 1998).
2. Becoming a parent, which raises RWA scores, since becoming a parent impels people to respond to the RWA scale by referring to themselves as an authority which others must necessarily obey (Altemeyer, 1988).
3. Undertaking liberal arts studies – including the humanities and psychology – which lowers RWA, since they offer students a plurality of opinions, theories, and findings. This increases their analytic skills and their ability to think and act independently,
which are negatively linked to RWA (Peterson & Lane, 2001; see also Gasperoni & Giovani, 2002; Winter, McClelland, & Stewart, 1981). The focus on the studies undertaken is of particular importance since the bulk of studies on authoritarianism have been performed on student samples.
4. Group participation. Participation in musical groups was shown to reduce RWA since it contributes to creative self-expression and to transforming needs, ideas, and individual values into a general perspective that can become a way of imagining a different and better world (Amerio, Capello, & Rossi, 1996).1 On the contrary, participation in sports groups raises RWA scores, since they frequently require their members to show dogmatic obedience to leaders, trainers, or managers (Roccato, 1997).When studying authoritarianism in samples younger than the general
population it is important to analyze group participation since, among young people, group participation exerts a significant influence on personality development.
Moreover, in Italy, sports and musical groups are among the groups characterized by the highest participation (Buzzi, Cavalli, & De Lillo, 2002).
However, according to Hopf (1993), Meloen (1993), Samelson (1993), Smith (1997), and Stone (1993), the conceptualization of the origins of RWA can be considered the weakest part of Altemeyer’s approach, since it overlooks the intimate relationships between attitudes and underlying personality dynamics. Altemeyer concedes that psychosocial variables could not easily be considered the “ultimate cause” of RWA. Moreover, research studies have shown that RWA is connected to personality, as assessed by the Openness factor of the Big Five personality traits (Altemeyer, 1996; Bulter, 2000; Heaven & Bucci, 2001; Peterson, Smirles, & Wentworth, 1997; Riemann, Grubich, Hempel, Mergel, & Richter, 1993; Trapnell, 1994). This fact may be due to the rigid cognitive style of right-wing authoritarians and to their lack of cognitive complexity (Heaven & Bucci).
According to Sidanius and Pratto (1999), SDO stems from cultural and biological factors. These include (a) belonging to and identifying with dominant groups; (b) some social factors, such as level of education, religious faith, and the set of natural and social events which occurred during childhood; (c) some not explicitly reported “temperamental and personality traits”; and (d) gender – men tend to be more social dominance-oriented than women in that they tend to play more favorable social roles. Moreover, research has shown that there is a degree of congruence between workers’ personalities and job types (van Laar, Sidanius, Rabinowitz, & Sinclair, 1999). Working in a profession which contributes to reducing social inequality (e.g., as a social worker or a psychotherapist) is negatively linked with SDO, whereas working in a profession which contributes to increasing social inequality (e.g., in the business world is positively linked with SDO. However, research has not yet made any in-depth, integrated attempt to develop a model of SDO origins. Exploratory studies were conducted by Pratto et al. (1994) and by Heaven and Bucci (2001), who analyzed the correlations of SDO with the Big Five personality traits and found negative covariation between SDO, openness, and agreeableness.
In the wake of the literature above, it could be concluded that Altemeyer’s and Sidanius and Pratto’s approaches would be much stronger if their “origins” part was more developed. The main goal of this paper is to draw and empirically test some of the links between
attachment theory and studies on RWA and SDO.
The attachment theory was developed by Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) on the basis of three main postulates:
1. Human beings share a primary attachment need selected by evolution to guarantee individuals’ survival in the first years of life. This need promotes the organization of attachment behavior, which fosters the caregiver’s proximity and parental care and provides a secure base for the material and symbolic exploration of the environment.
2. The infant-caregiver proximity also depends on the caregiver’s responsiveness to the infant’s attachment need. According to Bowlby (1953), a caregiver who develops an intimate, constant, and consistent bond with the infant ensures the child’s mental health. Otherwise, situations ensue that Bowlby (1965) classified as “lack of maternal care.”
3. The bonds developed by individuals with their caregivers in early infancy crystallize into relatively stable schemas of the self and the environment, defined as internal working models. Their main functions are to predict and interpret what will happen in one’s own personal and social world and to sustain one’s planning and decision making.
Researchers have detected different attachment styles that show strong stability from infancy to adulthood. Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978) distinguished between a secure style and two insecure patterns: anxious-ambivalent and avoidant. Secure people tend to be empathic, have confidence in themselves and other people, and develop a personality characterized by self-esteem, a sense of self-worth, and constructive attitudes towards the social world. Insecure people are characterized by relational instability, inadequate coping with negative emotions and stressful situations, a strong sense of ineffectiveness, and dissatisfaction with personal relationships. Moreover, they tend to be more hostile and pessimistic than secure people and to perceive social interactions as serious psychological threats. Avoidant individuals limit intimate relations and avoid close emotional and
psychological bonds with others. Anxious-ambivalent people fear abandonment and develop strong needs to merge with others (Collins & Read, 1990; Kobak & Sceery, 1988; Mikulincer & Florian, 1998).
A number of studies have investigated the influences exerted by attachment on social life, starting from Bowlby’s seminal postulate that “probably in all normal people
[attachment] continues in one form or another throughout life and, although in many ways transformed, underlies many of our attachments to country, sovereign, or church” (Bowlby, 1956, p. 588). Kirkpatrick (1998, 1999; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1992) discovered a direct relationship between attachment security and general religious commitment. Moreover, Holtzworth-Munroe, Stuart, and Hutchinson (1997) found an association between insecure adult attachment and the predisposition to violence in marriage, whereas Arbona and Powers (2003) discovered that securely attached adolescents are less likely to behave antisocially than insecurely attached ones.
A classic result of studies on authoritarianism is the discovery of the link between uncertainty and fear, on the one hand, and authoritarianism, on the other hand. According to Altemeyer (1998; see also Duckitt, 2001), authoritarians are afraid in that they perceive the social world as being dangerous. According to Duckitt, social dominators also tend to perceive the social world as being dangerous, although to a lesser degree than right-wing authoritarians do. According to Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway (2003), one of the functions of ideological belief systems (such as conservatism, RWA, and SDO) is the meeting of psychological needs and motives – first and foremost the needs for order, structure, and avoidance of uncertainty and fear. From this point of view, developing RWA and SDO could be the result of an attempt to manage fear and uncertainty.
Three assumptions and the results of qualitative research make it reasonable to postulate that the development of certain attachment styles in childhood may stimulate the later
development of RWA and SDO “personality patterns.” The first assumption is Miller’s (1980) consideration that the very first interpersonal relationships have implications not only on the psychological level for the mother-child pair, but also on the political and moral level for society as a whole. The second assumption is Holmes’ (1993) claim that adults have the same pressing needs for attachment as children and that, in times of difficulty, the same
processes that lead to the development of an insecure attachment style in early childhood may be operating on the societal level. The third assumption is based on Marris’ (1991, 1996) work. According to him, in any society, just as in any individual life, there exists a fundamental condition of uncertainty which depends on personal situations (mourning, separation, personal and family problems, etc.) and environmental factors (economic crises, unemployment, value crises, wars, natural disasters, etc.). The ability to handle this sort of uncertainty is inextricably connected with the ability to give significance to the events in one’s individual and social world, which, to a great extent, depends on the attachment experiences one had in early childhood (Bowlby, 1953). Finally, a direct and explicit
theoretical link between attachment theory and studies on authoritarianism was proposed by Hopf (1993) on the basis of qualitative research. According to her, the key variable in the development of authoritarianism is the occurrence of disturbances in the mother-child relationship during the first few months of life.
It thus seems reasonable to hypothesize two significant connections between attachment theory, RWA, and SDO:
1. Right-wing authoritarians and insecure individuals share a strong feeling of insecurity and perceive the social world as dangerous, meaningless, and uncontrollable and as
dominated by events which are difficult to give meaning to and to control (Altemeyer, 1988; Duckitt, 2001; Marris, 1996). Thus, they share the feeling of loss (or absence) of meaning in the social world and the conviction that it is highly important, for their own psychological survival, to restore (or to produce) order.
2. The attempts made by social dominators to obtain security at the expense of those who have less power may be considered a variant of the insecure attachments stemming from efforts to cope with the uncertainty of a world perceived as competitive giving it meaning and predictability (Duckitt, 2001; Marris, 1991).
Should these hypotheses be confirmed, it might be worthwhile to amend Duckitt’s model (2001) by introducing attachment style as an additional variable capable of influencing social world views. This could be a further step towards the identification of the link between personality, RWA, and SDO.
Research Goals and Hypotheses
In the wake of the literature above, the first aim of the present study was to investigate the covariation of RWA and SDO in an Italian sample. Italy is characterized by strong ideological contrasts, since ideology tends to be organized along a very prominent left-right dimension (Ricolfi, 1999, 2004). For this reason, on the basis of Duckitt’s work (2001), a strong correlation between RWA and SDO was hypothesized. The innovative element of this research concerned the second goal, namely, the development of a model connecting
attachment style with RWA and SDO. A structural equation model was built in order to predict RWA and SDO, hypothesizing positive and direct links between insecure attachment style, on the one hand, and RWA and SDO, on the other. Moreover, a significant relationship between RWA and course of study, importance of religion, and group participation was hypothesized (Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996, 1998). In line with the literature on
authoritarianism, the relationship of RWA with (a) studying psychology should be negative, (b) importance of religion should be positive and mutual, (c) participation in sports groups should be positive, and (d) participation in musical groups should be negative.
Sidanius and Pratto themselves wrote that “while it is possible that SDO is also related to temperamental-emotional styles, attachment experiences and certain kinds of socialization, we have yet to examine these processes in any detail” (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, p. 308). Since little information is available on SDO origins, this model was also used to predict SDO in order to study similarities and differences between the psychological roots of RWA and SDO. However, we hypothesized that the predictors of SDO would be different from those of RWA,
since (a) the elements that differentiate between the two constructs are more relevant than the common ones (Altemeyer, 1998; Duckitt, 2001; Whitley, 1999) and (b) RWA and SDO seem to develop on the basis of different socialization experiences (Duckitt).
Method Participants
A group of 360 first-year students from the University of Turin, Italy, participated in this study. Seven questionnaires had to be eliminated because they were incomplete. The actual sample was comprised of 81 men and 272 women. Of the participants, 136 were enrolled as psychology students, 82 as medical students, and 135 as biology students. Their mean age was 20.41 years (SD = 2.29).
Procedure
Participants were recruited during class with the respective course instructor’s consent. Participation was voluntary and anonymous. They filled out a structured 76-item
questionnaire, presented as part of “a research study performed by the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Turin, to find out what young people think about personal and social issues.” The students completed the questionnaire in the classrooms in about 30 min and were then debriefed.
Measures
RWA was assessed using Giampaglia and Roccato’s (2002) Italian adaptation of the RWA scale (Altemeyer, 1998), a balanced Likert scale composed of 30 items with nine response categories. Its Cronbach alpha was .85, and exploratory factor analysis yielded one factor, explaining 22.33% of the scale variance.
SDO was assessed using Roccato’s (2003) Italian adaptation of the SDO scale (Pratto et al., 1994), a balanced Likert scale composed of 14 items with seven response categories. Its Cronbach alpha was .82, and exploratory factor analysis yielded one factor, explaining
30.37% of the scale variance (no dimensional differences were found after splitting the sample by gender: the factor explained 31.32% of the scale variance among men and 30.11% of the scale variance among women). Table 1 shows the mean and standard deviation of RWA and SDO in the three groups of participants.
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Attachment styles were assessed using Roccato and Tartaglia’s (2003) Italian adaptation of Carver’s Measure of Attachment Qualities (MAQ; Carver, 1997). MAQ consists of 14 items with a 4-point Likert scale, which assesses four attachment styles: avoidance, security (negatively correlated), ambivalence-worry, ambivalence-merger (positively correlated). These styles, in turn, measure two uncorrelated factors, the first of which is negatively saturated by avoidance and positively saturated by security, whereas the second is positively saturated by both ambivalence styles. With respect to traditional self-report questionnaires assessing attachment using categorical models, questionnaires like the MAQ have two main advantages: (a) They do not assume that variation among participants within a particular category is unimportant or nonexistent, and (b) they show higher test-retest reliability (Crowell, Fraley, & Shaver, 1999).
In this study, as in Roccato and Tartaglia (2003), confirmatory factor analysis showed that, after eliminating four items (“I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me,” “I don’t worry about others abandoning me,” “I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like,” and “My desire to merge sometimes scares people away”), the structure of the adapted MAQ was substantially identical to Carver’s. The model had a satisfactory fit, 2(35) = 44.620, p = .128, 2/df = 1.275, TLI = .987, CFI = .990, RMSEA = .028 (90% CL = .000, 050).2
Figure 1 shows that the adapted MAQ consisted of four first-order factors, which in turn originated in two uncorrelated second-order factors. The four first-order factors (together accounting for 69.88% of the overall variance) corresponded to Carver’s four attachment styles – Security (pct of var = 28.45%), Avoidance (pct of var = 20.47%), Ambivalence-Merger (pct of var = 12.06%), and Ambivalence-Worry (pct of var = 8.90%). Moreover, the two second-order factors corresponded to Carver’s and together accounted for 69.48% of the overall variance. The first second-order factor (pct of var = 41.48%) had a positive
relationship with the Ambivalence-Merger and the Ambivalence-Worry first-order factors. It was thus labeled Ambivalence. The other second-order factor (pct of var = 28.00%) correlated positively with the Security first-order factor and negatively with Avoidance. It was thus labeled Security-Avoidance.
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The sociodemographic and psychosocial variables were assessed by means of a
sociodemographic standard form that included three questions about belonging to sports and musical groups and about the importance of religion which had to be rated on a 10-point scale from 1 (not at all important) to 10 (very important).
Results Correlation Between RWA and SDO
To test the first hypothesis of this study, the Pearson correlation between RWA and SDO was calculated. The hypothesis was partially confirmed; r amounted to .21, p < 0.01. This correlation was positive and significant, even if weaker than that found in Italy by Aiello et al. (2005; r = .56). Since empirical research has shown that SDO is significantly influenced by gender (Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo, 1994), it could be hypothesized that the significant relations found between RWA and SDO could be modified if gender was partialled out. However, the degree of correlation was exactly the same when gender was controlled for, rSDO, RWA ٠gender = .21, p < .001.3
RWA and SDO Origins
A structural equation model was built in order to test the hypotheses presented above: (a) a positive relationship between insecure attachment style, on the one hand, and RWA and SDO, on the other; (b) a negative relationship between studying psychology and RWA; (c) a positive, reciprocal relationship between religiousness and RWA; (d) a positive relationship between participation in sports groups and RWA; and (e) a negative relationship between participation in musical groups and RWA. The same model was tested on SDO as well in order to study the similarities and differences between the psychological roots of the two constructs.
This model did not pass the tests of fit. Accordingly, some changes were made. These changes – all of which were reasonable from a theoretical standpoint – resulted in a
satisfactory fit for the model, 2(115) = 132.211, p = .130, 2/df=1.150, TLI = .983, CFI = . 984, RMSEA = .021 (90% CL = .000, .035).4 The model is presented in Figure 2. The relationships between the attachment styles, RWA, and SDO were complex and partially differed from those expected. Attachment security (expressed by the individual score on the
MAQ second-order factor Security-Avoidance) positively influenced importance of religion, which, in turn, raised RWA and lowered SDO. Moreover, the first-order MAQ factor
Avoidance directly reduced SDO. The other relationships between attachment, on the one hand, and RWA and SDO, on the other hand, were not statistically significant.
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Taking a more analytical look at the model, three psychosocial spheres had a direct relationship with RWA. These were course of study, religion, and group participation.5 Enrollment in the Faculty of Psychology lowered RWA; the importance of religion increased it. With regard to group participation, belonging to musical groups reduced RWA, whereas belonging to sports groups raised it.
Except for sports group participation, which directly influenced RWA and showed no other direct relationships, the remaining RWA predictors had complex interrelationships. In this sense, the most relevant roles in RWA development were played by enrollment in the Faculty of Psychology and by importance of religion. Besides directly lowering RWA scores, enrollment as a psychology student negatively influenced the importance of religion. The latter, in turn, was directly linked to RWA and to musical group participation: Attributing great importance to religion increased the probability of participating in these groups. This result is not surprising, considering that, among the participants, importance of religion and belonging to musical groups tended to be associated, 2(2) = 3.628, p < .100. However, participation in musical groups reduced the RWA score. It can thus be maintained that, as expected, importance of religion and participation in sports groups had a positive influence on RWA, whereas enrollment in the Faculty of Psychology and belonging to musical groups exerted a negative influence.
Figure 2 also shows that, apart from the importance of religion, the first-order MAQ factor Avoidance and, indirectly, the second-order factor Security-Avoidance, no other SDO predictor was found. Therefore, the present model was able to predict RWA more effectively than it predicted SDO, accounting for a small but relevant part of RWA variance (Adj. R2 = .
129) and for a very small percentage of SDO variance (Adj. R2 = .038). Finally, it must be
noted that the model satisfactorily fit the data if RWA and SDO errors were correlated. Thus, it is reasonable to postulate a superordinate variable that has an influence on both SDO and RWA scores.
Discussion
In this research, the correlation between RWA and SDO in Italy was studied, and a structural equation model predicting both constructs was built, drawing meaningful relationships between authoritarianism and personality. Some of its results were expected; others were not. The expected results were as follows: (a) For the most part, RWA and SDO predictors were different – their only common predictor, importance of religion, exerted a positive influence on RWA and a negative influence on SDO; and (b) the importance of religion and sports group participation exerted a positive effect on RWA, whereas enrollment as a psychology student and musical group participation had negative effects.
It could be argued that sports and musical group participation pertain to a very limited proportion of people and that the relationships between participation in such groups, RWA, and SDO might not be very relevant. However, this research did not use a representative sample; rather, it aimed at studying the origins of RWA and SDO in an Italian student sample. A large proportion of the Italian population under the age of 34 participates in these kinds of groups (Buzzi et al., 2002). Moreover, in this study, the percentage of participants who declared that they belonged to such a group was not irrelevant (35.7% for sports groups and 12.5% for musical groups). It can also be argued that the negative influence exerted by
participation in musical groups on RWA could be the result of a spurious relationship. Both variables could have been influenced by these participants having been parented by liberal music lovers. This hypothesis should be tested in future research, for example, by asking participants to describe their parents’ music preferences when the participants were in primary and secondary school and to define their parents’ political standing and using these variables as control variables in the analyses.
The unexpected results were as follows:
1. Although RWA and SDO were positively and significantly correlated, their
correlation was not very strong and significantly weaker than that found by Aiello et al. (2005), Z = 5.763, p < .001.
2. As shown in the model, the relationships between RWA and its predictors were more complex than hypothesized. Only two variables influencing RWA were exogenous: enrollment as a psychology student and sports group participation.
3. There was no mutual relationship between RWA and importance of religion: Importance of religion influenced RWA, not vice versa.
4. The relationship between insecure attachment and RWA was mediated by the importance of religion and, through this mediation, was negative. (It was secure and not insecure attachment style that increased RWA).
5. The insecure attachment style reduced, and did not increase, SDO.
As a whole, these results led to the following conclusions. Duckitt’s theory on the mechanisms governing the correlation between RWA and SDO was not entirely confirmed, at least not in Italy. It would be interesting to investigate this theory further in future research in order to determine whether it is sound enough to withstand in-depth analysis.
RWA and SDO had different predictors. In addition, the data confirmed the hypotheses concerning the “traditional” predictors for RWA (importance of religion, group participation,
and psychology enrollment). However, they did not confirm the most innovative hypothesis of this study, which postulated a direct, positive relationship between insecure attachment style, RWA and SDO. To the best of my knowledge, these data are very difficult to interpret: Contrary to the hypothesis, the results indicated that the elements that distinguish RWA from insecure attachment style are more relevant than the shared elements. They also indicated that it may not be correct to consider SDO as a mechanism used by insecure people to defend themselves from unpredictability and lack of meaning in their social world. Rather SDO may be considered an ideological construct that can further increase the security of those who already succeed in predicting events in their social world and in giving meaning to it. It may thus create a sort of “virtuous circle” between the security of personality and the security that can be constructed in competitive interaction with others. However, this study showed that relationships between attachment styles, RWA and SDO, do exist, at least among Italian students. This confirmed the theoretical usefulness and empirical feasibility of integrating the personality sphere into studies on authoritarianism, even if it might be necessary to rethink the model of the connections between these variables.
It can be argued that the link between secure attachment style, importance of religion, RWA and SDO is the most relevant result that emerged from this study. The connection between attachment style and religious sphere is in line with Kirkpatrick’s results (1998, 1999), which pointed out a direct relationship between secure attachment and general
religious commitment. As we have seen, giving the religious sphere a central position in one’s existence not only increased individual RWA levels, but also reduced SDO levels. This result runs counter to Altemeyer’s (1998) study, in which religiousness and SDO were not related. However, it is in line with the results obtained by Pratto et al. (1994): Some Christian precepts can be considered hierarchy-attenuating legitimizing myths. People who place great
how they perceive and represent themselves and their social world. In summary, being religious in a rigid way, conforming to the dictates of family and ecclesiastical authorities, may contribute to forming that “unholy alliance” between religion and RWA evidenced by Altemeyer (1988, p. 216). On the other hand, being religious in a more intrinsic way may reduce the trend to dominate others. This hypothesis could be tested in further research, for example, by means of the religious orientation scale developed by Allport and Ross (1967).
This study presents several limitations. First and foremost, it was not founded on a probabilistic sample, but on university students. Therefore, the present results cannot be generalized because students tend to be much less authoritarian than the general population. This may limit the importance of the results of this study, given that the interviewing of a population sample which is not very authoritarian by nature, such as students, may imply that the sample is not prone to HELMs. Future studies should be based on probabilistic samples, or at least on groups of people that are more heterogeneous than students with regard to their degree of authoritarianism (Meloen, 1993).
Moreover, it can be argued that the variable used for assessing religiousness was not completely satisfactory. For instance, research has shown strong connections between the way one believes in God and one’s RWA score (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). At the very least, intrinsic versus extrinsic faith and endorsement of forgiving versus punitive variations of Christianity could predict differences among those high and low on RWA and SDO. Undoubtedly, future research should adopt more refined measures of religiousness.
Furthermore, the MAQ model fit the data only after we inserted several double loadings into the model. Although those double loadings could be explained on the basis of the
attachment theory, it could be claimed that, at least in part, they may have made the reading of the model less clear. In addition, the first model tested for the prediction of RWA and SDO did not fit the data. The changes made to make it fit the data were theoretically driven and the
final model met both statistical and substantive requirements. However, it is important to explicitly note that RWA and SDO errors had to be correlated in order to make the model fit. This means that a variable exists, external to the model, that simultaneously influences the two constructs. Its exploration could be a challenging goal for researchers on
authoritarianism. According to Meloen (1993), this variable could be a sort of “general ethnocentrism,” which would emerge in the derogation of a large number of groups negatively sanctioned by society. General ethnocentrism would correlate positively with political-economic conservatism and would be founded on both leaders’ and followers’ authoritarianism. As seen, the present data showed that SDO and RWA had a significant but not very strong correlation. Nevertheless, general ethnocentrism could be taken into
consideration as the superordinate variable accounting for the tendency of RWA and SDO to covary.
Finally, as mentioned above, this study explained a moderate but significant percentage of variance in RWA and a very low percentage of variance in SDO. Most predictors that were taken into consideration in this study were significantly connected to authoritarianism. However, future research should focus on other variables that can increase the predictive power of the present model.
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Footnotes
1 As suggested by an anonymous reviewer, it is also possible that participating in a right-wing extremist music group may increase RWA. This objection seems reasonable. However, the musical groups to which this would apply constitute such a small minority as to be almost negligible.
2 Also tested were two alternative models, both of which had a less satisfactory fit than the one presented. In the first model, only the two second-order factors were used as latent factors, 2(32) = 221.051, p < .001, 2/df = 6.908, TLI = .718, CFI = .800, RMSEA = .130 (90% CL = .114, 146). In the second model, only a single latent factor was used, 2(37) = 548.900, p < .001, 2/df=14.835, TLI = .340, CFI = .458, RMSEA = .198 (90% CL = .184, . 213).
3 The existence of a significant correlation between RWA and SDO did not mean that RWA and SDO can be merged into a single construct. An exploratory factor analysis of the battery merging the 30 RWA items and the 14 SDO items (maximum likelihood extraction, varimax rotation) showed the existence of two factors (explained variance 17.19% and 8.68%, respectively). With a single exception (item 30), the first factor correlates with all of the RWA items more than it does with the SDO items. The second factor correlates with all of the SDO items more than it does with the RWA items.
4 The changes I made were the following: (a) Attachment and RWA were linked by means of an indirect relationship (mediated by the importance of religion), and (b) RWA and the importance of religion were linked by means of an asymmetric rather than a reciprocal relationship.
5 Given that group participation is expressed by dummy variables, the relation with their predictors represents the probability of participation. As far as enrollment in different
Author note
Michele Roccato, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Italy.
I would like to thank Marta Bassi, Valentina Beggio, and Katiuscia Greganti for the useful comments and suggestions they gave me on an earlier draft of this paper.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michele Roccato,
Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Via Verdi, 10, IT-10124 Turin, Italy. E-Mail: roccato@psych.unito.it
Table 1
RWA and SDO: Descriptive Statistics
RWA: Mean RWA: SD SDO: Mean SDO: SD
Psychology 108.90 28.51 51.43 17.28
Medicine 117.62 27.24 49.93 17.68
Biology 123.41 26.73 46.32 17.59
Figure captions Figure 1. MAQ confirmatory factor analysis.
Figure 1.
It.1
It.2
It.5
It.4
It.12
It.3
It.9
It.7
It.13
It.14
err
.97err
.34err
.34err
.43err
.10err
.94err
.80err
.80 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1Amb_Worry
Avoidance
.89 .87Security
Amb_Merger
.59 .83err
.57 1err
.34 1 .5 8 .98 .76 .54 .61 .55 -.11 -.14 .17Ambivalence
.27err
.15err
.89 1 .89 .63 1Security
Avoidance
.68 .94 -.39err
.45err
.88 1 1 .09Figure 2.
