Posted by dio on September 6, 2007, 9:51 pm, in reply to "How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Success" Sample quote (from Page 55, PDF page 61): Sometimes it’s all rather predictable: authoritarians’ parents taught fear of homosexuals, radicals, atheists and pornographers. But they also warned their children, more than most parents did, about kidnappers, reckless drivers, bullies and drunks--bad guys who would seem to threaten everyone’s children. So authoritarian followers, when growing up, probably lived in a scarier world than most kids do, with a lot more boogeymen hiding in dark places, and they’re still scared as adults. For them, gay marriage is not just unthinkable on religious grounds, and unnerving because it means making the “abnormal” acceptable. It’s yet one more sign that perversion is corrupting society from the inside-out, leading to total chaos. Many things, from stem cell research to right-to-die legislation, say to them, “This is the last straw; soon we’ll be plunged into the abyss.” So probably did, in earlier times, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, sex education and Sunday shopping.
I'm in the middle of this online book on what turns out to be a closely related subject (though I don't know that the respective sources have even heard of each other): The Authoritarians (PDF, 261 pages, about 1.3 Mb) by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba. Authoritarian followers score highly on the Dangerous World scale, and it’s not just because some of the items have a religious context. High RWAs are, in general, more afraid than most people are. They got a “2 for 1 Special Deal” on fear somehow. Maybe they’ve inherited genes that incline them to fret and tremble. Maybe not. But we do know that they were raised by their parents to be afraid of others, because both the parents and their children tell us so.
It looks to me as if at least some of the stuff in the Judis article and in the Altemeyer book is going to dovetail on some level, but I haven't read enough of either yet to start considering exactly how.
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