Does authoritarianism predict post-9/11 attitudes?

Abstract

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Americans have been faced difficult choices about how to balance concerns over safety and security with issues of human rights and international cooperation during the War on Terror. We hypothesized that two individual difference factors, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), would be significantly related to attitudes toward human rights, support for going to war with Iraq, desire for the United States to leave the United Nations, and endorsement of George W. Bush as President. Results of our study largely supported these and other predicted associations. Multiple regression analyses revealed that while RWA significantly predicted each of the aforementioned attitudes, SDO only accounted for additional variance in the prediction of human rights attitudes. Our findings suggest that although RWA and SDO are related psychological phenomena, they represent unique influences on socio-political attitudes. The two factors together may be useful in the study of Americans’ reactions to national tragedy.