Altemeyer, B. (2006) | References | Narcissus and the Child

What This Research Found

Bob Altemeyer's four-decade research programme at the University of Manitoba produced some of the most rigorous empirical work on authoritarianism ever conducted. Building on—and substantially improving—the foundational work of Adorno and colleagues from the 1950s, Altemeyer developed measurement tools that have been validated across dozens of countries and used in hundreds of studies. His findings illuminate why some people readily follow authoritarian leaders while others resist, and why this matters for understanding narcissistic abuse at every scale.

The Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale. Altemeyer identified three core characteristics that cluster together in what he termed Right-Wing Authoritarianism: (1) submission to established authorities perceived as legitimate, (2) aggression toward groups that authorities designate as threats, and (3) rigid adherence to conventional norms and values. The "right-wing" in the name refers not to political conservatism but to submission to established power—communist party loyalists in the Soviet Union scored just as high as religious conservatives in the American South. The scale measures a psychological orientation toward authority, not a political ideology.

The Authoritarian Follower Psychology. High-RWA individuals think in characteristically compartmentalised ways. They can hold contradictory beliefs—believing simultaneously that their leader is honest and that he constantly lies "strategically"—without experiencing the cognitive dissonance that would trouble others. This compartmentalisation isn't stupidity; Altemeyer found no correlation between RWA scores and intelligence. Rather, it's a motivated cognitive style that prioritises group loyalty over logical consistency. High-RWAs also display remarkable in-group favouritism: identical actions are judged moral when performed by their group, immoral when performed by outsiders.

How Authoritarians Enable Narcissistic Leaders. The research reveals why flying monkeys and enablers seem genuinely convinced rather than consciously lying. High-RWA individuals submit to leaders they perceive as legitimate authorities, direct aggression toward targets those authorities designate, and maintain whatever norms the authority establishes—regardless of whether those norms changed yesterday. They don't experience hypocrisy the way others do because each situation is processed in its own compartment. When the narcissistic parent designates a new scapegoat, or when the political leader identifies a new enemy, authoritarian followers update their targets without revisiting their previous positions.

The "Deadly Cocktail" of High-RWA Followers and High-SDO Leaders. Altemeyer's most consequential finding concerned the interaction between two personality types. Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) measures the desire to dominate others and see the world hierarchically. Most high-RWA individuals are followers, not leaders—they seek authorities to submit to. Most high-SDO individuals want to dominate but lack loyal followers. When a high-SDO leader (who craves power and views relationships as zero-sum competition) attracts high-RWA followers (who crave certainty and want to submit to strong authority), the combination enables the most dangerous authoritarian movements. The leader provides dominance and direction; the followers provide loyalty, enforcement, and numbers.

How This Research Is Used in the Book

This research is cited in Chapter 15: The Political Narcissus to explain the mechanism by which narcissistic leaders maintain control over their followers through escalating demands for loyalty:

"Loyalty tests and purges maintain the narcissistic leader's control while feeding their paranoia. Trump's presidency featured constant turnover as officials publicly failed loyalty tests. Sometimes by refusing to prosecute enemies or acknowledging election results. Altemeyer describes how authoritarian leaders create 'loyalty spirals', each purge requiring greater submission from survivors, leading to increasingly extreme behaviour."

The citation supports the book's analysis of how narcissistic systems—whether families or nations—create self-reinforcing cycles of compliance. Each member who is expelled or scapegoated raises the stakes for remaining members, who must demonstrate ever-greater devotion to avoid becoming the next target. This explains both the escalating extremism of authoritarian movements and the intensifying dysfunction of narcissistic family systems.

Why This Matters for Survivors

Understanding authoritarian psychology provides survivors with frameworks for making sense of experiences that often feel incomprehensible—why certain people defend abusers, why some family members seem incapable of seeing obvious harm, and why entire communities can enable narcissistic behaviour.

You may recognise family dynamics in political movements. The authoritarian follower profile maps remarkably well onto enablers in narcissistic family systems. The spouse who defends an abusive partner, the siblings who blame the scapegoat, the extended family that maintains silence—these often display the same characteristics Altemeyer documented: submission to the narcissist's authority, aggression toward anyone who challenges the family narrative, and rigid adherence to family "rules" regardless of the harm those rules cause. Seeing these patterns named and measured can validate experiences that felt isolating.

Your inability to reason with certain people isn't your failure. Altemeyer's research on compartmentalised thinking explains why presenting evidence to some family members or enablers proves futile. They process information differently—not because they're stupid, but because their psychological architecture prioritises loyalty over consistency. The same fact that devastates you barely registers for them because it goes into a separate mental compartment that doesn't interact with their beliefs about the narcissist. This isn't something you can argue through; it's a structural difference in how they process reality.

The loyalty tests in your family mirror political loyalty spirals. Survivors often describe escalating demands: first they had to tolerate small slights, then defend obvious wrongs, then actively attack siblings who refused to comply. Altemeyer's documentation of loyalty spirals—where each purge raises the bar for remaining members—provides a framework for understanding this escalation. It also explains why siblings who once seemed reasonable became increasingly extreme in their defence of the narcissistic parent. They weren't necessarily worse people; they were caught in a system that demanded escalating commitment.

You can recognise authoritarian dynamics early. Understanding the characteristics of authoritarian followers allows survivors to identify these patterns in new relationships, workplaces, and communities before becoming enmeshed. The same red flags that indicate authoritarian political movements—demands for loyalty over truth, aggression toward those who question authority, compartmentalised thinking that excuses contradictions—indicate authoritarian dynamics in families, relationships, and organisations. This knowledge becomes protective.

Clinical Implications

For psychiatrists, psychologists, and trauma-informed healthcare providers, Altemeyer's research has direct applications in understanding patients who come from authoritarian family systems or who are processing involvement in authoritarian movements.

Assess family structure through an authoritarian lens. When patients describe family dynamics involving a dominant figure and compliant enablers, consider whether authoritarian follower psychology may explain enabler behaviour. This reframes the question from "why won't they see the truth?" to "what psychological needs does their submission meet?" and "what would leaving cost them socially and psychologically?" This understanding can reduce patients' self-blame for failing to persuade family members.

Recognise compartmentalised thinking as a trauma response. High-RWA individuals often had authoritarian upbringings—their compartmentalised thinking was adaptive in environments where questioning authority was dangerous. When treating patients who display these characteristics, consider that their cognitive style may be a legacy of childhood survival strategies rather than a fixed personality trait. The same neuroplasticity that encoded these patterns can, with appropriate intervention, encode new ones.

Prepare for the identity crisis of leaving authoritarian systems. Patients exiting authoritarian families, religious communities, or political movements face similar challenges: their entire social world, meaning structure, and identity were bound up in the system they're leaving. Altemeyer's research on what facilitates change—education, exposure to diverse perspectives, relationships across group boundaries—suggests therapeutic directions. But clinicians should also prepare patients for the grief, disorientation, and social loss that accompanies exit.

Distinguish between authoritarian followers and narcissistic leaders. Not everyone in an authoritarian system displays the same psychology. High-RWA followers and high-SDO leaders require different therapeutic approaches. The former may be more amenable to change through relationship and gentle exposure to alternative perspectives; the latter rarely seek treatment voluntarily and present the well-documented challenges of treating narcissistic personality pathology.

Consider how therapeutic relationships might model alternatives. For patients whose primary experience has been authoritarian relationships (submission or dominance, with no middle ground), the therapeutic relationship offers an alternative model: mutual respect, collaborative truth-seeking, and authority that doesn't demand submission. This experiential alternative may be more transformative than any insight the therapist offers.

Broader Implications

Altemeyer's research extends far beyond individual therapy rooms or political science departments. Understanding authoritarian psychology illuminates patterns across virtually every social domain.

Family Systems and Authoritarian Parenting

Narcissistic family systems often operate as authoritarian microsystems. The narcissistic parent functions as the high-SDO leader, demanding submission and enforcing loyalty through gaslighting, triangulation, and punishment of dissent. Enabling family members display authoritarian follower characteristics: they submit to the narcissist's authority, direct aggression toward scapegoated family members, and maintain whatever family "rules" the narcissist establishes. Children raised in these systems may internalise authoritarian follower patterns as survival adaptations—patterns that then shape their adult relationships, workplace behaviour, and political orientation. Breaking intergenerational cycles requires recognising how authoritarian patterns transmit across generations.

Workplace Authoritarianism

Organisations can function as authoritarian systems when leaders demand loyalty over competence, when questioning authority is punished rather than rewarded, and when designated scapegoats absorb blame for systemic failures. Altemeyer's framework helps explain why toxic workplaces are so difficult to reform: high-RWA employees may genuinely prefer authoritarian management styles, experiencing discomfort with collaborative leadership. Understanding this dynamic helps explain why some employees become flying monkeys for abusive managers while others resist, and why workplace culture change requires addressing psychological needs for certainty and belonging, not just implementing new policies.

Political Movements and Cults

The overlap between authoritarian political movements and cultic dynamics is substantial. Both feature charismatic leaders who demand total loyalty, both designate enemies and authorise aggression against them, both create information environments that isolate members from outside perspectives, and both make exit psychologically costly. Altemeyer's research suggests these similarities aren't coincidental—the same psychological profiles (high-RWA followers attracted to high-SDO leaders) appear in religious cults, political extremist movements, and some therapeutic communities. Recognising these patterns helps identify cultic dynamics before full enmeshment.

Religious Contexts

Religious authoritarianism presents particular complexities because submission to divine authority is often explicitly valued. Altemeyer found that high-RWA scores correlated strongly with certain forms of religiosity—particularly fundamentalist orientations that emphasise obedience, clear boundaries between in-group and out-group, and acceptance of traditional authority. However, religious practice can also reduce authoritarianism when it emphasises compassion, uncertainty, and connection across group boundaries. The research suggests that religious content matters less than religious structure: hierarchical, certainty-providing religious systems attract and reinforce authoritarian tendencies, while more egalitarian, doubt-tolerant religious practices may reduce them.

Educational Implications

Altemeyer's research on what reduces authoritarian tendencies has direct educational implications. Exposure to diverse perspectives, critical thinking education, and relationships with people different from oneself all correlate with lower RWA scores. Educational systems that encourage questioning, tolerate uncertainty, and bring together students from different backgrounds may inoculate against authoritarian appeals. Conversely, educational systems that emphasise obedience, provide simple answers, and segregate students by background may inadvertently cultivate authoritarian tendencies.

Media and Information Environments

The contemporary information environment creates unprecedented opportunities for authoritarian dynamics. Social media algorithms that create homogeneous information bubbles, cable news that divides audiences into separate reality streams, and online communities that reward extremism all exacerbate the conditions Altemeyer identified as fostering authoritarianism. Conversely, media literacy education, exposure to diverse news sources, and platforms designed to bridge rather than exploit divisions might reduce authoritarian susceptibility. The research suggests that technological solutions alone are insufficient—the psychological needs that authoritarianism meets must be addressed through meaning, connection, and genuine security.

Limitations and Considerations

Responsible engagement with Altemeyer's work requires acknowledging several limitations and considerations.

Self-report measurement limitations. The RWA scale, like all self-report measures, captures what people are willing to report about themselves, which may differ from their actual behaviour or unconscious attitudes. High-RWA individuals may present themselves in socially desirable ways, potentially understating authoritarian tendencies. Conversely, some items may trigger defensive responding. The scale measures a construct that predicts behaviour but doesn't directly measure behaviour itself.

Political bias concerns. Critics have argued that Altemeyer's framing reflects his own political perspective—that "right-wing authoritarianism" pathologises conservative values while ignoring authoritarian tendencies on the political left. Altemeyer addressed this by noting that communist party loyalists scored just as high as religious conservatives, but the debate continues. More recent research has identified "left-wing authoritarianism" as a distinct but related construct, suggesting that authoritarian tendencies may manifest across the political spectrum through different content.

Cultural generalisability questions. Most RWA research has been conducted in Western democracies, particularly North America. Whether the same construct operates identically in other cultural contexts—where relationships to authority may be structured differently—remains an open question. The scale has been translated and validated in many countries, but cross-cultural equivalence is difficult to establish definitively.

Causation vs. correlation ambiguity. While high RWA scores predict authoritarian behaviour, the causal direction remains unclear. Do authoritarian personalities cause support for authoritarian leaders, or does exposure to authoritarian movements increase RWA scores? The relationship is likely bidirectional, and Altemeyer's cross-sectional research designs cannot fully disentangle these effects.

Historical Context

Understanding Altemeyer's contribution requires situating it within the broader history of authoritarianism research. The foundational work in this field was Theodor Adorno and colleagues' 1950 study "The Authoritarian Personality," which attempted to understand the psychological roots of fascism in the aftermath of World War II. That work proposed a psychodynamic theory linking authoritarian tendencies to harsh parenting and repressed hostility, but it was criticised for methodological weaknesses—particularly the "acquiescence bias" in its measurement scales, where agreement with any statement scored as more authoritarian.

Altemeyer spent the 1970s and 1980s developing measurement tools that addressed these criticisms. His RWA scale balanced positively and negatively worded items, demonstrated strong reliability and validity across dozens of studies, and focused on observable attitudes rather than inferred unconscious dynamics. This empirical rigour established authoritarianism research as a legitimate scientific field rather than a politically motivated critique of conservatism.

The publication of "The Authoritarians" in 2006 came at an interesting historical moment—after the authoritarian responses to 9/11 but before the populist surge of the 2010s. Altemeyer made the book freely available online, believing that understanding authoritarianism was too important to be locked behind paywalls. When authoritarian movements gained power globally in the late 2010s, the book experienced a second life, downloaded millions of times by people seeking to understand what was happening to their countries. Its analysis of loyalty spirals, compartmentalised thinking, and the deadly cocktail of dominating leaders and submissive followers proved unexpectedly prescient.

The Authoritarians

APA Citation