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[Reelya]

What makes it worth studying is the fact that this thinking isn't isolated to a few nazi-types. The researchers find a healthy number of these types in every sample of regular college kids. Yeah, you can say it's the "are you a Nazi test" and say it's therefore silly. But a significant number of students match the personality profile, it's clearly a widespread thing worth looking at. I'd recommend the first chapter of the pdf before completely dismissing it:

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

There are a lot of separate attitudes that the research looks into over the last 4 decades, which correlate with the scale, not just voting patterns. And it goes beyond any single culture. People who scored highly in both the USA or USSR were the ones who believed their government were the good guys in the cold war, and demonized the other side. So it turns out the zealots on both sides are basically interchangeable, and most likely if they'd grown up in the other culture they'd be spewing the same bile in the opposite direction. The followers on both sides have exactly the same views of society and power as the other one does. This insight alone makes it worth having done the research.

There's a good one about rescinding the bill of rights. high RWA scoring students were the most likely to agree the Bill of Rights has to go to protect public morals, after being shown an article blaming the Bill of Rights for all sorts of social ills. So that's a bit alarming, that people who score highly on what is largely a test of conservatism, tend to have no problem agreeing to abolish the bill of rights.

There's also how students who score high on the RWA test are more willing to administer high levels of electric shocks to other students when the experimenter tells them do do as they please. So the test predicts basic sadism pretty well, too (when it can be blamed on an authority figure). That's also quite a telling discovery, that the people who will tell you they are the guardians of morals are basically more likely to torture someone for kicks than anyone else.

In wargames, the high RWA students were also much more paranoid and likely to overreact to perceived threats than other students. They were much more likely to perceive ambiguous manoevers as the enemy plotting to attack, and to initiate an arms race or a first-strike. So this personality profile definitely has bearings on things like gaming. Hence knowing something about your opponents poltical views could give you a good idea on how they would respond to ruses and the like. It does make a difference.

The most amusing one was nicknamed "posse". It basically postulates that the government has decreed some group a threat, and asks how supportive you'd be of a program to exterminate that group (escalaiting right up to executing the leaders). It turns out that no matter who the target is, the RWA students were more enthusiastic about the posse than anyone else (even if it was against religious groups, or their own political affiliated party). Finally, he proposed a posse against people basically described as right wing authoritarians. The RWAs were slightly less enthusiastic about this specific posse, but still more enthusiastic than any other students.

[mainiac]

In wargames, the high RWA students were also much more paranoid and likely to overreact to perceived threats than other students. They were much more likely to perceive ambiguous manoevers as the enemy plotting to attack, and to initiate an arms race or a first-strike. So this personality profile definitely has bearings on things like gaming. Hence knowing something about your opponents poltical views could give you a good idea on how they would respond to ruses and the like. It does make a difference.

All of these things are also true of me, as any player in one of my games of EOtFS could tell you.  Should we be afraid I will start a nuclear war if given a position of power just because I favor aggressive strategies in games?

[Loud Whispers]

Look up the different strategies of games of diplomacy with methuselahs, diplomats and opportunists.

All of these things are also true of me, as any player in one of my games of EOtFS could tell you.  Should we be afraid I will start a nuclear war if given a position of power just because I favor aggressive strategies in games?

YELLOW JACKET MAN :D

Spoiler: case in point (click to show/hide)

This is why we can't have fun things, sociologists don't know what fun is and why starting nuclear wars in model U.N. is hilarious bants

[miauw62]

Become India, threaten everyone with nuclear war?

[Loud Whispers]

When in doubt, drunk Indian nuclear war

[mainiac]

[Reelya]

In wargames, the high RWA students were also much more paranoid and likely to overreact to perceived threats than other students. They were much more likely to perceive ambiguous manoevers as the enemy plotting to attack, and to initiate an arms race or a first-strike. So this personality profile definitely has bearings on things like gaming. Hence knowing something about your opponents poltical views could give you a good idea on how they would respond to ruses and the like. It does make a difference.

All of these things are also true of me, as any player in one of my games of EOtFS could tell you.  Should we be afraid I will start a nuclear war if given a position of power just because I favor aggressive strategies in games?

You've got your causation backwards on all of that. And it's pretty much a strawman argument. Because no-one is making the case that the individual outcomes are predictive of the underlying behaviour, or that the risk is that they're going to "start nuclear war". I'm sure everyone has specific behaviour outcomes that are similar to serial killers (or Nazis for that matter). But to say that psychological profiling of serial killers (or Nazi ideology) is therefore not a real problem, because you never killed anyone is specious at best.

With RWA scorers there's a concentration of different outcomes. It includes the aggression, but in their case it's not just favoring a different strategy, they are suboptimal in their strategies because they make incorrect assumptions about other players moves, compared to the general population they do worse in strategy games. The college-age RWAs had worse strategic outcomes in that global game than even regular highschool kids do.

It's the collection of attitudes that makes the person. Their aggression spreads into - more willing to actually torture people if an authority figure tells them they're allowed to. More willing to give the death penalty, and long sentences for minor crimes, more willing to join posses and lynch mobs if the authorities say it's necessary, regardless of who the targeted group is. More willing to repeal the Bill of Right etc etc. Basically anything where you get the chance to be a nasty little fucker correlates well with the RWA.

This cluster of attitudes is what the RWA scale seems to be pretty good at measuring. And of course "well they never started a nuclear war" is a red herring. You just don't want someone like this in charge of anything where they have authority over other people.

[mainiac]

Sperficial simularities would be a good word... 

[Cthulhu]

The RWA test is horrible.  Questions are ridiculously loaded, you can find two or three distinct questions in many of them, though as SirQuiamus mentioned they all boil down to "are you a Nazi?  If you answered yes to any of this question, you are a Nazi."

[Reelya]

It says in the related literature why those specific sub-elements are in there, and why all three elements are covered in each question. The questions are loaded precisely because they're trying to measure the intersection of a cluster of three factors. That's discussed in the literature, and points out they could have added questions such as "do you think abortion is wrong" but they didn't because that really doesn't give much predictive power at all.

Those are not problems with the design, those are decisions made about what they're trying to measure, which is the cross-section of three factors: submission to authority, aggression in the name of authority, and wanting to make others conform too. Obviously, hardly anyone would answer "yes" to a "are you a nazi" test, but plently of people score highly on the RWA test. So it's good at detecting nazi-follower like mentalities in general population. Hardly anyone is a literal nazi, but plenty of people seem to be potential nazis if you go by the test results. It's worth researching for that reason.

The other part of it is how the test was evolved over 40 years. The main criteria was predictive power. Can this test be used to predict how people will act in different circumstances. And there's definite evidence that this is the case when you look at the large number of behaviours which are correlated with the test scores. For example high RWA scorers are also much quicker to ramp up the voltage in Milligram-style experiments, so RWA-style personality tests can give a new dimension of analysis into well established existing experiments. A test that tells you before-hand who's most likely to electrocute other people in the Milligram experiment has obvious value as a research tool, rather than just saying some people electrocute others more or less but we're not going to try and find out why.

[Loud Whispers]

This cluster of attitudes is what the RWA scale seems to be pretty good at measuring. And of course "well they never started a nuclear war" is a red herring. You just don't want someone like this in charge of anything where they have authority over other people.

Ah I see, so there is absolutely nothing politically motivated with a left-wing sociologist living under the Bush administration accusing the right wing of being composed of nazi sleeper cell churchgoers who should never be allowed into power? Nope! Nothing politically motivated at all :D
I'm reminded of the sociologists who made an experiment that concluded economics students lacked empathy and were sociopathic when their criteria for empathy was supporting socialist policies, where economics students would obviously support more liberal economic policies. The sociologists then concluded economics students needed empathy lessons, to learn the "right" opinions.
I also found this thing. Don't know what that is.

The RWA test is horrible.  Questions are ridiculously loaded, you can find two or three distinct questions in many of them, though as SirQuiamus mentioned they all boil down to "are you a Nazi?  If you answered yes to any of this question, you are a Nazi."

On a scale of -4 to 4 are you Hitler?

[SirQuiamus]

Those are not problems with the design, those are decisions made about what they're trying to measure, which is the cross-section of three factors: submission to authority, aggression in the name of authority, and wanting to make others conform too. Obviously, hardly anyone would answer "yes" to a "are you a nazi" test, but plently of people score highly on the RWA test. So it's good at detecting nazi-follower like mentalities in general population. Hardly anyone is a literal nazi, but plenty of people seem to be potential nazis if you go by the test results. It's worth researching for that reason.

Yes, those traits are probably quite prevalent in any human population, and yes, they probably do correlate with having Nazi-sympathies, as any 13-year-old could tell you. But the crucial question is, does this test measure those traits or something else altogether? It's supposed to be a "personality test" disguised as an "attitude survey," but as the questions are loaded with clusters of dogwhistles and fighting words, you have to admit that it's so artlessly and ham-fistedly "disguised" that any distinction between psychology and politics becomes moot (and let's ignore the fact that it's bloody difficult to differentiate personalities from attitudes in any case.) The personality traits have been already grouped into two opposing camps because the test in fact takes the conventional left-right dichotomy as its unstated premise and starting point – instead of explaining the left-right split in psychological terms, it simply presupposes the status quo and runs with it for Great Science. Even the author himself seems to acknowledge the horribleness of his methodology, but in the end he rather hilariously brushes it off and comes out on top (in his own mind):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Third, you knew what the items were trying to measure, didn’t you, you rascal!
The RWA scale is a personality test disguised as an attitude survey, but I’ll bet you
saw right through it.⁸ In fact, you could probably take each statement apart and see
how I was trying to slyly tap the various components of the RWA personality trait.

Take that first-scored item, No. 3: “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader
(authoritarian submission) who will do what has to be done to destroy (authoritarian
aggression) the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us”
(conventionalism). Well if you’re smart enough to do that, you’re smart enough to
realize how easily you might have slanted your answers to look good.⁹

⁸ The RWA scale is well-disguised. Personality tests are usually phrased in the first
person (e.g., “I have strange thoughts while in the bathtub”) whereas attitude surveys41
typically are not (e.g., “Bath tubs should keep to ‘their place’ in a house”). So it is
easy to pass off the RWA scale, a personality test, as yet another opinion survey. Most
respondents think that it seeks “opinions about society” or has “something to do with
morals.” Back to chapter

⁹ For the same good reasons, it’s out of bounds to give the RWA scale to your loved
ones, and unloved ones, to show them how “authoritarian they are.”

He's completely ignoring the fact that pretty much everyone taking the test realizes what they are being tested for, and that such traits as "submission to authority, aggression in the name of authority, wanting to make others conform, etc." are generally considered bad in our society, and most people are not willing to admit having them even to themselves. In other words, his data does not reflect "what people are like," but merely how they want to see themselves and how they want to be seen by other members of their social group.

Case in point: I got a "0% RWA" result, and as far as I know anything about myself, that does not sound very convincing. I mean, not even one percent? Oh come on, even Gandhi was at least 20% RWA, and Mother Theresa was probably somewhere above 95%. And I strongly suspect that if everyone in my department took this test, we'd see a statistically improbable row of zeroes accompanied by a beaming row of self-congratulatory faces. On the other hand, if you made members of a modern right-wing populist party take the test, we'd undoubtedly see a very narrow distribution of scores focused smack-dab in the middle of the continuum – the funny thing about contemporary European wingnuts is that very, very few of them self-identify as wingnuts, even in private.

Regarding the "predictive power" of this test in the mock UN scenario, we should ask: "What kind of people will publicly admit being Hitler-freaks?" The answer: Complete Morons. It's no wonder, then, that the people who got ~100% scores from this test fared badly in an intricate diplomatic game – they were the only ones too thick to figure out what all that dog-whistling was about.

And there's definite evidence that this is the case when you look at the large number of behaviours which are correlated with the test scores. For example high RWA scorers are also much quicker to ramp up the voltage in Milligram-style experiments, so RWA-style personality tests can give a new dimension of analysis into well established existing experiments. A test that tells you before-hand who's most likely to electrocute other people in the Milligram experiment has obvious value as a research tool, rather than just saying some people electrocute others more or less but we're not going to try and find out why.

This is pretty interesting because the Milgram experiment is another poignant example of a tendentious study with horrible methodology and unstated premises. Wikipedia lists James Waller's four objections to Milgram's study, and they are quite fatal to its central conclusions :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

   
1. The subjects of Milgram experiments, wrote James Waller (Becoming Evil), were assured in advance that no permanent physical damage would result from their actions. However, the Holocaust perpetrators were fully aware of their hands-on killing and maiming of the victims.
    2. The laboratory subjects themselves did not know their victims and were not motivated by racism. On the other hand, the Holocaust perpetrators displayed an intense devaluation of the victims through a lifetime of personal development.
    3. Those serving punishment at the lab were not sadists, nor hate-mongers, and often exhibited great anguish and conflict in the experiment, unlike the designers and executioners of the Final Solution (see Holocaust trials), who had a clear "goal" on their hands, set beforehand.
    4. The experiment lasted for an hour, with no time for the subjects to contemplate the implications of their behavior. Meanwhile, the Holocaust lasted for years with ample time for a moral assessment of all individuals and organizations involved.[18]

tl;dr: If your study tries to figure out why ordinary people like WWII-era Germans commit atrocities, you are probably doing real science. If your study takes "Nazis are Evil" as the premise and presents "Nazis are Evil" as the conclusion, you are not actually saying anything.

REALEDIT: Continued where I left off.
EDITEDIT: Much edit, very writing.

[Flying Dice]

This cluster of attitudes is what the RWA scale seems to be pretty good at measuring. And of course "well they never started a nuclear war" is a red herring. You just don't want someone like this in charge of anything where they have authority over other people.

Ah I see, so there is absolutely nothing politically motivated with a left-wing sociologist living under the Bush administration accusing the right wing of being composed of nazi sleeper cell churchgoers who should never be allowed into power? Nope! Nothing politically motivated at all :D

Gee, I didn't know that Bush was president in '81.

[Egan_BW]

This cluster of attitudes is what the RWA scale seems to be pretty good at measuring. And of course "well they never started a nuclear war" is a red herring. You just don't want someone like this in charge of anything where they have authority over other people.

Ah I see, so there is absolutely nothing politically motivated with a left-wing sociologist living under the Bush administration accusing the right wing of being composed of nazi sleeper cell churchgoers who should never be allowed into power? Nope! Nothing politically motivated at all :D

Gee, I didn't know that Bush was president in '81.

Of course. He was president before 2008.

[EnigmaticHat]

He was president in all years before 2008.