Dark triad traits may predict PC-authoritarianism and alt-right attitudes [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Dark triad traits may predict PC-authoritarianism and alt-right attitudes [pdf]

scottbarrykaufman.com

42 pointspseudolus19 comments

Pretty interesting, I'd strongly suggest anyone commenting read the article because the researchers use two distinct definitions of "political correctness" which they show to be strongly anti-correlated, with the common usage of political correctness being anti-correlated with the Dark Triad and the "authoritarian" one being correlated to both the Dark Triad and alt-right behavior.

In other words, the title has been changed from the original, "The Dark Triad traits predict authoritarian political correctness and alt-right attitudes" and mis-represents the author's findings.

I'd argue that "authoritarian political correctness" is the wrong term for questions such as, "When a charge of sexual assault is brought forth, the alleged perpetrator should have to prove his or her innocence” as that's straight up authoritarianism. While, "There are no biologically based differences in personality, talent, andability to reason, between racial groups." is pretty well aligned with conventional political correctness.

The fact that the researchers themselves show that agreement in one of those statements strongly correlated with disagreement with the other is evidence that supports my opinion.

For the love of all that's holy, show your scatter plots and let us actually see how well the data matches the claimed fit. My goodness.

"Moreover, it appears that the relationships between the dark side of human personality and right-wing political orientation and extremism, respectively, are relatively independent from each other. That is, that the endorsement of extreme political orientations is associated with the dark side of human personality is not a consequence of voters scoring high in the Dark Tetrad being more politically right-leaning."[0]

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5680983/

This is also one of the references for this study.

ABSTRACT:

> It is well established that mainstream personality traits are associated with moderate, traditional political attitudes. However, very little is known regarding trait predictors of extreme political attitudes. In the current study(N=511 U.S. residents), we examined the relationships between the Dark Triad traits, Entitlement and three extreme political attitudes that are highly covered in mainstream media: White Identitarianism (‘Alt-Right’),Political Correctness-Authoritarianism, and Political Correctness-Liberalism. We found that Dark Triad traits and Entitlement had incremental validity in the prediction of these 3 attitudes over demographic factors. The Dark Triad traits and Entitlement explained a substantial portion of variance in White Identitarianism and Political Correctness-Authoritarianism, and only a small portion of variance in Political Correctness-Liberalism. Across all attitudes, Psychopathy and Entitlement were the most consistent, strongest predictors. Results indicate that, from a Dark Triad perspective, Authoritarian PC advocates have more in common with extreme right advocates than those holding PC views related to compassion.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the whole research.

It feels like there's a larger underlying pattern here. I don't know if I can synthesize a good summary of it. Seems like it might be at the intersection of belonging/tribalism, identity, and needing to be "right" and imposing that on others (probably where the authoritarianism comes from).

The biggest weakness of this study and anything that I've seen discussing the "alt-right" is their arbitrary and capricious use of the term.

Alt-right is a very simple term to understand: it simply means people on the right of the political spectrum who reject the establishment. This includes: libertarians, monarchy restorationists, neo nazis and other groups.

The two tests for alt-right membership that were done were

1. Opposition to progressivism (PCA/PCL)

2. White Identitarianism

Assuming that this paper is actually measuring something (which is a big assumption for social science "research"), it certainly doesn't measure what it purports to measure. At best it measures the attitudes of people best described as "race realists" (their name, not mine) who also self-identify as White.

The paper also mentions that the research applies to new-left "liberal extremists" - not just extremists on the right.

But the hypothesis isn't really about that. It's about the relationship style of authoritarians - not their specific political tribe.

The defining features of authoritarianism are extreme in-group valorisation, extreme out-group hostility, and demands for compliance to tribal authority from everyone - even when that compliance is irrational (at best) or strategically self-harming (at worst).

This is exactly what you'd expect from collective instead of individual narcissism. There's no room for dissent, nuance, or open-minded inquiry, all of which are seen as ego weakness, and must be hidden or punished.

The in-group has to reinforce its own fragile image of superiority at all costs. Usually that means projecting all psychological and emotional weaknesses onto the out-group, where they can be disowned and attacked, sometimes with literal violence, or with verbal and intellectual violence - like brigading, or online trolling.

The tell isn't the tribal belief system, it's the extremism, aggressive token point scoring, and absolute lack of nuance and strategic awareness with which it's pursued and promoted.

The term alt-right was coined by Richard Spencer, a white nationalist, to describe his ideology which includes white nationalism and opposition to Progressivism [1].

Other, non-white nationalists may describe themselves as "alt-right", but they are effectively co-opting Spencer's ideology.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right

Disclaimer: I cite Wikipedia, but I also follow white nationalist movements closely and so I have my own level of expertise and awareness.

"it simply means people on the right of the political spectrum who reject the establishment"

This is not correct. The term refers to the traits described in the paper: White Identarianism and anti-progressivism.

While I'm very dubious of this paper in general, you got the title wrong. The full title is "The Dark Triad traits predict authoritarian political correctness and alt-right attitudes" (note 'authoritarian').

Specifically, if claims that 'PC-A' and 'alt-right' people are more similar on dark triad traits than 'PC-L' people. The 'PC-A' and 'PC-L' things are cited as being from an unpublished masters thesis, so... yeah.

Tried to squeeze the full title in but it exceeds the 80 character limit. With hindsight, perhaps more judicious editing of the title was called for.

Commenting so I can find this again after it's inevitably flagged.

There is a "favorite" link for this use case, underneath the link to the story on the main comment page.

Also, you'll get downvoted for talking about downvoting or flagging, as you currently see.

What's your interest? edit: it's an honest question.

I'm interested in HN commenters' thoughts on contentious issues.

HN's general consensus on any political issue is that, regardless of context, the left is the true evil.

This is funny. HN's general consensus on any political issue is that, regardless of context, the right is the true evil.

And you can even test this. Support communism in a comment and see how fast you get upvoted. Support Trump in a comment and see how fast you get banned.

This seems unsurprising. People with dark triad traits tend to more easily deviate from reality based on the stimulus they receive, making them much more receptive to extremist propaganda of any political leaning.

> People with dark triad traits tend to more easily deviate from reality based on the stimulus they receive

Maybe I'm a narcissist, but is this a scientific statement? How can you falsify it? You'd run into some pretty angry philosophers.

No offense but I think this is a poor model for both dark triad traits and political authoritarianism.

I recommend you look at it from an anti-sociality perspective - particularly the willingness to act anti-socially in order to achieve some desired end, whether that be "justice", "greatness", "fairness" or "equity".

Moreover equating rationality with good, "non-extremist" behavior is a mistake. Pro-sociality is only sometimes rational, and rationality is only sometimes good.

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