You Really Can Fool Some of the People All of the Time

[Emproph]

I’ve been wanting to do a review of John W. Dean’s book, "Conservatives Without Conscience," but it looks like I won’t have to. I think there’s enough here to get the gist of it.

I highly recommend it for better understanding the mind of the lock-step, blind-to-reason, 'I’m right and you’re wrong' Christian Conservatives.

These articles are pretty self explanatory, but at the risk of being redundant I’m including some rudimentary background/reference information.

Note: If you want to skip to the juice – go to the second post. (-you can always come back here :))

~~

Dean relies heavily on Bob Altemeyer’s work.

Bob Altemeyer is a Yale-trained social psychologist who teaches and pursues his research at the University of Manitoba. Altemeyer has studied authoritarianism for the past 40 years, and is considered by his peers to be a leading authority on the subject, not to mention a cutting-edge researcher in the field.

~Dean, article, Oct 20, 2006

Bob Altemeyer is associate professor of psychology at the University of
Manitoba. He does research on authoritarianism, prejudice, dogmatism, love, and the impolite topics of religion, politics, and sex.

~Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2003

Altemeyer developed a scale to measure Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). A person can score from low to high on this scale, depending on their answers to a series of questions.

~~

The Followers:

Right Wing Authoritarianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Wing_Authoritarianism) (RWA) is a psychological personality variable or "ideological attitude." It is defined as the convergence of three attitudinal clusters in an individual:

1. Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives. "It is good to have a strong authoritarian leader."

2. Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities. "It is acceptable to be cruel to those who do not follow the rules."

3. Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities. "Traditional ways are best."

~~

The Leaders:

Social Dominance Orientation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation) (SDO) is a personality variable which predicts social and political attitudes. It is a widely applied Social Psychological scale.

SDO is conceptualized as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination and domination; that is, it is a measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any given social system.

SDO correlates with Right Wing Authoritarian and together they predict to varying degrees many forms of prejudicial attitudes.

Robert Altemeyer construes SDO as a measure which includes aspects of personal dominance, so that high-SDO individuals will aspire to gain more power and climb the social ladder. Altemeyer's research suggested that high SDO scorers were competitive on a personal level (agreeing with items such as "Winning is more important than how you play the game") and were also quite Machiavellian (manipulative and amoral) agreeing with items such as "There really is no such thing as 'right and wrong'. It all boils down to what you can get away with."

~~

And Finally:

The Worst of Both Worlds: The Rare and Scary “Double Highs”

They score high as both leaders and followers, an apparent anomaly that Altemeyer accounts for by explaining that Double Highs respond to questions relating to submission not by considering how they submit to others, but about how others submit to them. They inevitably see the world with themselves in charge.

Altemeyer provided a number of examples of Double High behavior. Ordinary social dominators and ordinary authoritarian followers Bother end to be highly prejudiced against ethnic and racial minorities. Double Highs, however, possess “extra-extra unfair” natures, and they can be ranked as the most racially prejudiced of all groups. It seems that two authoritarian streams converge in them to produce a river of hostility, particularly regarding rights for homosexuals and women.

~Conservatives Without Conscience

~~

...rare “Double Highs” want to be dominators. They probably endorse submission on the RWA scale because they like the idea of others submitting to them. High SDO-high RWAs would win the gold medal in a Prejudice Olympics, having even stronger prejudices than ordinary high SDOs and ordinary high RWAs. They are also more power hungry, more dominance-oriented, meaner, more Machiavellian, and more amoral than any other identifiable group in my samples. They have an almost magical ability to alloy the worst features of social dominators and rightwing authoritarians, and I have likened them to Hitler (Altemeyer, in press). They would seem to be the most likely persons to rise to the top of movements thickly sewn with high RWAs.

~Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2003

~~
On with the show.

[Emproph]

Autumn over at Ex-Gay Watch posted this blurb from an article recently written by Dean (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20061020.html) and is the inspiration for this thread. I pulled up a few more pages to help round out the info.

~~

From the article:

As these revelations by David Kuo [Tempting Faith] were surfacing, I was exchanging emails with Bob Altemeyer, a social scientist who brings four decades of research to bear on understanding the behavior both of the Bush White House, as well as with Evangelicals who are being manipulated by Bush and his aides. Altemeyer was too unique a source to not probe him about these activities.

Based on my exchanges with Altemeyer, I have assembled the following Q & A:

~~

Q: Why do these authoritarians follow amoral, hypocritical, deceitful liars?

A: Because of one of their great vulnerabilities, which the manipulative dominators exploit. Authoritarian followers have basically copied the ideas of the authorities in their lives. They haven't thought about things to any great degree and then decided what they believe in. To maintain their beliefs in a world of challenging discoveries and conflicting beliefs, they associate as much as possible with others who agree with them. They travel in small circles, getting booster shots of faith from one another. They rely upon social support, rather than evidence or logic, to keep on believing what in many cases they've simply memorized. But this makes them quite vulnerable to manipulators who tell them what they want to hear. Experiments show that they're so glad to find another person who will tell them that they are right, that they don't consider that the newcomer might have ulterior motives. All you have to do to get into their "in-group" is tell them they are right, even if you don't believe a word of it. Since the in-group is made up of followers clinging to each other and looking for a leader, it's pretty easy for an unscrupulous person to take over-- provided he can outmaneuver the other dominators trying the same thing.

[Emproph]

Stanley Milgram is also featured in Dean’s book. These next two articles talk about The Milgram Experiment which you may be familiar with. This first one is short and the second is a lengthier Wikipedia article. The Global Change Game is after these.

~~

The Milgram Experiment (http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm)

-A lesson in depravity, peer pressure, and the power of authority

Although the "teacher" thought that he/she was administering shocks to the "learner", the "learner" is actually a student or an actor who is never actually harmed.

At times, the worried "teachers" questioned the experimenter, asking who was responsible for any harmful effects resulting from shocking the learner at such a high level. Upon receiving the answer that the experimenter assumed full responsibility, teachers seemed to accept the response and continue shocking, even though some were obviously extremely uncomfortable in doing so.

And (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment):

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

~~~~~

The Global Change Game (http://www.asap-spssi.org/pdf/asap43.pdf) is also featured in Dean's book:

What Happens When Authoritarians Inherit The Earth? A Simulation. -Bob Altemeyer

First paragraph:
~Two runs of a futuristic simulation involving introductory psychology students were held on successive nights. On one night, "Earth" was populated entirely by right-wing authoritarian followers; on the second night, a small number of dominating authoritarians were included among a second group of authoritarian followers. With a few notable exceptions (e.g., nuclear war did not break out), the future evolved as anticipated on the two evenings. In general, authoritarians produced dismal futures, beset by unemployment, famine, and disease.

Last paragraphs:
~Perhaps the most striking aspect of the simulation was how automatically right-wing authoritarians, placed in a room filled with people rather like themselves, still divided the world into small enclaves of "Us" versus the global "Them."

Beyond that, high RWAs create - by their submissive tendencies - an easy opportunity for social dominators to attain power. And social dominators who are also right-wing authoritarians will be more acceptable to rank-and-file authoritarians than will social dominators who are not. So Double Highs have a built-in advantage over others in the game of Reach for the Top, as they have a ready cadre of people with similar economic and political leanings, steeped in the same prejudices and looking for just the kind of leadership they intend to provide. But dominating authoritarians are hardly the people I would choose to lead us. Which is not to say they do not, at least in certain places.

~~

Double Highs it would seem are the very definition of "survival of the fittest." -The most wild among us.

..I'm Andy Roo.. I mean, this is Emproph - signing off.

[dewdrop_world]

I saw you posted that at umc.org... heh heh...

This paragraph from Dean's article is also telling.

Q: You're saying then that, ironically, if the Religious Right has its way, the White House and Congress will be filled with amoral people.

A: Yes, I am, although of course there would be exceptions. And I'd say the proof is already right in front of us. When did we ever have a president who insisted on having the "right" to torture people, or a Congress that voted for it? How often have we had an administration deciding it could suspend habeas corpus and other constitutional guarantees, and Congress going along? And you can see this amorality on the individual level. Look at the members of the House of Representatives who have been convicted of crimes lately. Or look at the list of the 20 most corrupt members of the House (http://www.beyonddelay.org/) compiled by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. Every one of these lawmakers got high marks for his voting record from the James Dobson/Tony Perkins Family Research Council (http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=VR05J01). That's not a coincidence. There's this remarkable, actually weird but understandable, connection between being corrupt and being elected by the Religious Right. The crooks head for the Religious Right. The gullible rank and file don't realize this. But they send far more than their fair share of bribe-taking, influence peddling, money laundering, lying scoundrels to executive mansions and legislatures election after election."

James

[Emproph]

Just some ramblings I wanted to get out. I’m still trying to whittle this down into one simple equation like E=mc². Please forgive any sweeping generalizations – like the title.

This is framed in regard to conservative Christian authoritarianism as it relates to homosexuality but I think the principles apply to other subjects as well. P.S. I may slip into the first person from time to time.

~~
Like the emotionally and sexually ‘retarded’ child-predator who grew up emotionally and sexually abused, the conservative Christian suffers the abuse of reason and grows up to be morally ‘retarded.’ Their ‘age of reason’ was permanently suppressed when they defined (had defined for them?) reason itself as being the enemy of reason. Thus they “reason” that anyone who actually reasons is an enemy of “truth” and thus an enemy.

Overwhelming childlike fear results in the authoritarian mindset. Reasoning itself is outsourced to “authorities” for the purpose of avoiding taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions.

Thus the need to be right becomes paramount. Opposition of any sort represents an unconscious threat, because it's always a potential threat to their entire belief system.

Since their reasoning is not their own, inherent in the admission of being wrong about anything represents the potential to be wrong about Everything – ultimately their belief in God and thus salvation from eternal hell or eternal nothingness. Thus being right is based not on the desire to be right but on the fear of being wrong.

Part of their hatred of homosexuals lies in the unrelenting nature of our resistence. Being homosexual by nature, our resistence to being “changed” is by nature unrelenting. Our clear consciences testify to the merit of this, thus great lengths are gone to in order to undermine this idea. Every measure is taken to link same-sex attraction with destructive behavior, if it’s destructive, it’s harmful, thus it’s immoral. Thus homosexuality=immorality, and phew! My belief system is safe.

If Dobson et al were wrong about homosexuality, I would be wrong about homosexuality, making me inferior to those I despise. Being wrong all along about the enemy equals being more wrong than the enemy.

Authoritarian (assumptive) reasoning flawed=no Bible=no God=no supremacy=the fear of death and an empty life devoid of pride and full of guilt for those I’ve wronged.

Yup, they’re screwed. Trying to convince them of the immutability of homosexuality is akin to trying to convince them that the Bible is wrong. Anyone who says “prove the Bible is wrong,” really means, “use the Bible to prove the Bible is wrong.” Likewise, Dobson et al are the only acceptable sources to prove themselves wrong. And who decides Dobson is right? I do. And who decides I am right? My inner child brat who’s scared to death of life AND death.

No moral decisions=no responsibility=no consequences=no fear of being wrong=no moral decisions.

Remove any one of those factors from the equation and the entire belief system collapses. The legitimacy of homosexuality represents a threat to ALL of them. We’re not just a threat to their security blanket, we’re a threat to their salvation. A fear that by nature of their authoritarian belief system can never see the light of day.

I imagine that their addiction to denial must be something like the mother when faced with the allegations that her husband is molesting their children. Or the general whose life is the military, faced with the fact that his superiors – who send his troops into battle – are corrupt for doing so. Perhaps not the best examples but hopefully you get the point. -If they are personally wrong about gays, then so is Dobson et al, and everyone else. Morally they would be obliged to speak out on behalf of gays and against Dobson.

Their beliefs are not even their own, yet they defend them in order to protect the one belief that is their own – that authorities MUST make the hard decisions for me (ie, tell me what to believe). No decisions = no consequences = no fear.

They mistake our righteousness for the(ir) fear of being wrong. What they deny is that we’ve earned the right to be right(eous). We’ve already had “our” belief systems shattered, and survived. Our relentless resistence is mistaken for unrepentance.

I was going to ask “are they born that way or is this a learned behavior,” but since they’ve perfected the art of psychological projection, I think their explanation for the causes of homosexuality may be apropos. In short, Some are born with ‘tendencies’ toward authoritarianism yet much depends on upbringing. Which leads to the question, is there an authoritarian gene?

Whad’ I miss?

[Daniel]

You've outlined- in detail- what Joe Brummer articulated in the 2006: The Year in Review thread. This phrase in his summation of the past year caught my eye.

"They are so afraid that our salvation will somehow affect theirs."

What have you missed? Not much, if anything. The diagnosis is pretty complete dear Doctor. Though a thought did cross my mind, one which applies to us all, not just those who like to reply on outsourced authority. And that is that the ego always likes to be right and will seek out behaviors which keep that rightness in play.

Being happy? That's another matter. A fearful ego seeking 'rightness' is anything but happy. The fearful ego always needs an enemy. Of course, we fill the bill perfectly. That is indeed why our love upsets the apple cart. It is Love. Not fear.

[nmwolfboy]

They mistake our righteousness for the(ir) fear of being wrong. What they deny is that we’ve earned the right to be right(eous). We’ve already had “our” belief systems shattered, and survived. Our relentless resistence is mistaken for unrepentance.


Thanks for sharing such a post! i'm still wrapping my brain around it - i'm not the quickest thinker in the world.

My first impression is that you've nailed Christian authoritarianism. The quote i've included above is really well put. You've certainly given me food for thought today - Thanks!!!

:)

[novaseeker]

"They are so afraid that our salvation will somehow affect theirs."

This is just based on their own reading of the story of Sodom & Gomorrah: namely, that if this society "tolerates" homosexuality like the community of Sodom did, that it will get crushed by God, like Sodom did. Never mind that this isn't how Ezekiel described the sin of Sodom, or the references that Jesus makes to the story, either ... but in any case this is what they are getting at, I think. God wants them to restrict/intolerate/re-educate us, or he will punish everyone for having failed to do so.

[TigerXero]

This is just based on their own reading of the story of Sodom & Gomorrah: namely, that if this society "tolerates" homosexuality like the community of Sodom did, that it will get crushed by God, like Sodom did. Never mind that this isn't how Ezekiel described the sin of Sodom, or the references that Jesus makes to the story, either ... but in any case this is what they are getting at, I think. God wants them to restrict/intolerate/re-educate us, or he will punish everyone for having failed to do so.

In response, I'm quiet certain they didn't "tolerate" the attempted rape of angels. All I read is that a large crowd gathered to commit the act. There's no mention of the city knowing this was happening or what there response was to it. You could, of course, infer that the city of Sodom condoned inhospitality to its visitors as the rest of the Bible says how they were inhospitable. To use this in comparision to a homosexual couple would be, in my opinion, very unfair.

I see your logic in what you were saying though (for what the Church wants them to believe about Sodom).

[u-dog]

The text actually specifies that the entire population of men and boys of Sodom were in the crowd. I will double check that but I'm pretty sure. Its part of what makes the conservative interpretation so ridiculous. Come on ... ALL the boys and men of Sodom are gay? how likely is that?

[u-dog]

But Lot insisted, so at last they went home with him. Lot prepared a feast for them, complete with fresh bread made without yeast, and they ate. 4 But before they retired for the night, all the men of Sodom, young and old, came from all over the city and surrounded the house. 5 They shouted to Lot, “Where are the men who came to spend the night with you? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!”

[belladonnacordial]

Seriously though, what does rape ( of non-humans, beings of the divine ) have to do with homosexuality? The same thing rape has to do with sexuality in general which is nothing. Rape is about causing harm and humiliation to another in order to have a power trip. If the angels had been female angels would heterosexuality be called into question? No. People who use the bible to persecute gay people grasp at straws to put a religiously accepable face on what they know is bad behavior.

[novaseeker]

But of course no less bright a light than Thomas Aquinas wrote that homosexual sex is a worse sin than heterosexual rape because, unlike rape, it is a crime against nature.

[TigerXero]

But of course no less bright a light than Thomas Aquinas wrote that homosexual sex is a worse sin than heterosexual rape because, unlike rape, it is a crime against nature.

Well, then this calls into question how one defines a crime against nature.

[belladonnacordial]

Sounds like a bit of self-interest talking. Let us not forget that Thomas Aquinas was most unlikely to get raped heterosexually.

Anyway we know now, that only a portion of nature is heterosexual.

[Emproph]

Bob Altemeyer (see first post), has written a book, posted it online (http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/) and says it will be up for a year.

In the fall of 2005 I found myself engaged, most unexpectedly, in a heavy exchange of emails with the man who had blown the whistle on Watergate, John Dean. He was writing a book about "conservatives without conscience" -- which the late Senator Barry Goldwater was to have co-authored. Dean, Goldwater, and others with solid Republican credentials had been alarmed by the capture of the Grand Old Party by the Religious Right and its seemingly amoral leaders. Dean was plowing through the social science literatures on conservatism and religion to see what perspective academics could offer his analysis, and eventually he ran across my name.

...Yet John Dean was reading everything I had written and pummeling me with insightful questions for months on end. I had died and gone to heaven. And since John's best-selling book, Conservatives Without Conscience had used my research to help explain how America was going to the devil, he thought I should write an easy-read, non-technical account of what I have found before I do die, and go to heaven or the devil. It will begin appearing on a screen near you soon.
Get it, a "screen" near you soon? This guy's a hoot:

...And if after that you find yourself thinking, “More, more, I still want more. I simply love reading books on a monitor!” I’ll tell you the story of what happened at my university on the night of October 19, 1994, When Authoritarians Ruled The Earth.
~~~
The links to the chapters are not titled on the website, so I took them from the Introduction and hyperlinked them if you want to browse.

Introduction (http://members.shaw.ca/perchaluk/drbob/Introduction_links.pdf)
Chapter 1 Who Are the Authoritarian Followers? (http://members.shaw.ca/perchaluk/drbob/chapter1.pdf)
Chapter 2 The Roots of Authoritarian Aggression, and Authoritarianism Itself (http://members.shaw.ca/perchaluk/drbob/chapter2.pdf)
Chapter 3 How Authoritarian Followers Think (http://members.shaw.ca/perchaluk/drbob/chapter3.pdf)
Chapter 4 Authoritarian Followers and Religious Fundamentalism (http://members.shaw.ca/perchaluk/drbob/chapter4.pdf)
Chapter 5 Authoritarian Leaders (http://members.shaw.ca/perchaluk/drbob/chapter5.pdf)
Chapter 6 Authoritarianism and Politics (http://members.shaw.ca/perchaluk/drbob/chapter6.pdf)
Chapter 7 What's To Be Done? (http://members.shaw.ca/perchaluk/drbob/chapter7.pdf)