Oh no! The Atlantic has revealed there are undiscovered authoritarians on the left! Hide the children!
I read bad studies all the time, but this one is particularly bad. Witness:
Costello and his colleagues started fresh. They developed what eventually became a list of 39 statements capturing sentiments such as “We need to replace the established order by any means necessary” and “I should have the right not to be exposed to offensive views.” Subjects were asked to score the statements on a scale of 1 to 7. They showed a trait that the researchers described as “anti-hierarchical aggression” by agreeing strongly that “If I could remake society, I would put people who currently have the most privilege at the bottom.” By agreeing with statements such as “Getting rid of inequality is more important than protecting the so-called ‘right’ to free speech,” they showed an attitude called “top-down censorship.” And they showed what the research team called “anti-conventionalism” by endorsing statements such as “I cannot imagine myself becoming friends with a political conservative.”
Let’s go slowly here. Packing this much nonsense into a single paragraph requires the argumentative equivalent of swamp waders.
So. If I “agree strongly” with “If I could remake society, I would put people who currently have the most privilege at the bottom,” am I “authoritarian”? Well, that would depend on a few assumptions:
- Is the opposite response on this scale, the “disagree strongly,” considered to be an expression of declining to remake society at all, or is it an expression of keeping people with the “most privilege” exactly where they are? Yes, those are two very different decisions, even though in certain interpretations they might lead to a similar result.
- But on a related note, is the middle of the 7-point scale here an expression of moving some people with “moderate privilege” to the bottom? Or to the top? Or is that a neutral “take no action” position, and the “disagree strongly” is to make the least privileged even less so? Hard to say, and again, too open to interpretation to garner a useful response. Are the respondents actually reading the question this closely?
- Likewise, would the respondents have picked “agree strongly” to the question “I would destroy the freedom of speech if I could get rid of inequality”? Put that way…
- If I “agree strongly,” does that mean I am serious enough to enact the said policy for “reals” in the zero chance that I would ever have the power to “remake society”?
Note that after point 4, if this was Law & Order, this is where I would add, “Withdrawn, nothing further.”
So it seems any response to this question could be considered “authoritarian.” Strip privilege away from the powerful and you’re “authoritarian.” Decline to change society, and you’ve reinforced the current hierarchy – but what could be more “authoritarian” than supporting a preexisting hierarchy? Split the difference and you’re both supporting a hierarchy and undercutting it by doing nothing…. it’s almost as if we’ve got a socioeconomic Catch-22 here that reflects a sharp critique of capitalism… good job, AEI! I think y’all might be actually “leftist” and not know it. Perhaps I should set up a study to show that there are secret Marxists in the right. The standards for method are pretty loose these days…
You are also “authoritarian” and a supporter of “top-down censorship” if you “agree strongly” with “Getting rid of inequality is more important than protecting the so-called ‘right’ to free speech.” But this question only asks the respondent rank two values, not toss out the other. A belief that getting rid of inequality is not inherently “authoritarian” – in fact, I don’t think a single human being alive that is really concerned about inequality would also throw out free speech with the bathwater, as it’s kinda necessary to address inequality. Anyone can believe in both. But even with a Likert scale, the 4 is not a clear expression of a balanced position. Each point of the scale would need to be carefully teased out in a nuanced description, as in a pinch, I might have clicked “agree strongly” myself when my actual position is in the middle. This question, like many on these kinds of silly tests, pretends to address ethical dilemmas where values must be balanced against each other by pushing the respondents (who probably do not have a doctoral degree in political science) to take an extreme position that they may not actually have or ever act upon if they even did. Questions that pit free speech and equality against each other cannot be reduced to a linear scale. This isn’t a new problem with Likert, of course.
Finally, it’s “anti-conventionalism” to “agree strongly” with “I cannot imagine myself becoming friends with a political conservative.” So unless you can imagine yourself friends with a political conservative, you’re an authoritarian? I wonder how that would make for an icebreaker. “Be friends with me, or you’re an authoritarian!”
But there are two more serious problems with these results than the loaded questions. Those are just symptoms.
One, the responses are self-reported and completely untrustworthy. Someone who chooses “agree strongly” on all three questions is quite likely to violate their positions within the day, because there are no consequences for doing so, and no reward for being consistent.
The second is the most obvious problem – the author is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate, and the study, by virtue of its loaded questions and goofy analysis, is just attempting to smear some of the accumulated fascist mud off of conservative thought onto the nebulous left, as any “left” position can now be automagically rendered “authoritarian.” Cue the Onion: “Rotten Apples In Every Bunch, Claims Horde of Shambling Apples, All Rotten.”
If anything goes, by questioning the method of the study, I am clearly “authoritarian.” I find this unlikely, though, as I already spend too much effort making the trains run on time in Italy to be railroaded into a specific political station in life.