The Authoritarian Samba
The Overt Manifestation of Authoritarianism in Brazil
By Felipe Vilanova and Angelo Brandelli Costa (Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul)
Political psychologists have studied authoritarianism for almost one hundred years and some conclusions were repeatedly corroborated. One of them is that authoritarian attitudes tend to be more popular among political right-wingers (1,2). Linking political right-wing to authoritarianism has thus almost become a common-sense in the field (3). Nevertheless, our research showed that authoritarianism is not limited to right-wingers, as even centrists tend to overtly express authoritarian attitudes in the Brazilian context.
Authoritarian attitudes have been studied at least since 1950, when Theodor Adorno and his colleagues (4) were trying to understand whether there was a specific type of person more prone to uncritically submitting to authoritarian leaders. One of their conclusions was that those who support harsh coercive measures, who endorse differences between “decent people” versus others, and who consider obedience to authority a fundamental value of civilization, tend to support authoritarian leaders and consider themselves right-wingers. After Adorno, other studies were conducted and also found a strong association between support to harsh coercive measures, traditional moral values, obedience to authority and right-wing partisanship (5, 6, 7). The association between right-wing partisanship and authoritarianism became so strong that thirty-one years later, the psychologist Bob Altemeyer proposed the term Right-Wing Authoritarianism, which is still used today.
Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a concept derived from the studies of Adorno and his colleagues, currently defined as the co-occurrence of support to traditional moral values (e.g. opposition to gay marriage), support to harsh coercive measures (e.g. capital punishment) and uncritical submission to authorities (8). The questionnaire commonly used to assess RWA is the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale (1), and empirical studies usually find that those who self-categorize on the political right tend to have higher scores in this questionnaire than those who self-categorize on the political left or the political center (9). However, most studies on RWA focus on samples from the United States or Europe, usually ignoring how this phenomenon happens in other parts of the world (for a thorough discussion about it see (10)).
In order to verify how this phenomenon happens in Brazil, we conducted an online survey in 2016 in which 518 participants were first asked about their political self-categorization. They had to indicate where they would self-categorize on the political spectrum: left, center-left, center, center-right, right, or none of these. Then, they were presented with a RWA scale, which was developed in New Zealand (8) but translated and modified to correspond to the Brazilian context by ourselves (11). In this questionnaire, participants read sentences such as “We should smash all negative elements that are causing trouble in our society” and marked how much they agreed with the sentences.
The figure below illustrates the agreement with RWA sentences. Corroborating international findings, the connection between right-wing partisanship and scores in the RWA scale was found: those who self-categorized on the political left, tended to agree less with RWA sentences than those on center-left, center, center-right, right, and those who self-categorized in “none of these”. However, those on the center tended to agree with RWA sentences more similarly to right-wing individuals than left-wing individuals. The same happened to those who self-categorized on the group “none”. Thus, even centrists, who usually profess to have moderate political views (12), actually supported harsh coercive measures, traditional moral values and uncritical submission to authority to a considerable extent. In other countries as New Zealand, the agreement rate with RWA sentences tends to be much smaller (13), pointing out how authoritarian attitudes might be more commonplace in Brazil.
The result that centrists and right-wingers similarly agree with RWA sentences helps to understand the political situation in Brazil. Recent national polls suggested that most Brazilians tend to self-categorize on the political right (14). Thus, in addition to the right-wing majority, centrists and those who self-categorize out of the political spectrum are overtly expressing their authoritarian attitudes and probably electing politicians that represent them. The election of president Jair Bolsonaro corroborates this hypothesis, as he was elected with 57.8 million votes defending the military dictatorship that happened in Brazil from 1964 to 1985 and more recently telling a journalist to “shut up” after being asked if he was trying to make political interferences in federal investigations.
Thus, is there a silver-lining for anti-authoritarian initiatives in our country? We do not know, but our research might contribute in making this issue more visible and, perhaps, helping people to address it in future interventions. Cross-cultural open science networks involving countries outside the EU-North America axis might provide feasible and effective ways to deal with alarming social issues, especially authoritarianism.
About the Authors
Felipe Vilanova is a Psychology MSc. Candidate at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. His research focuses on social attitudes as right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, as well as corrupt intention.
Angelo Brandelli Costa is a Professor in the Psychology and Social Sciences graduate programs in the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul. His research focuses on prejudice, social attitudes, and barriers to health-care access.
About the ISPP & its Blog
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References
1. Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press.
2. Altemeyer, B. (1996). The Authoritarian Specter. London, England: Harvard University Press.
3. Baron, J., & Jost, J.T. (2019). False Equivalence: Are Liberals and Conservatives in the United States Equally Biased? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(2), 292–303. DOI: 10.1177/1745691618788876
4. Adorno, T., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D., & Sanford, N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper.
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7. Stone, W.F., & Smith, L.D. (1993). Authoritarianism: Left and right. In: W.F. Stone, G. Lederer, & R. Christie (Eds.), Strength and weakness (pp. 144–156). New York, NY: Springer Verlag.
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10. Vilanova, F., Milfont, T.L., Cantal, C., Koller, S.H., & Costa, A.B. (2019). Evidence for Cultural Variability in Right-Wing Authoritarianism Factor Structure in a Politically Unstable Context. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Advance online publication.
11. Vilanova, F., DeSousa, D.A., Koller, S.H., & Costa, A.B. (2018). Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Factor Structure of the Brazilian Version of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Trends in Psychology, 26(3), 1317–1334. DOI: 10.9788/TP2018.3–07En
12. Loureiro, E.R.L., & Casadei, E.B. (2019). “GLOBO DOESN’T SHOW IT”: Affective Dimensions of False News in the Discredit of the Traditional Press Debate. Work presented at the VIII Congress of the Brazilian Association of Researchers on Communication and Politics, Brasília, Brazil. Retrieved from http://ctpol.unb.br/compolitica2019/GT4/gt4_Loureiro_Casadei.pdf
13. Duckitt, J., & Bizumic, B. (2013). Multidimensionality of Right-Wing Authoritarian Attitudes: Authoritarianism-Conservatism-Traditionalism. Political Psychology, 34(6), 841–862.
14. Faria, F. (2019, June 4). Confiança na Democracia Sobe, mas Insatisfação com seu Funcionamento é de 58% [Trust in Democracy rises, but Insatisfcation with how it works is 58%]. Folha de São Paulo. Retrieved from https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2019/06/confianca-na-democracia-sobe-mas-insatisfacao-com-seu-funcionamento-e-de-58.shtml
