The Servant and the Master: authoritarian followers and social dominance orientation

We often tend to think that power-seeking people are similar in psychological make-up. However, political psychologists have found two extreme orientations that are quite dissimilar and show very little correlation at their core: right-wing authoritarianism (RWA, Altemeyer) and social dominance orientation (SDO, Sidanius). There are two important similarities between these orientations; they tend to

• have conservative economic philosophies (people don’t have the right to economic equality)
• divide the world into winners and losers
• be prejudiced against outgroups (e.g. minorities, refugees)

However, as Bob Altemeyer in The Authoritarians (2013) points out, the differences between these two orientations are greater than the similarities.

As we can see, SDO and RWA might seem similar but they have very different end-goals. SDO seeks to dominate or even overthrow those that are in power in order to gain control. On the other hand, RWA seeks stability and not to overthrow. They both feed into prejudice but SDO correlates to prejudice against inferior and disadvantaged groups while RWA correlates to prejudice against threatening groups—or those do not conform to tradition (Crawford et al., 2013).

Despite their differences, Bob Altemeyer sees the relationship as often complementary: RWAs seek strong leaders, especially when they feel threatened by outgroups, and SDOs provide them. We have seen this phenomenon most recently in the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who is clearly SDO and has few RWA traits. RWA leaders often tend towards Machiavellianism, whereas SDO leaders tend towards psychopathy, with SDO often agreeing with questionnaire items such as  

One of the most useful skills a person should develop is how to look someone straight in the eye and lie convincingly.

Basically, people are objects to be quietly and coolly manipulated for your own benefit. Deceit and cheating are justified when they get you what you really want.

You know that most people are out to “screw” you, so you have to get them first when you get the chance.

Altemeyer argues that RWA is really a personality disposition rather than a mere worldview. I would argue that the same is true for SDO. While we know that RWA is quite a common occurrence, especially in times of trouble, SDO may seem like a fringe phenomenon, or even pathological (psychopaths). However, the success of the extreme right in recent years has shown that SDO is much more than a fringe phenomenon.

Trump (SDO) could only become president with massive support by RWAs and as much as Trump was glorified by his supporters in the US, he was vilified by people abroad, not just liberals but also people with an RWA disposition (extreme social conservatives). This is not surprising, considering that RWAs are highly patriotic and abhor deviance from the norm. It looks like many RWA voters turned a blind eye to Trump’s deviant side, which could not be ignored by RWAs abroad. Interestingly, the same is not true for SDO people.

Vladimir Putin is as much SDO as Trump, even though he is somewhat better at disguising his SDO than Trump (e.g. by drawing support from religious fundamentalists). Like Trump Putin has strong support among RWAs inside Russia and is reviled by RWAs outside Russia. However, Putin also has a strong fanbase among SDOs across the west, typically populist politicians, including Trump himself. This is one of the most fascinating differences between RWAs and SDOs: RWAs follow in-group authoritarians and revile outgroup authoritarians, where SDOs often admire authoritarians, perhaps because they secretly would like to be like them.

Even though we know much less about SDOs than RWAs, I would argue that SDOs are a personality disposition just as much as RWAs, with the most extreme forms showing in high testosterone males. As both orientations seem to include far more than a mere worldview, but a cluster of traits we can assume that not only is there a genetic basis to both orientations, but that both orientations were shaped in different evolutionary environments. I have argued that these environments were agriculture (especially irrigation farming) and semi-nomadic pastoralism, respectively.

Of course, this is not to say that all farmer types are RWA and all pastoralist types are SDO. Most people conform more or less to their societal expectations, however, these orientations are likely to be latent in many people and become active in times of crisis. In “normal times” most of these people would just be “normal people”. In order to illustrate this point: high RWA can be best seen in the corporate world with its hierarchy and high productivity orientation, whereas high SDO can be best seen in team sports with its high competitiveness and the desire to see the opponent team crushed:

Sports, and especially sports fandom, has an audience that largely veers right. Trump’s declaration that he brought back football (for many, a seemingly meaningless triumph) was a very specific way the president spoke to his most ardent supporters. If you want to understand the power of populism, look no further than sports fandom.  (source)

Pastoralist types love challenges, success, fun and admiration and often subscribe to a macho culture. They can be great team players and are great at sports and entertainment, but they can also be dangerous populist politicians, especially when supported by a broad RWA majority. Ironically, historically pastoralists were most frequently the outgroup farmers feared most due to frequent raiding (e.g. Chinese farmers and Mongol pastoralists). What’s more, there are indications that modern states were only formed when pastoralists conquered farmer settlements and established themselves as the ruling group:

David Graeber and David Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) believe that state formation happened when two types of governance came together:

Early Uruk, for example, does not appear to have been a ‘state’ in any meaningful sense of the word; what’s more, when top-down rule does emerge in the region of ancient Mesopotamia, it’s not in the ‘complex’ metropolises of the lowland river valleys, but among the small, ‘heroic’ societies of the surrounding foothills, which were averse to the very principle of administration and, as a result, don’t seem to qualify as ‘states’ either. If there is a good ethnographic parallel for these latter groups it might be the societies of the Northwest Coast, since there too political leadership lay in the hands of a boastful and vainglorious warrior aristocracy, competing in extravagant contests over titles, treasures, the allegiance of commoners and the ownership of slaves. Recall, here, that Haida, Tlingit and the rest not only lacked anything that could be called a state apparatus; they lacked any kind of formal governmental institutions. One might then argue that ‘states’ first emerged when the two forms of governance (bureaucratic and heroic) merged together.

We can see traces of this process in the Hindu caste system where the Kshatriya warrior caste (SDO) is known to have been the ruling class historically but was later superseded by the Brahman priest (RWA) caste. RWAs may admire strong SDO in-group leaders, however, they should also be aware of the fact that SDO leaders rarely provide what RWAs crave most: stability.

Check out my book Understanding History: Herders, Horticulturalists and Hunter-Gatherers for more: