# Authoritarian Followers The central research subject of [[Bob Altemeyer]]'s career: people who score high on the [[RWA Scale]]. Not followers in the casual sense of "people who follow a leader" but a specific personality profile — individuals whose measurable dispositions toward authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism form a coherent syndrome that predicts their political behavior with unusual reliability. Altemeyer's freely available 2006 book *The Authoritarians* remains the best accessible introduction to this population and how they think. ## The Psychology What makes authoritarian followers psychologically distinctive is not any single trait but the way multiple dispositions reinforce each other into a self-sealing system: **Compartmentalized thinking.** High-RWA individuals can hold contradictory beliefs simultaneously without discomfort, because they store them in separate mental compartments that rarely interact. They can believe in freedom of speech and support censoring their opponents. They can profess Christian charity and endorse harsh punishment of out-groups. The compartmentalization is not hypocrisy in the deliberate sense — it is a cognitive architecture that doesn't require consistency. **Double standards.** A direct consequence of compartmentalization. Authority figures and in-group members are judged by different standards than out-group members. The same behavior — financial impropriety, sexual misconduct, dishonesty — is excused in leaders and condemned in opponents. Altemeyer demonstrated this experimentally: present high-RWA subjects with identical scenarios attributed to in-group vs. out-group actors and the moral judgments flip. **Hostility sanctioned by authority.** Authoritarian followers are not generally aggressive people. Their aggression activates when perceived legitimate authority signals that a target is appropriate — when a leader identifies an enemy. This is the submission-aggression link: deference to authority is not passive but enables active hostility against whoever authority designates. The [[Conformity]] research tradition from Asch through [[Stanley Milgram]]'s obedience experiments shows how ordinary people commit harm under institutional permission; Altemeyer's contribution is measuring the *dispositional* variation in who is most susceptible. **Fear-driven mobilization.** High-RWA individuals perceive the world as more dangerous than low-RWA individuals do. They overestimate crime rates, exaggerate threats from foreign countries, and believe social decay is accelerating. This threat perception is not primarily driven by objective conditions — it is a dispositional lens that makes fear-based messaging disproportionately effective on this population. [[Propaganda]] that emphasizes danger, moral corruption, and the need for strong protective authority finds its most receptive audience here. **Herd behavior and [[Pluralistic Ignorance]].** Authoritarian followers calibrate their beliefs to what they perceive the in-group believes — and consistently overestimate the extremity and unanimity of in-group opinion. This creates a feedback loop: each individual shifts toward what they think the group wants, which shifts the perceived group norm further, which produces further individual shifts. The result is collective radicalization without any single individual intending it. ## Why They're Dangerous in Aggregate Altemeyer's most important finding is that authoritarian followers are dangerous *as a population*, not as individuals. Most high-RWA individuals are not cruel or malicious. They are conventional, earnest, authority-respecting people who believe they are doing what is right. The danger emerges from the *aggregate* properties of the syndrome: They provide the mass base without which authoritarian leaders cannot govern. They supply the foot soldiers, the voters, the rally audiences, the social-media amplifiers, the jury members who acquit in-group violence. They enforce [[Conformity]] laterally — policing each other's adherence to group norms, [[Scapegoating]] defectors. And because their aggression is authority-sanctioned rather than self-generated, they experience no guilt about the harm they enable. The leader gave permission. The group confirmed it. The target deserved it. This is what makes the follower-leader dynamic a *system* rather than a collection of individual choices. [[Authoritarian Leaders]] supply the direction; authoritarian followers supply the energy, the numbers, and the moral certainty. Neither functions without the other. ## The Follower-Leader Dynamic Altemeyer found that authoritarian followers and [[Authoritarian Leaders]] are drawn to each other through complementary needs. The follower needs an authority to submit to — someone who will name the enemies, enforce the norms, and restore order. The leader needs a base that will accept dominance without demanding accountability. The match is remarkably stable: high-RWA followers rarely abandon leaders who betray their stated principles, because the submission disposition overrides the evidence of betrayal. When someone scores high on *both* the RWA Scale and [[Social Dominance Theory]]'s SDO scale — what Altemeyer called [[Double Highs]] — the follower and leader dispositions merge in a single person. These individuals are the most dangerous actors in the system: followers who also want to dominate, leaders who also carry the in-group's moral certainty. ## Connection to Activation Theory [[Karen Stenner]]'s *[[The Authoritarian Dynamic]]* refined Altemeyer's portrait by showing that the follower syndrome is a *latent disposition* that activates under normative threat. Not all high-RWA individuals are politically mobilized at all times. The disposition lies dormant until conditions — social change, cultural diversification, perceived erosion of in-group norms — trigger it into active political engagement. This explains the episodic nature of authoritarian movements: the followers are always there, but their activation depends on context. ## See Also - [[Bob Altemeyer]] — the researcher who defined and measured the profile - [[RWA Scale]] — the instrument that identifies authoritarian followers - [[Authoritarian Leaders]] — the complementary profile - [[Double Highs]] — when follower and leader dispositions combine - [[Conformity]] — the broader social-psychological mechanism - [[Groupthink]] — the collective-decision pathology - [[Pluralistic Ignorance]] — the feedback loop that radicalizes groups - [[Scapegoating]] — how follower aggression finds targets - [[Propaganda]] — the messaging that activates followers - [[Cognitive Closure]] — the need for certainty that followers satisfy through authority - [[Social Dominance Theory]] — the complementary SDO framework - [[Authoritarianism]] — subject hub