Research Digest riporta e discute un articolo che valuta se un atteggiamento psicologico “autoritario” di sinistra sia possibile, di fronte ad una opinione piuttosto diffusa che non lo sia.
Avvertenza: lo studio si riferisce ad un contesto statunitense, ed usa termini comuni ma che in psicologia hanno un significato specifico.

Secondo l’articolo ci sono differenze tra le persone di destra e di sinistra con atteggiamenti autoritari:

They found a few differences between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians. People who scored highly on the LWA scale reported more negative emotions and were more neurotic than average (unlike RWAs). They were also more likely to report schadenfreude. The RWAs, meanwhile, scored higher for unjustified certainty in their beliefs and confirmatory thinking (a tendency to favour information that supports your beliefs). RWA was also more strongly linked to cognitive rigidity and low openness, as well as a lower than typical belief in science.

Ma esistono parecchie caratteristiche comuni ai due gruppi:

… it seems there is a shared constellation of traits “that might be considered the ‘heart’ of authoritarianism”, the team writes. These shared traits include (and again, I’ll quote directly from the paper): a “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behaviour, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy and moral absolutism.”

Immagine: Giovanni di Leida a Munster dipinto di Karel Frederik Bombled (Wikimedia Commons)