Measuring Authoritarianism: Four Studies of Cross-Cultural and Longitudinal Scale Validity

Democracies worldwide have suffered from democratic backsliding and a rise in popularity of authoritarian politics. Understanding the psychological underpinnings of (support for) authoritarianism requires developing and validating scales to measure it. However, many authoritarianism scales perform irregularly outside of Western contexts, over time, and across groups. We conducted four studies, with samples from a total of 17 countries (total N = 31,767), to assess commonly used scales’ (three versions of Right-Wing Authoritarianism; Left-Wing Authoritarianism; Group Authoritarianism; Child Rearing; and Political Intolerance) latent item clustering, measure overlap, and invariance across cultures and over time. Specifically, we ask which measures remain invariant across different social groups, which items from different scales cluster together, and whether multiple scales for authoritarianism measure shared latent constructs. We find no evidence of cross-scalar item clustering or latent variable convergence. Moreover, items within scales clustered predominantly based on positive or negative wording. Breaking this trend were six items from the 32-item Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale, which addressed ideological and expressive freedoms. The six-item Political Intolerance scale by Dunwoody & Funke (2016) was the most invariant of the scales assessed. These findings suggest that (disapproval of) belief diversity may be a core psychological aspect of authoritarianism, which should be considered in theory and scale development.