Shannon Houck

Ideologically incongruent authoritarians – liberal right-wing authoritarians and their counterpart conservative left-wing authoritarians – represent an important yet understudied group. What underlies the incongruence displayed by incongruent authoritarians? We present four conceptual frameworks for understanding this question: Psychological Ambivalence, Rigidity of the Right, Religion-Specific Authoritarianism, and Ecological Threat. We examined each of these frameworks using data from 14 studies and over 9,000 participants. Findings offer modest support for all four frameworks, but no framework on its own comprehensively accounts for incongruent authoritarianism. What is clear, however, is that ideologically incongruent authoritarians in the U.S. comprise a meaningful category with predictable differences from both their fellow non-authoritarian ideologues and their counterpart congruent authoritarians. As such, this work advances our current understanding of authoritarianism, provides unique insight into the psychology of incongruent authoritarians, and contributes to the ongoing asymmetry debate in political ideology.