High authoritarians adopt principles opportunistically to justify self-interest

Evidence

In other words, Highs often support majority rights when they compose the majority but support minority rights when in the minority. Obviously, they believe in neither. While High RWAs think of themselves as being driven by high principles, in reality they often snatch their “principles” off the shelf, after the fact, to justify getting what they want. Many Highs can speak out of both sides of their mouth on an issue, and perhaps never notice they are doing so. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1486

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• DEEPTHINKING: This is a piercing observation about the psychology of bad-faith moral reasoning — principle-as-retroactive-justification rather than a genuine guide. Applies far beyond authoritarians to ordinary motivated cognition.
• XREF: Echoes the false consciousness of A Very Minor Prophet’s protagonist and general literature on self-deception; also connects to Milgrom’s rational-choice modeling of how people bend norms to suit interests.

Related

• Authoritarians adopt whichever rights principle serves their side’s current advantage (similarity 0.89)
• Authoritarians retain moral self-superiority through compartmentalized double standards (similarity 0.85)
• Authoritarians reason in isolated compartments without perspective-taking (similarity 0.84)
• Even low authoritarians share belief in pseudo-science and motivated reasoning (similarity 0.84)
• Authoritarians endorse contradictory principles and apply double standards without noticing (similarity 0.84)
• Self-serving bias and compartmentalization of contradictions are universal, not authoritarian-specific (similarity 0.83)
• Authoritarians maintain beliefs by avoiding challenges and curating agreeable information sources. (similarity 0.83)
• High authoritarians yea-say slightly more than low authoritarians do (similarity 0.82)
• Authoritarians see themselves as righteous enforcers allied with legitimate authority (similarity 0.82)
• Some authoritarians remain open to changing their beliefs (similarity 0.82)
• Authoritarians fail to challenge their own contradictory reasoning (similarity 0.82)
• Authoritarians apply a double standard favoring agreeable evidence when judging truth (similarity 0.81)
• Authoritarians differ only in degree, not kind, from ordinary cognitive fallibility (similarity 0.81)
• Authoritarians are selectively not anti-introspective (similarity 0.81)
• Authoritarians adopt their authorities’ enemies rather than reasoning independently. (similarity 0.81)