High authoritarians become dogmatic because they never develop their own beliefs

Evidence

Hugh did not develop as many ideas on his own as Lou did; instead, he got them from “the authorities in his neighborhood.” He believes what he has been told to believe, on the strength of authority. Is the authority likely to be wrong, in Hugh’s mind? I don’t think so. So will he likely be sure that what he believes is correct, the rock of the ages, the absolute truth, compared with Lou? Yep. In fact, I think that if you have not figured things out much for yourself, you are almost forced to become dogmatic, because otherwise you are helpless against opposing opinions with evidence on their side. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2644

Categorization

• XREF: Gives causal mechanism for how authority-submission produces the closed-mindedness Whitehead and Perry associate with Christian nationalism.