High authoritarians received childhood training in obedience and fear of outsiders

Evidence

When we are young, we probably learn a lot about authoritarianism from direct teaching. Obedience is a key concept, and a battleground, for a two-year old, and parents do not usually hold seminars on civil disobedience with preschoolers. Indeed, in many families obedience remains a bottom-line condition for staying in the family home through adolescence, and beyond. Parents also teach their children to beware of certain threats, such as child molesters and kidnappers. We know from the accounts of both students and parents that as children, High RWA students were taught greater fear of these and many other “dangerous people” than others were (EOF, pp. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1014