Low authoritarians abandon environmental principles when their own jobs are threatened

Evidence

I expected High RWAs to be less concerned than Lows about the environment. So I did not expect the “you’ll lose your job” manipulation to affect Highs as much as Lows. Instead, the Lows were on the spot in this experiment. Would they put their income where their mouth was, when their jobs were at stake in an environmental controversy? … The answer was no. Of the 23 Lows who answered the control version of the case, 22 (96%) wanted the government to insist upon the tough environmental standards. Another 20 Lows answered the “‘you’l! lose your job” version, and significantly fewer of them (75%) wanted the government to stick to its guns (z = 1. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1559

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s ‘reading for’ theme that decorum/principles bend under self-interest; parallels moral-hypocrisy findings across group lines. — connects to: Organizations deny environmental change to protect their established roles and resources. — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 71