Low authoritarians correctly discount assigned essays and infer no personal opinion

Evidence

Thirty-two Lows happened to get an essay that a philosophy student had allegedly chosen to write from a pro-homosexual rights viewpoint. What was the essayist’s real opinion? You can see that, on a 1-9 scale, the 32 Lows inferred such a student would be strongly prohomosexual (mean = 8.16). Eighteen other Lows got the same essay, but with the understanding that the point of view had been assigned to the writer. What was the writer’s personal point of view then? These 18 Lows sensibly said, “Beats me.” Their mean equaled 5.39, a shift of only . from 5.0 (the ""Neu- Given that this same essay produced a shift of (8. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1389