Right-wing authoritarianism predicts racial prejudice as a conventional outlet for aggression

Evidence

Anyone could become the target of authoritarian aggression, but unconventional people (including “social deviants”) and conventional victims of aggression (such as certain minority groups) are attacked more readily than others. Thus we would expect right-wing authoritarianism to correlate with ethnic and racial prejudice, because such prejudice provides a conventional outlet of aggressive impulses. Authoritarians believe that certain authorities approve of this hostility, and they may believe that certain groups threaten the social order. Hence the aggressiveness in prejudice can be authoritarian. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 151

Categorization

• XREF: Direct corroboration of Altemeyer’s core mechanism for the vault’s Christian-nationalism claims — links authoritarian submission to authorities’ sanctioning of outgroup hostility.