Right-wing authoritarianism robustly predicts prejudice, including anti-Muslim attitudes

Evidence

We examined RWA because it represents the extent to which people adhere to their own traditions and hold aggressive feelings toward other individuals who violate their norms (R. A. Altemeyer, 1988). Accordingly, RWA is one of the most robust predictors of prejudice throughout the world (Sibley & Duckitt, 2008) and has been linked to negative attitudes toward Muslims (Rowatt et al., 2005). — Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims, 86

To be inclusive, we included two different measures of prejudice: Arab American prejudice (Bushman & Bonacci, 2004) and MR, which is a subtle form of racism (McConahay, 1986). RF was also expected to be inversely related to sympathy toward a Muslim person because it tends to be related to prejudice to traditional outgroup members, such as homosexuals and ethnic minorities (Whitley, 2009), less positive attitudes toward Muslims (Rowatt et al., 2005), and as Study 1 demonstrated, it is also correlated with Islamophobia. — Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims, 117

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s portrayal of post-9/11 suspicion of Muslims as norm-enforcement against outsiders.
• DEFINE: Defines RWA as adherence to tradition plus aggression toward norm violators.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims: Psychometric…, 86; Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims: Psychometric…, 117