Cognitive ability and authoritarianism: Understanding support for Trump and Clinton

Author: Choma, Becky L.; Hanoch, Yaniv

Description: With Donald Trump the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee for the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, speculations of why Trump resonates with many Americans are widespread – as are suppositions of whether, independent of party identification, people might vote for Hillary Clinton. The present study, using a sample of American adults (n=406), investigated whether two ideological beliefs, namely, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) uniquely predicted Trump support and voting intentions for Clinton. Cognitive ability as a predictor of RWA and SDO was also tested. Path analyses, controlling for political party identification, revealed that higher RWA and SDO uniquely predicted more favorable attitudes of Trump, greater intentions to vote for Trump, and lower intentions to vote for Clinton. Lower cognitive ability predicted greater RWA and SDO and indirectly predicted more favorable Trump attitudes, greater intentions to vote for Trump and lower intentions to vote for Clinton.

Subject headings: Authoritarianism; Ideological beliefs; Right-wing authoritarianism; Social dominance orientation; Cognitive ability; Voting; Political psychology

Publication year: 2017

Journal or book title: Personality and Individual Differences

Volume: 106

Pages: 287-291

Find the full text: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886916310911

Find more like this one (cited by): https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=3883892626418086516&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en

Serial number: 4129

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