The Conundrum of Measuring Authoritarianism: A Case Study in Political Bias
By Thomas H. Costello
In the book "Toward a Science of Clinical Psychology" pp 395–411
Costello is a younger researcher. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Emory University in 2022. So he is in a good position to trash the work of his elders. And does he trash it! There is much to trash. In my 20-year research career from 1970 to 1990, I trashed it often. Costello does cite one of my iconoclastic papers. In the final words of his chapter, he summarizes the research field concerned as "interesting noise". I concur.
I won't attempt to summarize the chapter. It is an extremely thorough coverage of the issues in political psychology research. Psychologists are overwhelminhgly Left-leaning and the characteristic Leftist predilection to be believe only what they want to beieve has emerged strongly when they have studied political psychology. Costello sets out ably the ideological biases in their work. He shows that to the extent that you remove the bias you are left with no firm conclusions at all.
He has a major focus on what is still a beloved piece of political psychology research: "The authoritarian Personality" by Adorno et al. Practically every claim in that book has been shown to be faulty but its conclusions -- that it is conservatives who are authoritarian, not Communists -- is just too delicious to abandon.
But I doubt that Costello will influence any political psychologists much. Leftism is usually deeply entrenched in the personality so facts and logic are not going to shake that much
Costello's work is a great contrast with the paper by Kranebitter & Gruber that I mentioned recently. Kranebitter & Gruber treat with respect precisely what Costello has shown to be rubbish. Leftists never learn
The Abstract to this book chapter rather undersells it. Perhaps it has to:
Abstract
In this chapter, I review key conceptual and methodological sources of bias in psychological measurement, emphasizing those with particular relevance to political phenomena and providing relevant examples of measurement bias in political psychological research. I then review the case of authoritarianism, which until recently was predominantly assessed among political conservatives. This emphasis on right-wing authoritarianism and the paucity of research concerning left-wing authoritarianism have led to widespread conceptual obstacles to understanding the psychological underpinnings of authoritarianism, illustrating the degree to which measurement bias has key implications for theory development and testing. In closing, I provide several recommendations for reducing political bias in psychological measurement.
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Can America rediscover what made it great?
The loss of "greatness" is NOT the work of Americans generally. It is the declared aim of the American Left and they are good at accomplishing it. There is little that other Americans can do other than highlight the destructive results of Leftist policies
What happens when progress stops? That’s an important question in a country whose self-understanding is deeply tied to the idea of progress — material, technological, political and social. America’s first three centuries were characterised by physically pushing its border across the continent, west to the Pacific and then across nearly 2,500 miles of open ocean. It would not have been obvious to early Americans that Hawaii, a tropical archipelago far away from the California coast, would become the nation’s fiftieth state, joined in a political union with the far-distant original states facing the Atlantic.
While the country was expanding in size, rapid progress was made in many other areas: science and technology extended the average life span, elevated living standards and promoted social mobility and broad-based prosperity. Americans have come to expect upward movement to continue: GDP will keep rising and science will make us healthier and wealthier, while political and cultural movements will make us better, happier people.
The uncomfortable fact is that progress doesn’t happen by some law of nature and is not guaranteed to continue indefinitely
But progress has slowed, stalled or even reversed in recent decades. Technology is still advancing, but primarily in the digital world. People get married later and have fewer children; life span stopped increasing and has actually declined in the past several years, even before the onset of Covid-19. It now takes two incomes to support a family of four in the middle class; one income was sufficient as recently as the 1980s. Self-reported levels of happiness have dropped. Social trust is diminishing and the social consensus is badly frayed. Distrust of gatekeepers is widespread. The institutions responsible for protecting and advancing the interests of the nation — political, cultural, academic — have failed in their core mission and have become self-interested to the point of sociopathy. In short, America has not been moving upward.
The uncomfortable fact is that civilisational progress doesn’t happen by some law of nature and is not guaranteed to continue indefinitely. Civilisations can rise, achieve greatness and then fade, leaving behind evidence of impressive ingenuity. To the modern mind, it is disorienting to realise that earlier civilisations could have been just as prosperous, secure and happy as our own — perhaps more so.
But the trajectory of civilisation is not somehow upward by definition. Decline and decay are just as possible as progress. In fact, decay is the default: it’s what happens when you just do nothing. Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington famously argued, following a classic understanding of national cycles, that every nation is in either a state of development or decline. I would offer a modification that gets to the heart of the matter: there is an invisible force that drives development, which I call vitality.
The vitality of a nation can be judged in two ways: by the private life of its people and by its public life. In the private sphere, a nation is successful if the people are physically secure in their lives and their property; if families are being formed and are free, generally prosperous and self-sustaining; and if those families produce at least enough children to maintain a stable population. That sounds simple, because it describes the basic conditions for personal independence, physical security, social continuity and a general sense of wellbeing. Add to this a broadly shared worldview supported by religious piety and practice and one has the conditions for a vital civilisation. Rome and Athens had this. America used to have it too.
In the public sphere, civilisational vitality is shown in a capacity for collective action, which is rooted in what the fourteenth-century Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun called asabiyya. This concept can be understood as social cohesion, national or civilisational purpose, a feeling of being in it together and for the same reasons. When asabiyya is high, societies grow prosperous because high social trust supports complex trade relationships along with specialisation and division of labour, allowing for innovation and the production of luxury goods.
Just as personal vitality grows from a strong sense of identity and purpose, civilisational vitality springs from a shared identity that unites people, legitimises the state and explains its place in the world, and inspires great societal achievements. America has undertaken big projects in the past, from taming the frontier to the early space programme, but our ability to accomplish great things as a nation has waned in recent decades. One reason is a fading sense of national identity and purpose.
When the frontier closed, American national identity was largely set, and the nation’s restless energy then went out into a global project — which now seems to have run its course. Will the engine that propelled this country simply burn out? The past few decades in America have been characterised by five major phenomena: globalisation, financialisation of the economy, science and tech stagnation (despite advances in digital technology), managerialism and risk aversion.
Taken together, these developments have brought us to a crossroads. Numerous indicators of societal health have been trending downward, often reinforcing each other. Some trends owe to factors outside our control, others resulted in part from earlier decisions that were made in good faith and would have seemed right to most smart, informed, well-intentioned people at the time. Now it’s time to reckon with those errors and correct our course.
Many one-time-only advances were made in an earlier era: discovering electricity, preventing polio and other communicable diseases, developing antibiotics. These singular advances brought great material improvements to people’s lives, and the benefits were widely distributed. Let’s look at the average American home in 1900: by the best estimate, only 1 per cent of homes had indoor plumbing. There was no electric light, no refrigerator, no telephone, no washing machine, no television, no car parked outside. All these things were standard in the average American home by 1960. The typical home of 2023 wouldn’t look greatly different: the TV is probably a large flatscreen with many more channels; there are multiple phones and maybe no land line; there’s a PC or some laptops and tablets with internet. But the differences aren’t as dramatic as those between 1900 and 1960.
Things were changing fast and for the better before 1960. America was growing, people were living longer and healthier lives, and living standards were rising. There was a lot of momentum behind American expansion, and when progress slowed down it wasn’t really noticeable for a while. But science has been advancing more slowly and at greater cost, resulting in slower development of new technology that improves living standards, a slower increase in productivity, and lower real economic growth.
This is what Tyler Cowen called ‘the Great Stagnation’ in his 2010 book. A decade later, few people seem willing to accept the idea. Acknowledging that we’re in a period of stagnation seems like a form of heresy, even if its effects are all around us: stagnant wages, a widening wealth gap, a shrinking middle class, endless cycles of debt that trap people in what economic anthropologist David Graeber called bullshit jobs — ‘a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.’ Obesity and chronic inflammatory diseases have become more widespread. Loneliness and alienation have been rising since before Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone in 2000. Social cohesion is weaker and political polarisation is sharper. Americans have even stopped having enough children to keep the population steady, let alone expand it, one consequence of which is that the median age of Americans has climbed from 28.1 in 1970 to 38.3 in 2020. As American society has grown older, it has also become more risk-averse, less willing to take on big challenges that could lead to a more prosperous future.
The main consequence of stagnation is a loss of social mobility: the promise of modern American liberalism has been that if you work hard and play by the rules, you will do better than your parents, and if you go to college, a secure place in the middle class should be a near certainty. Now each new generation is doing worse than the one before it; many find themselves running just to stand still. At every stage of life, Generation X has owned a smaller share of the national wealth than baby boomers did at the same median age, while millennials own even less.
It’s easy to see why millennials are sometimes characterised as a Lost Generation and why sociopathologies — including high rates of drug use, sexual dysfunction, depression and other mental health issues — are so much in evidence among them, along with radical politics. They are a large part of American society, but because they hold such a small share of national wealth relative to the preceding generations at their age, they are more alienated from the system and resentful of the status quo. As a result, they look for answers. They’re not just asking, ‘Why are things the way they are?’ but, ‘I’m an adult now, how do I get my rightful share?’ Since the political mainstream appears to have failed them, many are inclined to seek answers outside it. One way to understand the rise of bitcoin is as an end-run around the existing financial system, which remains disproportionately controlled by boomers. The millennials and zoomers who see little hope for success within it are building an alternative.
We’re seeing a pattern of downward mobility and a proletarianisation of the American people. There are declining prospects for individuals, increasing precarity, and more social dysfunction. There is more inequality and more polarisation, both contributing to institutional decay. These symptoms have been much remarked upon, but the underlying malady has gone undiagnosed. If we want to arrest the disintegrative trends, we need to start by recognising that the decay is further advanced and far deeper than either the left or the right will admit. It also cuts across the left/right political dialectic that has prevailed since the end of world war two.
As much as these things are discussed, their causes are often misunderstood. Adding to the slowdown in science, structural demographic forces combine to create an environment ripe for conflict. The symptoms of societal decay are typically seen through a narrowly ideological lens. Political liberals blame billionaires, greed and bigotry for growing inequality, and call for redistributing wealth from billionaires to everyone else — which would not solve the underlying problem. Some conservatives see insufficient devotion to the cause of liberty behind the country’s malaise, while others identify a spiritual crisis leading to cultural degradation. While I’m quite sympathetic to the idea that there is a spiritual deficit in America, it is only part of the problem I’m describing here.
Many of the problems facing America today can be seen throughout the developed world, but the solutions will need to be distinctly American. A prerequisite for recovering national vitality is to regain a national purpose and identity. In this age of heightened awareness of group identities, the national identity that binds us together is given short shrift when the very concept isn’t being decried as oppressive. When a people loses its sense of itself and its place and purpose in the world, it disintegrates from within.
After world war two, the Cold War played a similar role to the frontier. Now the postwar American hyperproject has run its course. The factories have been exported, and proletarianisation is trickling up from the American working class to the professional managerial class. Even the merely rich are being left behind by the superrich. Industrial agriculture has exacted a great cost on the family farm and the environment. American pop culture, while still a powerful global phenomenon, is increasingly rejected by people in central and eastern Europe, across Asia, in the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere in favour of homegrown culture that better reflects local sensibilities.
Since 1941, the American military has never been completely at peace. After world war two came the Cold War and interventions in Korea, Vietnam, Africa, Colombia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq again, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and so on. Our military interventions have become a tragic farce that undermines our security, bleeds our young people and distracts attention from problems at home. The Great Power competition of the nineteenth century gave way to the ideological conflict of the twentieth century and is now being replaced by rivalries between civilisation-states, particularly China, India and Russia.
These are big changes in the way the world works, yet American elites still cling to a worldview born in the 1940s. It’s past time to rethink the national project and identity, and then move forward boldly.
One prerequisite for moving in a positive direction is to recognise the value of accepting risk. That may seem counterintuitive when any number of studies demonstrate that most people will choose security over freedom, justice, equality, or almost anything else. In fact, it’s difficult to accomplish normal things like raising a family when you have too much risk in your life, especially the wrong types of risk: there’s a big difference between the risk of taking Oxycontin and that of starting a homestead on the edge of civilisation.
The mitigation of risk is perfectly human and generally beneficial, but it also breeds complacency and a reluctance to take on big challenges that can move us forward. Looking back at the successes of the past several generations, it’s too easy to assume that progress is simply natural, when in fact it results from bold and courageous action.
Taking risks was a defining part of the American culture from the time the Pilgrims crossed an ocean to settle in a strange land, through the era of pioneers in covered wagons venturing into the wilderness, to the day that astronauts landed on the moon. Ironically, our society’s present risk aversion puts us in a very risky situation because it has caused stagnation, which increases social dysfunction and political conflict, and makes us less equipped to meet emerging global challenges. We need to recognise the danger we are in and be willing to take on risks to reverse the forces of decay. We can all have a part in restoring the national vitality that benefits all Americans.
https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/can-america-rediscover-what-made-it-great/
*************************************************Minneapolis: Man ordered to remove ‘Jesus is the only way’ T-shirt at Mall of America
A man inside the Mall of America last week was ordered by security guards to remove his T-shirt that read “Jesus is the only way” in a viral confrontation that has sparked online outrage.
The man’s bright yellow shirt read “Jesus saves” on the front and “Jesus is the only way” on the back with the “Coexist” symbol which represents peace among different religions crossed out, the footage shows.
Security guards told the man that other shoppers at the Minnesota mall said they were offended by the shirt.
“Jesus is associated with religion and it’s offending people,” one of the guards tells the man in the video from the Jan. 7 incident.
The man tries to reason with the guards, telling them that he didn’t speak or say anything to anyone — in terms of preaching.
He was removed from the mall for “preaching the gospel” on another occasion, he said in the video.
A spokesperson for the Mall of America told the Daily Mail that one week prior to the T-shirt incident, the man was “issued a 24-hour trespass for soliciting guests.”
The mall policy forbids “picketing, demonstrating, soliciting, protesting or petitioning” on the premises.
The security guard said the man’s religious tee still counted as soliciting even if he was not actively preaching. “Again sir, it is religious soliciting,” he told him in the video. “There is no soliciting allowed on mall property, which is private property.”
He added that people also said they were offended by the shirt.
The mall’s policy also disapproves of “apparel that has obscene language, obscene gestures or racial/religious/ethnic slurs that are likely to create a disturbance,” according to its website.
“I’m giving you a couple options,” the guard told the man, who was wearing a long-sleeved shirt underneath the t-shirt. “You can take your shirt off and you can go to Macy’s and you can do your shopping — or you could leave the mall. Those are your only options right now.”
However, the man was eventually allowed to keep his shirt on and go about his way shopping, a spokesperson for the mall said. ‘”After a brief interaction, the guest was not required to change his shirt and was allowed to remain at the Mall,” the representative told the Daily Mail.
Many Christians said they were shocked to learn the video was taken in the US.
“There is no way this should happen in USA,” Twitter user Carol Harper wrote. “He has a free speech right to wear that shirt, and a freedom of religion right to practice his faith in public places. More people should wear Christian shirts to that mall.”
A pastor said the man should take legal action against the mall. “He should sue them into oblivion,” Pastor Chase Thompson tweeted. “This wouldn’t have happened anywhere in the US until very recently, and it certainly wouldn’t have happened if he’d had a pride shirt on and even 50 people complained.”
Others said they planned to wear Jesus shirts en masse to the shopping mall as a protest.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/16/man-ordered-to-remove-jesus-is-the-only-way-shirt-at-mall-of-america/
****************************************************Kristi Noem Backs Bill to Protect Minors From Transgender Surgeries and Medical Interventions
“Governor Noem supports this legislation and will be watching as the legislature works through the process,” Ian Fury, Noem’s chief of communications, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday.
H.B. 1080 aims “to prohibit certain medical and surgical interventions on minor patients.”
Specifically, the bill bars a health care professional from performing certain acts on a minor “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of, or to validate a minor’s perception of, the minor’s sex, if that appearance or perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”
H.B. 1080 bars health professionals from prescribing or administering to minors any drug to delay or stop normal puberty or any cross-sex hormones such as testosterone to females and estrogen to males. It also bars them from performing “any sterilizing surgery, including castration, hysterectomy,” and other surgeries to remove sex organs, or any surgery “that artificially constructs tissue having the appearance of genitalia differing from the minor’s sex.” Finally, the bill prohibits the removal of “any healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue.”
Many prominent American health institutions push hormones for children, based on the theory that kids who persistently and consistently claim to identify with the gender opposite their biological sex will commit suicide if doctors do not help them force their bodies to conform to their self-image. They do so despite the weak evidence on the subject.
The Florida Department of Public Health determined in April that “systematic reviews on hormonal treatment for young people show a trend of low-quality evidence, small sample sizes, and medium to high risk of bias.” It cited an International Review of Psychiatry study stating that 80% of those seeking clinical care will lose their desire to identify with the opposite sex.
H.B. 1080 allows health professionals to perform the controversial interventions for minors “born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development, including external biological sex characteristics that are irresolvably ambiguous,” and minors who do not have a sex chromosome structure that is normal for a biological male or female. The bill also includes a “grandfather clause,” exempting any health care professional who began “a course of treatment for a minor” that would otherwise violate the bill before July 1, 2023.
The bill grants real teeth to the prohibition, requiring professional or occupational licensing boards to revoke “any professional or occupational license or certificate held by the healthcare professional” who violates the bill. It also grants minors who suffered injury from such medical interventions the ability to sue for damages, so long as the minor files the lawsuit before he or she turns 25 and within three years from the time the person discovered that the health professional caused the injuries or damages in question.
South Dakota Republicans previously filed a similar bill in the 2020 legislative session, House Bill 1057. That bill failed, in part because Sanford Health, a hospital network that is the state’s largest employer, lobbied against it. Sanford also opposed a bill to prohibit males who claim to identify as female from competing in women’s sports. Noem issued a partial veto against the first version of the bill, claiming that it opened up thorny legal issues, only to sign a similar version later.
“The bill to prevent doctors from giving hormone-blocking drugs to kids — when it failed, that was all Sanford,” John Mills, a Republican lawmaker representing South Dakota’s fourth house district, told National Review’s Nate Hochman. Doctors at Sanford Health have prescribed transgender hormone drugs to minors.
“You want to believe it’s not about the profit, but you also witness the reality of what’s happening on the ground and can’t help but wonder,” Mills added.
State Rep. Bethany Soye, a Souix Falls Republican in the ninth house district, told The Daily Signal that she thinks the bill is more likely to succeed this year.
“Today there is much more public awareness of what is going on in our state than there was three years ago,” she said. “Sanford Health has been very bold in promoting chemicals and procedures that cause permanent damage to children.”
Soye mentioned the Midwest Gender Identity Summit, which Sanford hosted with the transgender activist group The Transformation Project. South Dakota’s health department terminated its contract with The Transformation Project after The Daily Signal reached out for comment regarding the summit.
“There has also been a lot of national media attention pointing out the disconnect between South Dakota’s claimed conservative values and the practices that we are allowing to occur in our state,” Soye added.
The Republican also argued that minors cannot consent to transgender medical interventions that may have lifelong effects such as sterilization and weakening bone density.
“The list of things that a child under 18 cannot consent to is vast: drinking alcohol, buying cigarettes, getting a tattoo, buying cough syrup, etc. Yet all of these activities cause less permanent damage than chemicals that permanently stop their natural development and turn them into lifelong medical patients,” Soye said. “Studies show that when allowed to experience natural puberty, 80-90% of children struggling with their identities will accept and thrive as their biological sex.”
“Children need true help and healing, not permanent harm,” she concluded.
“It’s time for us to stop experimenting on kid’s bodies,” Family Heritage Alliance Action Executive Director Norman Woods said in a statement Tuesday. “We have been perpetuating the dangerous lie that through medical intervention, we can change a person’s sex. This harmful idea, and the industry profiting from it, are leaving a trail of broken bodies in their wake.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota opposed the bill, claiming in a statement that it would “prohibit doctors from providing live-saving gender-affirming care to transgender South Dakotans.”
“Anytime policymakers spread lies and misinformation about trans people and their medical care, it’s dangerous,” Samantha Chapman, ACLU of South Dakota advocacy manager, said in a statement Tuesday.
Sanford Health did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on the bill.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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