Fueled by fear of a dangerous world, encouraged by unjustified extreme self-righteousness, they are predisposed to cause harm, and display general fear, and malicious aggressiveness when sanctioned by authority.
Extreme self-righteousness: see themselves as far more moral and upstanding than others (yet the opposite is true); these false beliefs are theorized to be aided by their religiosity and it's guilt-evaporation mechanisms (like Confession) which appear to "wear down" their conscience, by leaving them 'guilt-free', and thus contributing to a remarkable self-righteousness, which unleashes their aggression. They believe they are right, holy, and pure and wish to smite down their enemies by fair or foul means.
"Many of them would attack France, Massachusetts, or the moon if the [conservative] president said it was necessary 'for freedom'."(p.56) As distasteful as these qualities appear, for authoritarians they can be (secretly or even openly) very attractive.
Highly compliant with social conventions, pro-conformity. Feel safer in the presence of powerful authorities. Often highly religious, zealous, dogmatic, moralistic, moderate to little education,
narrow-minded, intolerant, highly prejudiced, hostile and bigoted towards minorities, bullying, mean-spirited, severely punitive, panic easily.
Against freedom, anti-equality, anti-democratic, cold-blooded, ruthless, amoral, power-hungry, proto-fascist, Machiavellian, liars. Narrowly limited by inability to see the world from any other point of view. Have very little self-awareness. Do not realize as undesirable *any* of the many things research has discovered about them, and in the inverse of the reality, think they are "the good people". Have very compartmentalized minds, so they can suppress whatever they wish, whenever.
A much smaller number of them also strongly display the attributes of their leaders, of social dominators: highly amoral and dominating people who want to be submitted to, believe strongly in inequality, desire personal power. Typically men, often very cruel, ruthless, pitiless, unfeeling, unsympathetic, highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, homophobic), with conservative economic and political ideology. Again, they use many of these terms to describe themselves. Sober academic researchers call these people "particularly scary". They report going to church only for image and contacts.
Right and wrong are irrelevant to them. They value the ability to lie convincingly. Manipulative, tell others what they want to hear, create false images to sell self. Dishonest, cheat to win and call victims "suckers". "Hitlerian." Faintly hedonistic. Vengeful. Intimidating and bullying. Nationalistic.
Only a few of the followers can become aware of these qualities, and those few can sometimes do work to change their outlook and behavior. The social dominators, however, have proven unable to make such adjustments.
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