Authoritarianism and social dominance as differential predictors of individuals’ support for collective violence

Objective: In political psychology, extreme forms of outgroup animosity, such as collective violence, remain understudied. As such, we know little about the ideological reasons people support different kinds of collective violence. This study builds on recent research on the dimensionality of collective violence beliefs; we test the link between two well-established intergroup ideologies (right-wing authoritarianism [RWA] and social dominance orientation [SDO]) and support for two types of collective violence: diffuse collective violence (against members of outgroups) and upward collective violence (UCV) (against leaders of outgroups). We hypothesized that RWA would predict higher support for diffuse collective violence, but lower support for UCV. We also expected that SDO would predict higher support for both forms of violence.

Method: We employed structural equation modeling to scrutinize the relationships between RWA, SDO, and latent constructs of diffuse and UCV beliefs. This research was conducted using two distinct and diverse community samples in Lebanon (N = 596; 1,035) respectively.

Results: Results showed consistent evidence of a negative relationship between RWA and UCV beliefs and a positive relationship between SDO and diffuse collective violence beliefs.

Conclusions: The findings indicate that in a conflict-ridden setting, individuals may legitimize or delegitimize violence based on different ideological underpinnings, highlighting the complex interplay of beliefs and context. Future studies could expand this research into diverse environments to explore how conflict intensity affects these ideological influences on attitudes toward violence.