LEFT-WING AUTHORITARIANISM AND DANGEROUS AND COMPETITIVE WORLDVIEWS: A CORRELATIONAL STUDY IN A SLOVAK SAMPLE
Helena Tkáčová, Jana Turzáková
Abstrakt: Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) remains a relatively understudied construct in political psychology, particularly in post-communist contexts where the historical legacy of left-wing authoritarian regimes and the strains of societal transformation create specific conditions for its emergence. This study examined the relationship between LWA and dangerous (DWV) and competitive worldviews (CWV) within the Dual Process Model of Ideology and Prejudice (DPM), while also considering the role of subjective socioeconomic status (SSS). The sample comprised 122 adult participants from Slovakia (64 men, 58 women; M = 36.4 years), who completed the Specter of Left-wing Authoritarian Views Scale (SLAV; Petrović & Ninković, 2025), the Frequency Estimation Index of Social Worldviews (Perry & Sibley, 2010), and the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (Adler et al., 2000). Correlational analyses revealed statistically significant positive relationships between LWA and both DWV (r = .26, p = .005) and CWV (r = .25, p = .007), with Steiger’s Z-test indicating no significant difference between the two effect sizes. Dimensional analysis revealed that three of the four SLAV dimensions — anticapitalist sentiment, anticonventionalism, and antihierarchical aggression — were significantly correlated with both worldviews, whereas censorship of right-wing ideas showed no significant relationship with either worldview. A significant negative relationship between SSS and LWA was found (r = –.24, p = .009); however, bootstrap mediation analyses did not support a mediating role of SSS in the relationship between worldviews and LWA. These findings suggest that LWA is associated with a generalized perception of threat rather than an ideologically specific worldview, thereby challenging a straightforward extension of the DPM to left-wing forms of authoritarianism and empirically supporting calls for a reconceptualization of the construct’s motivational homogeneity.
Keywords: left-wing authoritarianism, dangerous worldview, competitive worldview, subjective socioeconomic status, dual process model, post-communist context
Pages: 58-68
Doi: -temp-
Source: Pomáhajúce profesie, 2026, vol. 9, issue 1, pp. 58-68 (PDF)
Language: Slovak
