Authoritarianism acts as a psychological bridge for dark personalities, study finds

People with antagonistic personality traits often express their self-centered tendencies through rigid, authoritarian political beliefs, which can act as a bridge to managing their self-control. A recent study suggests that these harsh personality characteristics rely on a strict adherence to authority and tradition to justify punishing others, rather than operating through a direct desire for social dominance. These findings were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Psychological researchers have proposed that aggressive and prejudiced social attitudes stem from two main motivational pathways in a framework known as the dual process model of prejudice. This approach separates ideological motivations into two distinct trajectories. One path is driven by a preference for social hierarchy, while the other is driven by a need for social order.

The first pathway is characterized by a preference for group-based inequality and social status. Psychologists call this social dominance orientation. People who score high in this area view the world as a competitive arena where certain groups naturally deserve to hold power over others.

The second pathway centers on strict obedience to established authorities and traditional norms. This is referred to as right-wing authoritarianism. Individuals with these tendencies perceive the world as a dangerous place, reacting to perceived threats with moral absolutism and a desire to punish those who break the rules.

Both of these ideological pathways have been associated with aggressive personality profiles. Recent psychological frameworks have identified a unified core for these antagonistic characteristics, termed the dark factor of personality. This core represents a general tendency to maximize personal gains at the expense of others while justifying the resulting harm.

This dark core encompasses several well-known traits, including narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism. Narcissism involves an inflated sense of superiority, psychopathy entails low empathy and impulsivity, and sadism involves deriving pleasure from the suffering of others. Rather than operating independently, these traits manifest as different expressions of the same underlying disposition.

To understand how these dark traits translate into behavior, researchers examine self-regulatory processes like emotion regulation and self-control. Emotion regulation involves the ability to manage and respond to emotional experiences gracefully. Self-control is the capacity to override impulses to achieve long-term goals or adhere to social standards.

Psychologist Fernanda Otoni at the Universidade Tuiuti do Paraná and her colleagues set out to investigate how these elements connect. They designed a study to see if authoritarian beliefs act as a psychological bridge between antagonistic personalities and a person’s ability to regulate their emotions and impulses. Their goal was to integrate personality, ideology, and self-regulation into a single explanatory model.

The researchers recruited 498 adult participants from various regions of Brazil. The volunteers ranged in age from 18 to 71, with an average age of about 33. The group was relatively balanced in terms of gender, and participants represented a wide spectrum of political affiliations.

Each participant completed a series of psychological questionnaires designed to assess multiple dimensions of their personality and behavior. One survey measured the dark factor of personality, asking respondents to rate their agreement with statements reflecting callousness, deceitfulness, and vindictiveness. Other surveys measured their levels of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.

To evaluate self-regulation, the team used two additional scales. The first measured general self-control, capturing the respondents’ perceived ability to resist temptation and maintain discipline. The second assessed difficulties in emotion regulation, identifying issues such as emotional impulsivity and an inability to accept negative feelings.

The researchers analyzed the responses using a statistical technique called path analysis. This method allows scientists to examine the directional links between multiple different variables simultaneously. They looked specifically for indirect pathways, where authoritarian beliefs might connect a dark personality to specific self-regulatory abilities.

They found that the dark factor of personality was entirely connected to self-control through right-wing authoritarianism. In this sample, individuals with highly antagonistic dispositions reported stricter adherence to traditional authorities and a greater willingness to punish rule-breakers. This authoritarian rigidity, in turn, was associated with their reported levels of self-control.

The results suggest that self-control is not always an adaptive, positive force. In people with high levels of dispositional antagonism, the ability to control impulses might function as a strategic tool rather than a purely protective capacity. They might use disciplined rule-following and punitive authoritarian beliefs as a socially acceptable way to express their hostility.

A surprising pattern emerged regarding social dominance orientation. A desire for hierarchical group relations did not act as a bridge between the dark personality factor and self-regulation. The statistical models showed no mediating effect for this variable on either self-control or emotional difficulties.

This lack of a relationship might be explained by the specific cultural context in which the study took place. In historically unequal societies like Brazil, social hierarchies are often sustained by traditional institutions and ingrained cultural norms. In such environments, individuals might not need explicit, self-serving personality traits to endorse anti-egalitarian beliefs.

The study also revealed insights into how emotion regulation operates. The researchers noted that difficulties in managing emotions had a direct, inverse relationship with self-control. This connection persisted even when accounting for the dark personality factor and authoritarian ideologies.

These emotional deficits did not appear to drive adherence to right-wing authoritarianism or social dominance orientation. The association between ideological beliefs and emotional dysregulation was very weak. This challenges the assumption that authoritarian individuals simply lack the capacity to cope with negative emotions.

Instead, the data support the idea that emotional regulation and self-control operate as distinct, relatively independent domains. People with maladaptive regulatory strategies, such as constantly suppressing their feelings, often struggle to maintain basic self-control. This regulatory failure seems to happen apart from their political or social worldviews.

The researchers detailed a few limitations to their investigation. Because the data came from self-reported questionnaires, the responses might be influenced by social desirability bias. Participants might have altered their answers to appear more favorable, especially regarding sensitive topics like prejudice and aggression.

The study relied on observational data gathered at a single point in time. This design means the results cannot prove that a dark personality alters someone’s authoritarian beliefs or diminishes their self-control. The associations only highlight how these psychological traits tend to cluster together in the population.

The statistical model used by the research team explained only a modest amount of the variation in the participants’ responses. This indicates that other unmeasured factors likely play a role in shaping how people regulate their emotions and form ideological beliefs. Socioeconomic status, childhood environments, and other personality traits might fill in the missing pieces.

Future investigations could expand on this framework by incorporating different cultural backgrounds and measures of social inequality. Including data that tracks individuals over many years would also help clarify the developmental timeline of these traits. Expanding psychological research beyond Western, industrialized populations remains an essential goal for the broader scientific community.

The study, “The dark core and the dual process of prejudice: When self-control and emotional dysregulation serve antagonistic ends,” was authored by Fernanda Otoni, Ariela Raíssa Lima-Costa, Antônio Silvério da Rocha Neto, Victória Sobreira Gonçalves, Ligia Ziegler Samuel, and Bruno Bonfá-Araujo.