A genetic and environmental analysis of 'right-wing authoritarianism' in twins reared apart and together

Building on the extensive research on the authoritarian personality conducted in the 1950's and 1960's, Altemeyer (1981, 1988) constructed the Right Wing Authoritarianism scale (RWA) to measure the three reliable facets of authoritarianism: conventionalism, submission, and aggression. Altemeyer adopted a social learning perspective to explain the development of social attitudes, with the rearing environment as the driving force. Additionally, Altemeyer viewed educational differences as a source of individual differences in authoritarianism, but his research did not support an association between intellectual ability or socioeconomic status and RWA. To further explore these relationships, this investigation employed monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared apart (MZAs and DZAs, respectively) and their spouses from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA) and monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared together (MZTs and DZTs, respectively) from the Minnesota Twin Registry (MTR) to determine the genetic and environmental influences on and correlates of RWA. Biometric model fitting using the four-group design showed that genetic factors account for at least 50% of the phenotypic variance and unshared environment for 35%. Common environment explains the remaining variance, but incorporating an assortative mating coefficient into the model renders unnecessary a common environment parameter. Partialling out variance due to general cognitive ability had little effect on the reared apart twin correlations. The MISTRA participant pool also served as an adoptee sample, allowing the analysis of specific rearing environmental influences, independent of genetic influences, on RWA. Measures of the childhood family environment included the Moos and Moos Family Environmental Scale (FES), the Block Environment Questionnaire (BEQ), and variables from the MISTRA Life History interview. Of the measures, only four FES scales showed systematic association with RWA scores, and only for individuals reared by biological relatives, but not for adoptees. For all participants, intelligence, education, and socioeconomic status were each moderately associated with RWA. Comparisons with the Traditionalism and Unlikely Virtues scales of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire suggested that the validity of the RWA is not compromised by its harsh wording and socially undesirable tone. American participants scored significantly higher than the British participants, a result tentatively attributed to broad social influences.