Thanks, that's an interesting studyOriginally Posted by LittleFuzzy
they take a novel approach, and their conclusions are both intuitively appealing and apparently in line with popular narratives. At the same time, as I read the paper—without being at all familiar with the field and the methods—I found myself growing increasingly unconvinced. The samples are weirdly skewed wrt gender, their findings are inconsistent, the correlations are significant but weak, they test for preferences in a way that might be problematic (eg. the test for progressive/democratic leader preference may also pick up Trump-fans b/c of the anti-elitist/anti-corporatist element). Think it's also important to note the countries they focused on: UK, US, and Australia—all of which had conservative govts with dodgy leadership at the time (which might explain why perceived breakdown in leadership was associated with a preference for progressive/democratic leaders), and all of which are socially, culturally, and politically dissimilar from many other western govts.
I'm inclined to believe perceived division interacts with other psychological and socioeconomic determinants of political preference for authoritarian leaders, but I think that perceived moral division is a small and indirect link in the causal chain. Looking forward to reading comments on their findings from people who're actually familiar with the field though, because I certainly am not
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