A specter is haunting political psychology—a specter of left‐wing authoritarianism: Development and validation of left‐wing authoritarianism scale in a post‐communist society

Abstract The position of left‐wing authoritarianism (LWA), contrary to its right‐wing counterpart, has long been contested within the psychological literature. Efforts to examine the nature of LWA have recently been revived. This research has, however, (1) been done exclusively in Western, liberal societies without any legacy of LWA ideas and (2) mostly ignored the economic axis of political beliefs. Previous operationalizations thus might capture only a specific constellation of LWA attitudes that are not universally representative. In this registered report, across three studies (total N = 1213), we developed a new reconceptualized LWA scale—the SLAV scale—and assessed its validity. The SLAV scale showed good factorial validity (with four interrelated but distinct domains of Anticapitalist Sentiment, Anticonventionalism, Antihierarhical aggression, and Censorship of right‐wing ideas) and related expectedly to previous operationalizations of LWA. Moreover, we found expected correlations of SLAV domains to variables of political and social beliefs, and cognitive style. The one key exception is that the relations of SLAV to RWA and ideologically neutral authoritarianism were predominantly negative or non‐significant. We consider the implications of our findings for research on authoritarianism in general, as well as how our results illustrate the need to reexamine the label of LWA.