Implicit Ideologies: Do Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Predict Implicit Attitudes?

Many social and political attitudes, beliefs and behaviours can be predicted by Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA; a preference for authority and tradition) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; a preference for social hierarchies and inequality). These two constructs have predominantly been studied in the context of self-reported (explicit) attitudes, so the usefulness of RWA and SDO to predict individuals’ implicit attitudes remains relatively unclear and understudied. The current research examines a large dataset collected as part of Project Implicit to test the predictive power of RWA and SDO for implicit and explicit attitudes toward topics relating to authority, tradition and hierarchies (i.e., concepts most relevant to RWA and SDO). The findings of the current study suggest that RWA and SDO are in fact predictive of some implicit attitudes that are in line with the RWA and SDO ideologies, as well as most corresponding explicit attitudes.