The authoritarian personality model of punitiveness is inconsistent in predicting punishment preferences: a sentencing vignette study in a representative sample from six countries

Right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) are routinely used to predict punitiveness and believed by some to form the dispositional basis of punitive attitudes towards offenders. The measures of punishment preferences employed in this line of research have been discredited in criminology as vague and biased. Instead, this study used sentencing vignettes distributed as part of a large population survey. Contradicting the assumptions of extant research, our data indicated that there may not be a single underlying punitiveness trait. Rather, we identified clusters of punishment responses with a latent class analysis. At odds with theoretical and empirical understandings of the authoritarian personality, the effect of RWA on punitiveness was partially suppressed by SDO, which itself was associated with lower punitiveness. Moreover, the subscales of RWA produced opposing effects on recommended sentences, undermining the assumption that RWA should be considered unidimensionally. The predictive power of scales derived from political psychology is modest and does not improve models differentiating between higher levels of punitiveness.