The dark side of ideology: Ideological worldviews and antidemocratic attitudes

This research investigated associations between diverse aspects of ideological worldviews and opposition to principles of liberal democracy in a heterogeneous sample of UK adults (N = 824). In line with the hypotheses, both system-justifying worldviews (e.g., authoritarianism and social dominance orientation), and system-challenging worldviews (e.g., need for chaos and prejudice against the rich and powerful) were robustly associated with antidemocratic attitudes adjusting for other predictors and demographic variables—and these associations were mediated by perceived illegitimacy of the democratic system. Several system-orthogonal aspects of worldviews, including a simplistic epistemology (e.g., lack of actively open-minded thinking) and misperceptions of antidemocratic attitudes among political opponents, also robustly predicted antidemocratic attitudes, while political prejudice, societal malcontent, and perceived superiority or the self and ingroup showed less robust effects. At a more specific level, the strongest predictors of support for democratic elections, censorship, political violence, and denying groups their rights were actively open-minded thinking, authoritarianism, need for chaos, and social dominance orientation, respectively. Taken together, the results contribute to a more unified and nuanced understanding of the psychological underpinnings of antidemocratic attitudes.