Social dominance and authoritarianism have mostly countervailing associations with attitudes about COVID-19 and its management

Abstract

Although social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) often predict similar outcomes, their respective motivations to reinforce inequality and mitigate threat are ostensibly incompatible with attempts to manage a pandemic. We test the potential countervailing associations SDO and RWA have with COVID-19 attitudes in a nationwide random sample of New Zealand adults ( N = 31,025). As hypothesized, SDO and RWA had countervailing associations with most COVID-19 attitudes, including believing the health risks were exaggerated; trust in and satisfaction with the government; compliance with various health directives; and getting information from mainstream media and the government. Nevertheless, SDO and RWA both correlated positively with getting information from social media, believing COVID-19 was laboratory-created, worrying about catching the virus, confidence in recovering from COVID-19, and ruminating about the pandemic. Collectively, these results suggest that people who prefer hierarchies may oppose COVID-19 containment efforts, whereas authoritarians may support such measures.