Ignition for Education

I’ve argued in previous posts that education defined by the Creation Paradigm prioritizes the individual, rather than conformism, and that “Liberal Democracy and education guided by the Creation Paradigm are two sides of the same coin.” In other words, conformism and authoritarianism are opposed to what education ought to be. So, I find it interesting that, according to a wealth of research in psychology, conformism and authoritarianism are strongly linked.

In an article in Nature Reviews Psychology last year, Danny Osborne and his co-authors reviewed literature on the psychological underpinnings of authoritarianism[i]. They explain that the scholarly literature posits two causes—a “dual processes motivational model”—of right-wing authoritarianism. One is an inclination to favor conformism and to punish those who do not conform. Another is a tendency to view the world as a field of zero-sum competition for resources, status, and dominance. They suggest that, though the research is less advanced in this area much of this may apply to left-wing authoritarianism, especially to its tendency to demand ideological conformity and suppress opposing ideologies.

It’s important not to over simplify this. Conformism takes different forms in different people, and a person inclined to conformism will not always support authoritarian politics. Nor will a person who does support authoritarianism necessarily be an obvious conformist. But there does seem to be a great deal of scholarship that supports the existence of a relationship between the two inclinations.

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[i] Osbourne, Danny et. al. “The psychological causes and societal consequences of authoritarianism.” Nature Reviews Psychology, Vol. 2. April 2023. 220-232.