No strong evidence that authoritarian attitudes are driven by a lack of control

Kakkar and Sivanathan (1) provide new evidence of the link between economic crises and the preference for dominant leaders and strengthen previous evidence of the influence of economic crises on authoritarianism (2⇓⇓–5). However, the authors’ interpretation of why economic uncertainty favors dominant leaders entails two further predictions that are not borne out by our follow-up analyses of their dataset. According to the authors, individuals choose more dominant leaders in times of uncertainty “to reduce the aversive state of low personal control when plagued by collective uncertainty”; in other words, “seek[ing] a dominant leader [is] a compensatory strategy to restore their sense of personal control” (1). This hypothesis predicts that people should prefer dominant leaders compared … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: lou.safra{at}gmail.com. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1