Is the left as dogmatic as the right?

An investigation compares the two main ideologies to see if they differ in this aspect.

It is evident that we are living in times of social and political change that are associated with the progressive left. An ideology that, in short, positions itself from its origins against the different forms of repression towards cultural and thought particularities, as well as in favor of citizen participation in the social and political debate.

All these principles and moral positions, however, need an implementation, a way to be applied in practice. And this is where the controversy and confrontation appear, not only about the methods to assume the objectives, but also about the goal to be achieved. For all these reasons, the University of Minnesota launched a study to determine the practices and techniques used by the left to convince the population and defeat their political opponents. The basic idea was to find out whether the left is as dogmatic and opposed to questioning certain ideas as the right, traditionally associated with conservatism.traditionally associated with conservatism. The final results are, to say the least, surprising.

• Related article, "What is Political Psychology?"

Politics, the new religion

Lucian Gideon Conway, associate professor of psychology at the University of Montana, warns that political ideology is one of the most ingrained and influential variables in our way of thinking, although we do not realize it, "to the point of being dogmatic," he notes.

Some years ago, after the end of the Second World War (1945) and the beginning of the Cold War (1945-1991), the following was coined the concept of the war of ideaspredicting that the next battles to be fought would be not so much material as ideological. Since then, propaganda has been the most useful tool to combat the ideas of the opposition. Expenditures in newspapers, television and programs related to political dogmatism, are counted in millions of dollars. H

t is a little less than a year since the Russian Revolution of 1917 was celebrated by Leninist communism. Some applaud it, others lament it and accuse the radical left of historical authoritarianism, largely because of the way public opinion has been polarized on the subject. As an example of the influence that the propaganda battle has had, it is worth noting that although at the end of World War II the Soviet Union had been mainly responsible for the defeat of Hitler, in recent decades it is more widely believed that it was the Americans who defeated the Nazis.

Conway's curiosity was piqued and, together with her psychologist colleagues, she decided to delve into the left's way of conveying arguments. She found that many of those many of those who were against dogmatism were already practicing it verbally..

Is the left authoritarian?

Unconsciously, authoritarianism is often associated with the extreme right and fascism. There are reasons for this, given that these positions legitimize ways of discriminating against people based not on their actions, but on their belonging to "fixed" categories such as race or place of birth. Conway, however, believed that dogmatism is also widespread among the left. As a starting point, the team of psychologists took the American Bob Altemeyer's "Authoritarian Right Scale" model as a starting point..

This method is nothing more than a survey to measure the authoritarianism of a person answering the questions. Some questions respond to the power that should be given to the State, the confidence in the authorities and in their laws. Phrases such as "it is always better to trust the rigor of the authorities regarding climate change and other science-related problems", to which we have to respond on different scales of agreement: absolutely agree, strongly agree, partially agree, slightly agree, neutral, partially disagree, strongly disagree and absolutely disagree.

This technique brings us closer to a very precise analysis given the range of possibilities to answer, especially to determine the level of ideological dogmatism. For this purpose, 600 students of ideological 600 students with a progressive ideology and 600 students with a liberal right ideology were selected.. Both groups responded to their respective surveys of their left/right political spectrum.

Surprisingly, crossing the answers of both groups, they coincided in three variables. According to the data obtained, left-thinking individuals are as authoritarian, dogmatic and extremist as their right-wing colleagues. The participants questioned were on the same political spectrum when asked about State power.

Conclusions and limitations of the study

As Conway asserts, this study has some limitations. The number of participants is too small to draw definitive conclusions. For the team of psychologists, there are good reasons to believe that the right tends to be more dogmatic than the left, and they assure that the studies still need to be developed a little more to be able to compare the behaviors of both ideologies.

On the other hand, the research is biased: trust in the state and the law does not have to be a trait of dogmatism. whether these effectively serve to ensure that all social groups live well, or in times when the threat of ultra-conservative influence is perceived because of the latter's tendency to systematically discriminate against certain minorities.