The Fundamental Determinants of Anti-Authoritarianism Davide Cantoni David Y. Yang Noam Yuchtman Y. Jane Zhang* March 2017 Abstract Which fundamental factors are associated with individuals holding democratic, anti-authori- tarian ideologies? We conduct a survey eliciting Hong Kong university students’ political atti- tudes and behavior in an ongoing pro-democracy movement. We construct indices measuring students’ anti-authoritarianism, and link these to a comprehensive profile of fundamental eco- nomic preferences; personalities; cognitive abilities; and family backgrounds. We find that fundamental economic preferences, particularly risk tolerance and pro-social preferences, are the strongest predictors of anti-authoritarian ideology and behavior. We also study simulta- neously determined outcomes, arguably both cause and consequence of ideology. Examining these, we find that anti-authoritarians are more pessimistic about Hong Kong’s political out- look and about their fellow students’ support for the movement; their social networks are more political; they consume different media; and, they are more politically informed than other students. Our extraordinarily rich data suggest that individuals’ deep preferences should be considered alongside payoffs and beliefs in explaining political behavior. Keywords: Political movements, ideology, preferences *Cantoni: University of Munich, CEPR, and CESifo. Email:
[email protected]. Yang: Stanford University. Email:
[email protected]. Yuchtman: UC-Berkeley, Haas School of Business, NBER, and CESifo. Email:
[email protected]. Zhang: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Email:
[email protected]. Helpful and much appreciated suggestions, critiques and encouragement were provided by Doug Bernheim, Arun Chandrasekhar, Ernesto Dal Bo,´ Matthew Gentzkow, Peter Lorentzen, Muriel Niederle, Torsten Persson, and many seminar and conference participants.