A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right 1 A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right Patrick S. Forscher1 and Nour S. Kteily2 1Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, 2Department of Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Author notes Data and materials for this project can be found at https://osf.io/xge8q/ Conceived research: Forscher & Kteily; Designed research: Forscher & Kteily; Collected data: Forscher & Kteily; Analyzed data: Forscher & Kteily; Wrote paper: Forscher & Kteily; Revised paper: Forscher & Kteily. Address correspondence to Patrick S. Forscher, Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, 216 Memorial Hall, Fayetteville, AR, 72701 (Email: [email protected]). A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right 2 Abstract The 2016 U.S. presidential election coincided with the rise the “alternative right” or “alt- right”. Although alt-right associates wield considerable influence on the current administration, the movement’s loose organizational structure has led to disparate portrayals of its members’ psychology, compounded by a lack of empirical investigation. We surveyed 447 alt-right adherents on a battery of psychological measures, comparing their responses to those of 382 non- adherents. Alt-right adherents were much more distrustful of the mainstream media and government; expressed higher Dark Triad traits, social dominance orientation, and authoritarianism; reported high levels of aggression; and exhibited extreme levels of overt intergroup bias, including blatant dehumanization of racial minorities. Cluster analyses suggest that alt-right supporters may separate into two subgroups: one more populist and anti- establishmentarian and the other more supremacist and motivated by maintaining social hierarchy. We argue for the need to give overt bias greater empirical and theoretical consideration in contemporary intergroup research. Keywords: politics; extremism; intergroup relations; dehumanization; prejudice; alt-right A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right 3 A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right The 2016 U.S. presidential election broke with orthodoxy on numerous counts. One of its most surprising features was the fact that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination — and subsequently the U.S. presidential election — despite flouting both conservative orthodoxy and U.S. political norms forbidding offensive speech targeting minorities. Trump’s election coincided with the rise of a political movement, the “alternative right” or “alt-right”, that took an active role in cheerleading his candidacy and several of his controversial policy positions (Schreckinger, 2017). Although the movement embraced Trump enthusiastically, the precise nature of its membership and goals remain unclear. Nevertheless, associates of the alt-right appear to wield considerable influence within Trump’s administration (Schreckinger, 2017), dramatically increasing the movement’s reach and political power. Moreover, some alt-right associates have shown a willingness to use aggressive behavior in pursuing their aims, including violence at political rallies (Berkeleyside editors, 2017) and doxxing of political opponents (i.e., publicly releasing sensitive personal information on the internet; Broderick, 2017). Beyond the significance of the alt-right’s rise for theories of intergroup relations, the movement’s growing political influence and the seeming willingness of some of its adherents to use extremist tactics towards their objectives highlight the practical need to better understand the psychological roots of alt-right support. Some of the opaqueness of the alt-right’s motivations follows from the movement’s largely decentralized structure; whatever formal organization it has exists primarily online (Caldwell, 2016; Bokhari & Yiannopolous, 2016; Lyons, 2017; NPR Staff, 2016; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2017). This has led to divergent understandings of their psychology. On one end of the spectrum are portrayals characterizing the movement as primarily driven by anti- globalist and anti-establishment sentiment (Guardian style editors, 2016; Bokhari & Yiannopoulos, 2016; Daniszewski, 2016). On the other end are portrayals characterizing the movement as driven by anxiety about threats to the status and power of US-born Whites (Lyons, 2017; SLPC, 2017; Caldwell, 2016; Daniszewski, 2016; see also Gest, Reny & Mayer, 2017), with some outlets explicitly labeling the movement as White supremacist (NPR staff, 2016; Armstrong, 2017). These different views of the alt-right make distinct predictions about its primary goals. If the alt-right is primarily anti-establishment, one would expect its adherents to focus on transferring power from perceived elites to perceived non-elites. If the alt-right is primarily supremacist, one would expect its adherents to focus on protecting and promoting the political interests of Whites and other favored groups. These characterizations need not be mutually exclusive; populist and supremacist subgroups may exist within the alt-right, and a given person may identify with the movement for both populist and supremacist reasons — perhaps especially if they view Whites as a victimized group whose plight has been ignored by elites (Craig & Richeson, 2014; Norton & Sommers, 2011). We sought to clarify the psychology of people who identify with the alt-right movement by comparing the characteristics of supporters and non-supporters. We assessed an array of psychological constructs, capturing a wide range of potentially relevant distinguishing characteristics. Based on journalistic and academic investigations of the radical right, we A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right 4 speculated that populism and supremacism might be important features of alt-right support and ensured that we assessed associated psychological constructs. For populism, these included concern about the gap between elites and non-elites, general attitudes about the economy, and trust in various media outlets. For supremacism, these included desire for collective action on behalf of Whites, Social Dominance Orientation (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994), blatant dehumanization (Kteily et al., 2015), and the motivations to express prejudice toward Blacks (Forscher et al., 2015). We use “populism” and “supremacism” broadly — the former to mean suspicion of elites and mainstream institutions, and the latter to mean a belief that some groups are superior to others and need their interests protected.1 Finally, we measured characteristics, such as the Dark Triad and self-reported aggression, that might capture a disposition toward extremism. Although we did not have firm hypotheses due to our study’s exploratory nature, we had a modest expectation that alt-right adherents would prefer groups that have been historically advantaged in US society (e.g., men, Whites), derogate both disadvantaged minority groups (e.g., Blacks, Muslims) and political outgroups (e.g., Democrats), distrust mainstream institutions, and report high levels of extremist behavior. Method All data and materials can be found at https://osf.io/xge8q/. Alt-right sample. We recruited our participants using mTurk and set a recruitment goal of 400-500 per sample, which we believed was large enough to obtain accurate effect size estimates for most psychological variables (Schönbrodt & Perugini, 2013). Our mTurk posting specifically asked for alt-right participants, and we offered participants $3 for their participation. To ensure that this sample genuinely identified with the alt-right, we added identification probes both at the beginning and end of the survey (with the latter probe appealing for honesty and assuring that compensation was not contingent on their response; see Chandler & Paolacci, 2017). If a participant answered that they were not a member of the alt-right at the beginning of the survey, they were routed out and a cookie was placed in their browser preventing re- responding. If the participant indicated they were not alt-right at the end of the survey, they still received payment but their data were not included in analysis. 978 people viewed the online consent form, 682 identified as alt-right in the first probe, 552 made it past the initial demographic questions, 492 reached the second probe, and 480 (97.6%) identified as alt-right on this second probe. We eliminated 36 extra responses: 17 because they were not recruited through mTurk,2 14 because we determined that they were unlikely to be true members of the alt-right from their free response data (specifically, when asked to describe the movement, they copied text directly from the two top Google hits for “alt- right”: Wikipedia and the Southern Poverty Law Center), 3 because we determined that they 1Note that our measured constructs map imperfectly onto these definitions and hence are imperfect approximations of them. 2Initially, we supplemented our alt-right recruitment through social media, which resulted in 17 responses. Because we met our recruitment goals efficiently using mTurk recruitment alone, we decided to eliminate non-mTurk responses to ensure comparable recruitment methods across samples. A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right 5 were less-complete duplicates of other responses in the dataset, and 2 because they both completed the survey very quickly (6 minutes or less) and gave repetitive survey responses. This left 447 participants for analysis (34.0% female, 66.0% male; 93.3% White, 2.9% Black, 4.9% Hispanic,