Reply to Kenneth Thomas's “Wild Analysis in Politics”

Abstract

We try to clarify Kenneth Thomas's (“Wild Analysis in Politics”) mistakes about our analysis of the question: Do right‐wing authoritarian (RWA) beliefs originate from psychological conflict? We suggest, contrary to Thomas's analysis, an approach that builds on the kinds of psychodynamic causes we use to explain RWA and the importance of confirming them empirically.

In Defense of Mainstream Conservatism: A Response to Crouse and Stalker

“…Crouse and Stalker's () reply to my commentary (Thomas, ) includes both valid and invalid observations. They assert, but often do not substantiate, a litany of purported errors on my part.…”

“…Crouse and Stalker (, p. 113) emphasized early in their reply that their original article was “speculative.” This emphasis was apparently intended to release them from responsibility for being viewed as politically biased or for providing any clinical or empirical support for their contentions. Simply because one is speculating on something does not eliminate its potential bias.…”

“…Crouse and Stalker argued that I characterized the psychometric data presented in their original article as insufficient evidence for the Scale's validity. For example, they stated in their reply that “predictive and discriminant validity is a far more complicated matter” (, p.115) than I make it. Actually, it is difficult to determine from reading their original article what their intention was in reporting the psychometric data presented in Table 1.…”

“…In other words, except for criticizing Crouse and Stalker for exaggerating the psychopathology associated with possessing conservative political beliefs and suggesting that using psychoanalysis to advance a political agenda might be considered unprofessional, there were no statements in my commentary that could even loosely be considered ad hominem attacks. Crouse and Stalker (), on the other hand, may have committed their own ad hominem attacks when they characterized me as “displaying confusion about basic social science matters in psychometrics,” (, p. 114) “not being aware of research that investigates the common, correlated and unique factor structure of the RAW and related measures,” (, p. 115) seeming to be “unaware of the value of this avenue of research,” and being unable to understand “how one ought to go about criticizing social science work.” (, ibid) Specific examples of my purported ad hominem statements were not presented, but Crouse and Stalker stated in their reply: “In this response we will ignore Thomas's rather aggressive and ad hominem attacks on us and our article, save for mentioning that while one of us is liberal in political matters, the other is conservative.” (, p. 114)…”

“…Crouse and Stalker's strong advocacy in the final sentence of their reply for “quantitative methodology such as experimental, quasi‐experimental, and latent variable modeling to garner support or rejection of these speculations” (, p. 117) was not followed in their original article. That is, no empirical or even clinical data on persons deemed high in right‐wing authoritarianism were collected at all in their original article.…”