Beyond politics: authoritarianism and the pursuit of leisure

Psychologists know a lot about the political and ideological correlates of people scoring high on authoritarianism. However, psychologists have less knowledge about such people's everyday pursuits. In the present study, the authors examined authoritarian interest in film, live events, music, and reading. A predictable pattern of correlates emerged. For example, authoritarians enjoyed activities in which physical conflict was prominent, whereas authoritarians tended not to like entertainment that offered introspection. In general, the present results were consistent across 2 samples (N = 120, N = 90). Although men and women had significantly different preferences on over 0.5 of the leisure pursuits (e.g., men enjoyed action films more than did women), there were no significant gender differences in the magnitudes of correlates with authoritarianism. In general, leisure interests appeared to be partly manifestations or expressions of authoritarian tendencies.