Obsession with personal autonomy is a key element of adolescence. However, multiple variables may influence teens’ more significant conclusions about autonomy and authoritarianism.
When asked, teens say that family, friends, values, and other factors have influenced their political ideologies. However, outside the left-right dichotomy, there’s the question of how much control authority figures should exert, whether parents, government, or others.
The latest study shows that kids’ position in this spectrum is affected significantly by their cognitive abilities and emotional intelligence.
How Do Teens Reach Their Political & Ideological Positions?
Well into adulthood, your social ideologies might be similar to what they were at 17 or maybe very different. Your higher education, experiences in the workforce, health experiences, social circle, and even raising kids may have shifted your views.
As a teen, however, when you’ve had so few of those experiences, your politics tend to come from external sources. Maybe you echo what your dad believes, or you reject it. Maybe listening to your parents and grandparents disagree has changed your mind, or a history teacher has provided context that has influenced how you see things.
Teens told the New York Times that these are precisely the things that have shaped their views, along with what they’ve witnessed of family members’ personal struggles, experiences shared by friends, and, in some cases, their experiences with politics affecting them more directly.
Still, Ideology Is More Complex
On an ideological compass, one’s personal politics can be mapped in two directions. Left and right is the apparent spectrum currently (no pun intended) centered in the United States, but there’s another direction.
In these compasses, libertarianism (separate from the political party) is placed opposite of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is associated with wanting an authority figure to make the decisions, and libertarianism is related to wanting the individual to be free to make choices without interference from authority.
The current study found that, whether left or right, it’s the lean towards authoritarianism or libertarianism that, in teens, is most affected by cognitive and emotional intelligence.
Lower Cognitive Ability & Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism relies heavily on simple messages. Think of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and lines like “Four legs good, two legs bad,” which the pigs use to associate some animal groups more with the humans (and thus the oppressors) than the other animals.
It’s a limiting phrase that prevents the other animals from discussing and debating any nuance of behaviors or disagreements. It works because it boils a philosophy down into a few words requiring no further thought.
The researchers in this latest study expected to find specific correlations but noted that they found lower cognitive ability linked to one political ideology and authoritarianism anywhere on the political spectrum.
Three Separate Ideological Tests
The teens were tested on three measures: left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and social dominance orientation (SDO). The latter refers to ideologies that believe in social hierarchies in which one group is inherently superior or dominant.
They were also tested on cognitive abilities and emotional intelligence. Then, they compared the scores. The researchers concluded:
“Not only did the analyses reaffirm previous studies with regard to the relationships for RWA and SDO, but we also revealed meaningful relationships for LWA. Moreover, emotional abilities bore out even stronger relationships than cognitive abilities.’
What Else Did Researchers Uncover?
The study found that these tendencies applied similarly in middle and late adolescence, suggesting that the views are likely developed early and remain relatively stable throughout teen years.
PsyPost also noted that the SDO correlation with lower cognitive ability was weaker than that of RWA, suggesting that a tendency to prefer social hierarchies might come more from emotional than cognitive processes.
However, the study still lacks a lot of other information, including influence from parents and peers, so we don’t know to what degree, for example, those with lower cognitive scores just choose to adopt the views of parents or friends, teachers or podcasters. It’s also not longitudinal, so even though we see the same patterns across age groups, we don’t see how views have changed in any individual over time.
What Should Parents Do With This Information?
Just as our views may have changed with life experience, we can expect that our kids’ may too.
We should teach them the skills for emotional intelligence and critical thinking so that as they take in information from other sources, they can consider it openly and clearly and evaluate it against their own ideology and beliefs.
As parents, we should have conversations with our kids about politics and social stances, in which we explain our views and allow them to voice theirs. We should be regularly discussing current events and their impact and helping our kids prepare for life as adults who will take their own turn in affecting the direction of not only their country but their world.