Climate and authoritarianism in two global powers: exploring right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and climate concern and activism in the USA and India

Climate beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are strongly associated with ideological factors, often rendering climate mitigation contentious and difficult. Evidence shows that some of the most powerful ideological factors are Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). However, this large body of research has some limitations. First, it tends to focus on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries and rarely has a cross-cultural dimension. Second, it tends to neglect the relationship between the left-wing counterpart of RWA, Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA), and climate-related outcome variables, even though both evidence and theory suggest that the relationship might be significant and opposed to the relationship between RWA and these outcome variables. The present study (N = 2206) sought to take a step toward addressing these limitations by studying the relationships between climate concern and activism and RWA, SDO, and LWA in India (n = 1104) and the USA (n = 1102). While RWA was negatively associated with climate concern and activism in the USA, it was positively associated with climate concern and activism in India. SDO was negatively associated with climate concern in both the USA and India. While SDO was negatively associated with climate activism in the USA, it was positively associated with climate activism in India. LWA was positively associated with climate concern and climate activism in both the USA and India. A discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of these results is provided.