Why some people are primed to be authoritarians - with Karen Stenner

The Larger Us Podcast

Karen Stenner has spent years researching why some people seem to have a psychological predisposition towards authoritarianism in the right conditions.

With her co-author Jonathan Haidt, Karen has explored how about a third of people across dozens of liberal democracies share this trait to some degree - a key factor in understanding why, for instance, so many Americans continued to support Donald Trump even as he lurched steadily further towards authoritarianism, and which has led Karen to argue that "liberal democracy has now exceeded many people's capacity to tolerate it."

We spoke to Karen about why support for authoritarianism is so widespread, what we can do about it, and what's next in countries like the US where right wing populism has been surging.