The neurobiology of authoritarianism

[Hardkill]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That has nothing to do with narcissism.

That you cannot see that is disturbing.

How does it not have to do with narcissism?

Lack of empathy is one of the key traits of narcissism.

psychologists, psychiatrists, and other legitimate mental health experts have stated that the nine big traits of narcissism are:

1. Lack of empathy

2. Excessive need for admiration

3. Envious of others

4. Sense of entitlement

5. Grandiose sense of self

6. Arrogant and haughty behavior

7. Exploitation of others

8. Interpersonally exploitive behavior

9. Arrogance

You have to have an insane lack of empathy to do everything that Putin has done. Putin has also undoubtedly exhibited all of the 8 other traits of narcissism.

Edited Monday at 05:32 AM by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

You have to have an insane lack of empathy to do everything that Putin has done.

There is no room for empathy when you run a country like Russia!

These are matters of life and death. Not some childish hippie nonsense.

20 million Russian died in WW2! And you whine about empathy.

Edited Monday at 05:30 AM by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is no room for empathy when you run a country like Russia!

These are matters of life and death. Not some hippie worldview. 

20 million Russian died in WW2! And you whine about empathy.

I get it. I know that Russia still requires a ruthless dictator to run the country.

However, that doesn't excuse how egotistical Stalin was or how self-serving Putin is.

Like you said before, the less developed a society is the more selfish the people are and the more they need to be governed by fear, whereas the more developed a society is the less selfish the people in the country are and the more they can be governed with love.

Edited Monday at 05:44 AM by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

You can be cold-hearted without being narcissitic about it.

A crocodile will eat you without an ounce of narcissism.

Edited Monday at 05:45 AM by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

You can be cold-hearted without being narcissitic about it.

How?

[aurum]

27 minutes ago, Breathe said:

It's not about being skewed toward authoritarianism. It's about wanting someone in charge that shares the same views as they do and fuck everyone else. But, it's also fear mongering, disinformation, etc. People are being manipulated into believing that the person they are electing actually cares for them, and will follow through with promises.

Nope, see above comment.

I think that's missing the point.

Yes, they want someone who they agree with. But many people specifically want an authoritarian. So things are being skewed in that direction.

This is not just manipulation, this is what they are hoping for.

 

[Breathe]

I'm tired. I'll look into it tomororw

[Osaid]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Authoritarianism is functional. It serves survival.

It serves beliefs about how to survive, which are dysfunctional. 

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It's not about ego, it's about how best to organize society so that it functions effectively.

That's just what the ego thinks that it is, and that's how the ego justifies authoritarianism to itself. The political space is a projection of beliefs from whoever is elected. Trump believes that getting rid of all the immigrants and isolating the country is what is best for functionality (because of his narcissism), so that is what he is doing. If you asked a bunch of people in a room what they believe is best for societal function, they would all give different answers depending on what beliefs they have about themselves and the world.

"What I believe is best for the country" would entirely consist of people's beliefs about reality, and someone with NPD who has the power to act on those beliefs would turn to an authoritarian regime.

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Which is why all militaries have an authoritarian governance structure. The military is not structured as it is because some guy had a big ego and wanted to lord over everyone. It's because if it wasn't structured that way everyone involved would be dead.

It's still narcissistic in nature and it will have the same effect on someone as a narcissist would, it doesn't matter what the intentions are. If there is a hierarchical structure where you can't question anyone, that is the exact same structure a narcissist would use to control people, there is zero perceivable difference. The ideology of narcissism is the same ideology that controls other people for personal benefit. A teacher in North Korea might not care about Kim Jong Un, but they will still teach it to the students because they were ordered to do so from above. What they are doing is narcissistic even if they themselves are not narcissistic. When someone tells you to praise Kim Jong Un, that is narcissistic whether they themselves truly believe it or not.

That being said, the key difference is that someone who is not truly narcissistic (like a soldier or North Korean teacher) would immediately stop what they are doing as the orders stop, because they have no pathology. The orders come from narcissistic structures, not the soldiers or teachers themselves. There is no incentive otherwise. They are a cog in a narcissistic structure or a narcissistic regime, otherwise there is no motivation or functionality.

The bigger aspect of all this is that these kinds of indirect narcissistic structures are what traumatize people and breed narcissists in the first place. Often it comes from narcissistic parents, but these kinds of systems can also traumatize similar to how parents would.

Edited Monday at 07:11 AM by Osaid

[Daniel Balan]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

There is no room for empathy when you run a country like Russia!

These are matters of life and death. Not some childish hippie nonsense.

20 million Russian died in WW2! And you whine about empathy.

Firstly this is not factually correct. 20 million soviet citizens died! Not Russian, only half of that number is Russian. The other half consists of the citizens of the republics that now Russia wants again to enslave under their boot. 

The tragedy of ww2 doesn't give Putin any licence to turn into Hitler himself and terrorize Europe in a manner only the Austrian painter did. 

Why there ain't room for empathy in Russia? Can't stage red people behave normally for a day? Who is forcing them to attack all their neighbours? They were too butthurt when Ukraine showed them the middle finger after centuries of famine and enslavement from the Moskow's rule. Instead of accepting that other countries don't want to be puppeted by their evil caveman policies, Russia viciously doubled down on stage blue and red , and became like a vengeful ex trying to destroy both his ex girlfriend and her new boyfriend(Nato, Eu). Russia should have tried to improve and liberalise like Western Europe did after ww2. Instead Putin is driving Russia into the past, into stage Red. Russia must go from Blue to Orange, not to Red. No one is threatening them to have this backlash 

Edited Monday at 08:59 AM by Daniel Balan

[Basman]

15 hours ago, aurum said:

Both. It's a strange loop.

Nope.

Human cognition and behavior would have to be a hierarchical system to qualify as a strange loop, which isn't the case. Humans clearly act on survival interests which isn't sufficiently paradoxal. 

[Raze]

10 hours ago, aurum said:

You are cherry-picking a highly atypical example. Most societies do not change that rapidly, which supports my point.

Also, rapid shifts are still possible if authoritarianism correlates with brain structure. You could have a distribution of liberal and authoritarian brains that is relatively equal, which would allow for swings. Especially if the survival pressures of that particular generation changed.

It's more so about where your center of gravity is and what political direction you are likely to trend.  

That’s not true at all. Countries that go authoritarian often do so extremely rapidly. For long periods of time most of the world had monarchs who were all authoritarian, that’s no longer the case. Did everyone’s brain structure change? Unlikely.

If the distribution is equal there wouldn’t be swings, one would consistently win out and stop the other. Or it’d be a constant switch back and forth as they fight for power.

[Joshe]

A psychology based on anatomical structure or neurochemistry almost can’t help but be a specific way? 

Of course those variables predispose one to this or that, such as fear, tribalism, etc, but the psyche itself is too malleable to be seen as fixed. It seems it’s all about framing. If you had power over the collective framing and interpretation of authoritarianism, you could uproot it or entrench it, which kind of implies neurobiology does not account for authoritarian embrace, although I’m sure it contributes. 

If you take 100 kids and drill Christianity into them from birth, and tie their survival to it, nearly all of them will remain that way for life. If you take those same 100 kids and instead drill into them high principles, education, integrity, etc, and tie it to their survival, most all of them will carry their indoctrination to the grave.

So, it’s all about perspective/frame. Society has unwittingly, in its ignorance, allowed the stage of polarization to be set. The more polarization, the more likely authoritarian embrace.

I think it's likely that Trump is the primary factor of the current authoritarian embrace in America. If such a polarizing figure never came on the scene, American life would look very different than it does today and talk of authoritarianism would just be a boring academic idea rather than an actual reality to contend with. 

Edited Monday at 02:54 PM by Joshe

[aurum]

On 4/21/2025 at 6:09 AM, Raze said:

That’s not true at all. Countries that go authoritarian often do so extremely rapidly. For long periods of time most of the world had monarchs who were all authoritarian, that’s no longer the case. Did everyone’s brain structure change? Unlikely.

Most of the world is still under authoritarian rule. So no, everyone's brain structure has obviously not changed.

The fact that authoritarianism has been conserved across time and culture so well shows there could be a biological link.

[Joshe]

3 hours ago, aurum said:

The fact that authoritarianism has been conserved across time and culture so well shows there could be a biological link.

I mean, you could say this about many things. Of course there's correlation, but the idea it would be significant seems absurd. 

Like religion, nationalism, or conspiracy theories, authoritarianism is something people subscribe to when it meets a need, not something hardcoded into the species. It's the fulfillment of emotions via available, compelling narratives.

People adopt it, not because it's their destiny, but because they've been sold on it. In the case of the U.S, the offer is identity, certainty, and a sense of belonging to a side that thinks it's under siege, and they're driven by the prospect of meaning in triumph.

It’s the result of two systems colliding. Cognitive/emotional vulnerability and a story designed to exploit it. It's just a well-timed story and a target audience. No brain glitch required. lol

Edited Wednesday at 03:36 AM by Joshe

[Breathe]

On 4/21/2025 at 4:52 AM, Leo Gura said:

That can't be correct.

Not all authoritarians are narcissists.

Putin does not act like a narcissist.

Putin does have some narcissistic traits. Shirtless photos are one example.

But, everyone has mixed motives.

He clearly needs to maintain a certain appearance in the public eye, lacks empathy, has a sense of entitlement.

He's also super paranoid because he fucks people over all the time and knows people want him dead.

He's also driven by existential fears. He wants to be remembered as someone who made Russia great again. Lol. Meaning is at the core of ego, and it is very apparent in Putin.

Like everyone else, he's a complex, multi-faceted dude.

Unlike most people though, he doesn't value human life.

On 4/21/2025 at 5:26 AM, Hardkill said:

How does it not have to do with narcissism?

You have to have an insane lack of empathy to do everything that Putin has done. Putin has also undoubtedly exhibited all of the 8 other traits of narcissism.

I think it's hard to diagnose someone in power as a narcissist because the job requires traits that we would consider narcissistic.

Trump is easy to diagnose simply because of his excessive need for admiration. I don't see that quality as strongly as with Putin.

There is, however, something called "hubris syndrome" which is a disorder that one develops when they take on a position of power. It's an interesting one, take a look.

Quote

Hubris syndrome is a condition where individuals in positions of power develop an inflated sense of self-importance and overconfidence, often leading to poor decision-making and a lack of regard for others. It typically arises after achieving significant success and can result in a distorted perception of reality.

Regardless, I'm not a fan of labels because we tend to assign them to a cluster of symptoms. These symptoms can overlap and have many different causes. Labels often don't point to anything that's actually real.

[aurum]

32 minutes ago, Joshe said:

I mean, you could say this about many things. Of course there's correlation, but the idea it would be significant seems absurd. 

Like religion, nationalism, or conspiracy theories, authoritarianism is something people subscribe to when it meets a need, not something hardcoded into the species. It's the fulfillment of emotions via available, compelling narratives.

People adopt it, not because it's their destiny, but because they've been sold on it. In the case of the U.S, the offer is identity, certainty, and a sense of belonging to a side that thinks it's under siege, and they're driven by the prospect of meaning in triumph.

It’s the result of two systems colliding. Cognitive/emotional vulnerability and a story designed to exploit it. It's just a well-timed story and a target audience. No brain glitch required. lol

Again, the science is not on your side. You guys keep arguing with me but you have no answer for this.

Yes, part of authoritarianism is social conditioning. Of course. But why limit yourself to that perspective?

There can be both brain structure and conditioning at play. They go together.

[Joshe]

1 hour ago, aurum said:

There can be both brain structure and conditioning at play. They go together.

I agree both are at play. But neurobiological factors would play an insignificant role in explaining authoritarian embrace. It’s interesting research that could lead to great things, because if you can identify brains most compatible with authoritarianism, you can possibly apply that same concept to every fetish, every perversion, every twisted way of thinking, and every healthy way of thinking, and surely that would be useful.

So it’s interesting and has great potential, but even if you identify brains compatible with X ideology, the mind has to build webs of beliefs and buy into specific narratives for X to take root. Which, in the case of political ideologies, requires outside influence. Without that outside influence, the predisposition would very likely not give rise to embracing X. Kind of like how being raised in a secular society would very likely not give rise to embracing religion, and vice versa. 

The predisposition seems more like dormant potential, of little to no consequence until activated by a compelling narrative.

Edited Wednesday at 06:01 AM by Joshe

[aurum]

12 hours ago, Joshe said:

But neurobiological factors would play an insignificant role in explaining authoritarian embrace.

You are deeply understating the significance.

Your biological potential matters more than any societal conditioning. If I cut your amygdala, you will not even fear death anymore:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/brain-surgery-cant-feel-fear/

[Raze]

5 minutes ago, aurum said:

You are deeply understating the significance.

Your biological potential matters more than any societal conditioning. If I cut your amygdala, you will not even fear death anymore:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/brain-surgery-cant-feel-fear/

That’s a specific surgical intervention. It’s not the same as trying to explain what are often rapid shifts in societies based on collective brain changes. Shifts in how we are biologically structured happen slowly over extremely long periods of time. 

[aurum]

14 minutes ago, Raze said:

That’s a specific surgical intervention. It’s not the same as trying to explain what are often rapid shifts in societies based on collective brain changes. Shifts in how we are biologically structured happen slowly over extremely long periods of time. 

I've already answered this. There have not been rapid shifts.

Society has always been deeply authoritarian and mostly still is.

If you want to point to cherry-picked examples of rapid changes like Germany, those are still explainable. Conditioning, distribution and unique survival pressures / conditions can account for those within a model where authoritarianism is correlated to brain strucutre.