Immoral/I'm moral: the mediating effect of moral disengagement in authoritarianism and support for the strongman leader among Filipinos

• Main Authors: Coronel, Andrea Danielle, Santos, Carlo Jose, Te, Stephanie Rose, Velecina, Amiel Joshua
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2017
• Subjects: Authoritarianism; Dictatorship
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/5998
• Institution: De La Salle University

This paper intends to investigate the dynamics of what leads to supporting a person who utilizes a strongman leadership style, defined as one that uses fear, force, and violence in exercising power (El-Naway & El Masry, 2016). This study is the first of its kind to measure support for any kind of leader through the creation of the support for the strongman scale. Main hypotheses are that right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) would predict support for the strongman (SS) and that moral disengagement (MD) would explain this effect as a mediator. The model was shaped after Hayes' (2016) simple mediation model with RWA as the independent variable, SS as the dependent variable, and MD as the mediator. Using a quantitative method, 551 Filipino participants between the ages of 30 to 75, coming from different regions and educational background, were gathered via convenience sampling and asked to answer a questionnaire comprising of Altemeyer's right-wing authoritarianism scale (2006), a revised version of Jackson and Gaertner's moral disengagement scale (2011), and a support for the strongman scale. The results gave evidence in proving the hypothesis that right-wing authoritarianism predicted support for the strongman (p < 0.001, b=0.0113). Moreover, with p < 0.001 and a medium R2 mediation effect size (R = 4164, R2 = 1726), moral disengagement was shown to be a significant mediator to the model, explaining the interaction between right-wing authoritarianism and support for strongman leadership.