Re-examining the EU Referendum vote: right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation as indirect trait-level motivation

Abstract

Various economic and social characteristics have been used to explain individual vote choice in the 2016 British EU Referendum. Recently, researchers have considered the role various psychological orientations have played in this vote choice. Here, we are interested in two in particular: right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO); constructs that are often used to predict a host of political attitudes and behaviors, particularly those where group identities are a central issue. Those high in RWA prefer group uniformity and are willing to use coercion to enforce this preference. Those high in SDO prefer group-based, hierarchical social and political systems over more egalitarian systems. These orientations are therefore likely to have played a role in people’s vote choice in this referendum. Using data from the 2014–2019 British Election Study internet panel we show that RWA and SDO powerfully influence anti-immigrant attitudes and pro-sovereignty attitudes; attitudes strongly associated with individual vote choice. Our findings suggest that the EU Referendum effectively rallied people’s prejudices against foreign and domestic outsiders to pull the United Kingdom from the European Union.