The RWA scale was built to catch slippery shifts: how easily we trade independence for order when we feel threatened. It doesn’t just ask whether you like strong leaders; it threads together submission, aggression toward “rule breakers,” and a hunger for conventional norms. What’s most revealing is the middle of the response range, where people hesitate—neither cheering nor condemning. That’s the dusk zone, when daylight certainty fades and the mind starts bargaining: maybe authority is fine, as long as it’s “our” authority, as long as the targets seem deserving. Because the items mix pro- and anti-authoritarian statements, the scale can expose that quiet drift without rewarding reflexive agreement. Researchers keep refining the language because societies evolve, but the underlying tension it tracks doesn’t go away. In practice, authoritarianism almost never arrives as a blunt declaration—it creeps in as a “reasonable” exception, repeated often enough that it becomes routine, quietly happening in plain sight.
DUSK
0.1108
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