The Ethnic and Political Divide in the Preference for Strong Leaders

The prevailing view among scholars has been that the preference for strong leaders is an idiosyncratic feature of right-wing individuals. However, it is unclear whether this inference is accurate given that prior research has largely overlooked the role of ethnicity. Analyzing data from the US and Western Europe (N = 34,443), we found that ethnic minorities (and right-wing individuals) prefer strong leaders to a greater extent than Whites (and left-wing individuals). Notably, ethnic minorities across diverse ethnic and political backgrounds are closer to right-wing Whites on strong leader preference than to left-wing Whites. Our work also provides some evidence, using both measurement-of-mediation (Studies 1-4) and experimental mediation (pre-registered Studies 5-6), that generalized trust helps explain group differences in strong leader preference. Importantly, our findings suggest that left-wing Whites’ leadership preferences should not be considered the “default” as they do not generalize even to left-wing people belonging to other ethnic backgrounds.