Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
PLoS One. 2013 May 1;8(5):e62275. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062275. Print 2013.
According to a "parasite stress" hypothesis, authoritarian governments are more likely to emerge in regions characterized by a high prevalence of disease-causing pathogens. Recent cross-national evidence is consistent with this hypothesis, but there are inferential limitations associated with that evidence. We report two studies that address some of these limitations, and provide further tests of the hypothesis. Study 1 revealed that parasite prevalence strongly predicted cross-national differences on measures assessing individuals' authoritarian personalities, and this effect statistically mediated the relationship between parasite prevalence and authoritarian governance. The mediation result is inconsistent with an alternative explanation for previous findings. To address further limitations associated with cross-national comparisons, Study 2 tested the parasite stress hypothesis on a sample of traditional small-scale societies (the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample). Results revealed that parasite prevalence predicted measures of authoritarian governance, and did so even when statistically controlling for other threats to human welfare. (One additional threat-famine-also uniquely predicted authoritarianism.) Together, these results further substantiate the parasite stress hypothesis of authoritarianism, and suggest that societal differences in authoritarian governance result, in part, from cultural differences in individuals' authoritarian personalities.
根据“寄生虫压力”假说，在疾病病原体高发的地区，更有可能出现独裁政府。最近的跨国证据与这一假说一致，但该证据存在推理上的局限性。我们报告了两项研究，这些研究解决了其中的一些局限性，并进一步检验了这一假说。研究 1 表明，寄生虫流行程度强烈预测了评估个体独裁人格的跨国差异，这种影响在寄生虫流行程度和独裁治理之间的关系上具有统计学上的中介作用。这一中介结果与对之前发现的另一种解释不一致。为了解决跨国比较中存在的其他限制，研究 2 在传统的小规模社会样本（标准跨文化样本）上测试了寄生虫压力假说。结果表明，寄生虫流行程度预测了独裁治理的措施，即使在对其他威胁人类福利的因素进行统计控制后也是如此。（另一个额外的威胁——饥荒——也可以独特地预测独裁主义。）这些结果共同进一步证实了独裁主义的寄生虫压力假说，并表明，独裁治理的社会差异部分是由于个人独裁人格的文化差异造成的。
