Power to Whom: Authoritarian Preferences and Minority Success

We propose a novel behavioural measure of authoritarian preferences and deploy it in a large German sample comparing East and West. We identify preference for three types of decision rules and discrimination when assigning decision power. Support for authoritarian decision rules is high with 73% of participants assigning positive weight to them. When assigning decision power within authoritarian rules, groups with a large number of minorities as well as minority members themselves face substantial discrimination, ranging between 12 to 33 percent lower decision weight allocated to them. East and West German participants do not significantly differ in their discrimination in decision power. Our main treatment variation exposes individuals to minority success stories; neither authoritarian rule support nor discrimination in decision power is significantly impacted by such positive information. Drawing on an extensive questionnaire, we identify attitudes toward decision power allocation within the society, and beliefs about immigrants’ origin and religion asthe strongest predictors of authoritarian behaviour.