High RWAs tend to feel more endangered in a potentially threatening situation
than most people do, and often respond aggressively. In 1987 my colleague Gerry
Sande and I had five-man teams of male introductory psychology students role-play
NATO in an “international simulation” involving (they thought) another team of
students playing as the Warsaw Pact. Some of the NATO teams were composed
entirely of low RWA students, and other NATO teams were stocked entirely with
highs. (We experimenters secretly played the Warsaw Pact.) The simulation began
with a couple of ambiguous moves by the Warsaw Pact, such as holding military
exercises earlier than anticipated, and withdrawing divisions to rear areas (possibly for
rest, or --as Dr. Strangelove might argue--possibly for redeployment for an attack).
The NATO teams could respond with nonthreatening or threatening moves of varying
magnitudes. But if they made threats, the Warsaw pact responded with twice as much
threat in return, and the NATO team would reap what it had sown as an escalation of
aggressive moves would likely result.
The low RWA teams did not interpret the ambiguous moves at the beginning
of the game as serious threats and thus seldom made threatening moves. The high
RWAs on the other hand usually reacted to the opening Warsaw Pact moves
aggressively, and sowed a whirlwind. Over the course of the simulation, the high
RWA teams made ten times as much threat as the low teams did, and usually brought
the world to the brink of nuclear war.
-- pg 26
The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ an American professor at the University of Manitoba
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