According to Stenner, authoritarianism is primarily the result of cognitive inhibitions and personality factors which significantly limit one's ability to tolerate ambiguity, complexity, and—by extension—sociocultural diversity. Authoritarians rank very low on openness to experience—one of the Big Five personality traits—and are demonstrably more likely to commit spelling errors, to have smaller vocabularies (relative to libertarians) and to be less likely to pursue post-secondary education.Stenner, K. (2005). The Authoritarian Dynamic. Cambridge University Press. 143-173. Ultimately, she argues that authoritarians are best understood as "simple-minded avoiders of complexity rather than closed-minded avoiders of change."Stenner, K. and Haidt, J. (2018). Authoritarianism is not a momentary madness, but an eternal dynamic within liberal democracies. In C.R. Sunstein. (Ed.), Can It Happen Here? (pp. 183). New York City, NY: Dey Street Books. She similarly rejects the hypothesis that religiosity is a contributory factor to authoritarian beliefs and expressions, citing research indicating a lack of correlation before concluding: "There is no necessary relation between belief in and personal commitment to a religious code, and demand for state coercion of others' adherence to [the] same. The latter rests primarily on something beyond personal faith and individual codes of conduct, having to do with a compulsion to control the diversity and complexity of one's environment, that is, a need to regulate other people's behaviour."Stenner, K. (2005). The Authoritarian Dynamic. Cambridge University Press. 271-272.
