A recent study published in the Journal of Personality delivers an eye-opening insight: teenagers with lower emotional and cognitive abilities are significantly more likely to adopt authoritarian attitudes, regardless of whether those leanings skew left or right.
This isn’t just about being politically conservative or liberal. It’s about how a young person’s ability to understand and regulate emotions shapes how rigid, conformist, or hierarchical their worldview becomes.
And here’s the kicker: emotional intelligence turned out to be even more predictive of authoritarianism than raw IQ.
For example, a 16-year-old who struggles to interpret emotional cues or regulate frustration might not just lash out at a peer, but also lean toward ideologies that demand strict social rules and unwavering loyalty to authority.
That insight alone reframes how we understand political development in the teenage brain—and why emotional skills may be one of the most overlooked tools in building a more democratic society.
Why We Should Care About Teen Ideologies
Adolescence isn’t just about mood swings, school dances, and identity crises. It’s also when political ideologies start to cement, laying the groundwork for beliefs that often persist into adulthood.
Until now, most studies have assumed this ideological shaping only begins after exposure to higher education and adult responsibilities.
But researchers at Ghent University in Belgium wanted to challenge that.
“We wanted to see whether adolescents mirror the same cognitive-emotional patterns we observe in adults when it comes to ideology,” said the lead researcher.
And what they found was sobering: even at ages 15 to 22, the seeds of authoritarianism are already strongly linked to how well a person thinks and feels.
Testing Brains and Beliefs
To get these results, the team analyzed 507 adolescents, all between the ages of 15 and 22.
These participants were high school and college students, covering both middle and late adolescence, a pivotal time for intellectual and emotional maturation.
They measured cognitive ability using age-appropriate intelligence tests:
- WISC-V for those 16 and younger (verbal comprehension, fluid reasoning, processing speed)
- Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test for those 17 and older (fluid and crystallized intelligence)
Emotional ability wasn’t just self-reported.
Participants completed four performance-based tasks that assessed their capacity to recognize, interpret, and manage emotional expressions—a crucial step in separating perception from self-deception.
Then came the political deep-dive. The team used three major ideological scales:
- Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA): respect for authority, conformity, and aggression toward out-groups
- Social Dominance Orientation (SDO): preference for hierarchy and dominance
- Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA): opposition to traditional power structures, often mixed with coercive egalitarianism
The Results: Who’s Most Prone to Authoritarianism?
Lower cognitive ability correlated with stronger authoritarian leanings, especially RWA and LWA. But emotional ability had an even stronger link across all three ideological scales.
This means that teens who struggle emotionally are not only more likely to adopt hardline political views, but they might also gravitate toward any belief system that promises order, structure, or punishment for nonconformity.
And here’s where the study gets really interesting: when emotional abilities were included in statistical models, the impact of cognitive abilities essentially disappeared.
This suggests that emotional skills mediate the connection between intelligence and ideology.
Translation? It’s not just about how smart a teen is. It’s about how emotionally attuned they are to the world around them.
“The very concept of ‘ideological attitudes’ almost necessitates that its developmental roots go back in time,” the researchers noted. “Values and norms likely develop at younger ages and are amenable to socialization.”
Pattern Interrupt: The Authoritarian Isn’t Always Who You Think
For years, we’ve been fed a simplified political narrative: authoritarians wear red, follow rules, and want to protect tradition at all costs.
But this study adds fuel to a growing fire in political psychology: authoritarianism isn’t exclusive to the political right.
In fact, left-wing authoritarianism, though less studied, can manifest as just as much rigidity, aggression, and intolerance—only toward different targets.
This matters because it breaks a common assumption: that progressivism is automatically synonymous with openness, flexibility, and empathy. The data says otherwise.
In this adolescent sample, both right- and left-wing authoritarians shared the same core psychological deficits: low emotional intelligence, limited cognitive flexibility, and a higher need for conformity.
Ideology, it turns out, is less about what you believe and more about how you think and feel.
That’s not a small shift in understanding. It calls into question political stereotypes and suggests that the authoritarian mindset is a psychological style, not just a policy preference.
The Real Predictor
So what exactly are we talking about when we say “emotional abilities”?
We’re referring to key skills like:
- Emotional recognition: reading facial expressions or tone of voice accurately
- Emotional understanding: grasping why someone might feel a certain way
- Emotion regulation: staying calm under pressure or managing frustration
A deficit in any of these can make social life harder—and politics, more black-and-white.
If you can’t interpret someone else’s pain, for instance, you’re more likely to dehumanize them or support punitive policies.
Conversely, teens with strong emotional abilities can better appreciate nuance, handle disagreement, and empathize across ideological lines.
“Emotional ability is not just a soft skill,” said one of the study’s authors. “It’s a powerful force in how people shape their worldview.”
Findings Consistent Across Teen Years
One might expect that these effects differ between a 15-year-old just entering high school and a 22-year-old adult.
But surprisingly, the researchers found no major variation in patterns across age groups.
This finding challenges another long-standing belief: that ideological rigidity only hardens in later adolescence or adulthood.
Instead, it appears that emotional and cognitive traits influence political style consistently throughout the teen years.
In other words, by the time a young person starts college, their authoritarian tendencies might already be deeply rooted—and likely shaped more by emotional development than political debate.
What This Means for Educators, Parents, and Policymakers
If emotional abilities are more predictive of authoritarianism than intelligence alone, then focusing exclusively on academic achievement may be missing the point.
Schools, parents, and even policymakers might need to rethink what “preparing kids for the future” actually means.
It might be less about test scores and more about teaching empathy, conflict resolution, and emotional regulation.
Implementing emotional education early could have far-reaching effects not just on personal well-being but also on political tolerance and democratic resilience.
A society that invests in emotional intelligence may not just produce kinder kids, but more open-minded voters.
Limitations and What Comes Next
Of course, this study is not without its limitations. The data was cross-sectional, meaning it captured one snapshot in time rather than tracking change.
We still don’t know whether emotional and cognitive abilities cause authoritarianism or are shaped by it.
Future longitudinal studies could reveal whether improving emotional intelligence actually reduces authoritarian tendencies over time.
There’s also the question of cultural context.
The study was conducted in Belgium, and different societies might show different relationships between emotion, cognition, and ideology.
But for now, the message is clear:
Emotional intelligence isn’t just about getting along with others. It’s about building a political mind that can navigate complexity without falling into the trap of authoritarian simplicity.
Final Thoughts: Teaching Teens to Think and Feel
We spend a lot of time worrying about what young people think.
But maybe we should be just as concerned about how they feel, and more importantly, how they handle those feelings.
Because when emotional abilities are low, ideological extremes often fill the void.
And whether those extremes emerge on the right or the left, the result is the same: a worldview that favors obedience over dialogue, punishment over understanding.
If we want a generation that resists authoritarianism in all its forms, we need to start by teaching them not just how to argue—but how to empathize.
That could be the most radical political education of all.
