50 years ago, film director John Cassavetes observed that lifestyle is a driver of social division. Our article suggests that this holds true today. However, we add that lifestyle divisions are not random but cluster (and are perceved to cluster) around political identities.

We quantified the association between political identity and 61 social, movement, work, and leisure behaviors collected from smartphone sensors/logs and ecological momentary assessments in a sample of students on a college campus.

AGGRESSION & EMOTIONALITY: Authoritarians used positive and negative emotion words more often and with more variability, and they used anger- and death-related words more. The exception was anxiety! Those LOW on authoritarianism used more anxiety words.

AUTHORITY & HIERARCHY (1): Authoritarians’ language revealed a preoccupation with status (e.g., using more clout-related words) and a tenuous relationship with submission (e.g., greater variability in assent-related words).

LIMITED EXPOSURE: Authoritarians have an active but constrained social circle (e.g., receiving more text messages from fewer numbers), an interest in familiar pop culture (e.g., listening to Europop music), and a focus on intergroup dynamics (e.g., “they”-related language).

Behavioral patterns reflecting limited exposure to unknown people/places/cultures were most important for predicting individuals' authoritarianism, followed by preference for simple information, respect for authority & hierarchy, and tendency towards aggression & emotionality.

Everyday behavioral patterns measured with smartphones predicted individuals’ authoritarianism twice as accurately as demographics (i.e., age, gender, education, nationality).

We used prior literature to derive theory-informed behaviors that a) reflect authoritarians’ key psychological attributes, and b) can be measured with smartphones sensors/logs (i.e., app usage, keyboard typing, music listening, unlocking/locking, calling/texting, GPS location).

🚨New Preprint (wish it were less timely)🚨
We map everyday behavioral patterns of authoritarians using smartphone data, providing an updated portrait of authoritarianism in the digital age. w/ Timo Koch, @clemensstachl.bsky.social, @dracek.bsky.social, Ramona Schoedel, et al
osf.io/preprints/ps...