Adorno sounds familiar, so you're probably right about the source influence. I recall RWA being distinct from "people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses", so I'll check that later and leave it here in an edit.

Agreed on the middle east situation, but I've written elsewhere on HN about the catch-22 that I believe has produced a Baptists and Bootleggers dynamic in what Orwell would call the disputed territories.

Edit: the RWA score is from a survey on pp11-12.

1. The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just “loud mouths” showing off their ignorance.
2. Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married.
3. Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.
4. Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.
5. It is always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubt in people’s minds
6. Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly.
7. The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.
8. There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.
9. Our country needs free thinkers who have the courage to defy traditional ways, even if this upsets many people.
10. Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs.
11. Everyone should have their own lifestyle, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences, even if it makes them different from everyone else.
12. The “old-fashioned ways” and the “old-fashioned values” still show the best way to live.
13. You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting for women’s abortion rights, for animal rights, or to abolish school prayer.
14. What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.
15. Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religion, and ignoring the “normal way things are supposed to be done.”
16. God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished.
17. There are many radical, immoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action.
18. A “woman’s place” should be wherever she wants to be. The days when women are submissive to their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past.
19. Our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the “rotten apples” who are ruining everything.
20. There is no “ONE right way” to live life; everybody has to create their own way.
21. Homosexuals and feminists should be praised for being brave enough to defy “traditional family values.
22. This country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group’s traditional place in society.

Responses given on a -4 to 4 scale, and after scoring the possible results are 20 to 180.

Page 14 states: "Introductory
psychology students at my Canadian university average about 75. Their parents
average about 90. Both scores are below the mid-point of the scale, which is 100, so
most people in these groups are not authoritarian followers in absolute terms. Neither
are most Americans, it seems. Mick McWilliams and Jeremy Keil administered the
RWA scale to a reasonably representative sample of 1000 Americans in 2005 for the
Libertarian Party and discovered an average score of 90. Thus the Manitoba parent
samples seem similar in overall authoritarianism to a representative American adult
sample. My Manitoba students score about the same on the RWA scale as most American university students do too."

(as to church-going, about 400 of those 1000 sampled probably go to church on their relevant day of the week.)