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I understand the confusion on this issue. I have given it much thought, and have a different perspective:

Studies are usually done by such academics (pro-authoritarian, as long as it is centralized, coercive authority); overwhelmingly, those academics are liberal. More than one supposedly unbiased study has been touted in recent years purportedly proving that conservatives are more fearful and less educated than the vaunted liberals. They, of course, define which fears are applicable, and equate the holding of degrees with education (they are not the same thing); and who controls the institutions of degree dissemination? Liberals. It is a self-reinforcing system.

Such things are thus done with an inherent leftist bias going in. If the right wing is so compulsively afraid and anti-authoritarian, then why is the military so overwhelmingly more conservative than the general populace (which is proven by the Democrat/Federal attempts to disenfranchise their vote)? Does not such service require both courage in response to fear, and obedience to authority? The real question then is: What does each side fear, and what does each side obey.

Leftists are, ultimately, always totalitarianists at heart; thus they love centralized, absolute authority, especially when they are in power. They are anti-authoritarian only when they perceive that authority to be fostering individual freedom, because that means people can disagree with them, and that people (meaning themselves) can be held accountable for their own behavior without excuse.

Conservatives, historically, are law-and-order types, and become anti-authoritarian only when they perceive authority to be violating individual freedom. Individual freedom requires individual responsibility, not governmental coercion.

Leftists lack self control (i.e., they are libertines); they hate and fear self control. They want mass control, with them calling the shots. They hate personal accountability, which is why they hate capital punishment. They love external control.

Rightists choose self control; they hate and fear governmental coercion. They want individual control, with themselves calling the shots, within the bounds of the law. They love internal control (i.e., self mastery: ask any Special Forces expert).

A perfect example is welfare versus charity: Leftists want the government to confiscate money and redistribute it. Rightists want the government to leave them alone so that they can freely choose to donate to the charities of their choice. (Charities historically work very well; that’s why the federal government hates them and seeks to replace them).

When studies, despite the inbuilt bias, show results that leftists hate, they twist the results to fit their narrative. An example of this is the one that showed that conservatives actually know more hard science than so-called liberals (read: communists). I read leftists trying to twist that into saying that conservatives just know static facts, but liberals know the dynamic meaning behind the science: pure propaganda.

Leftists are far more afraid generally than conservatives; all one has consider is the issue of gun control: Many leftists are literally afraid to be in the same room as a gun - as though (like an SUV, I guess) it will spontaneously jump up and shoot them.

Compare Bowe Bergdahl, cowardly anti-authoritarian leftist deserter (and thus a military outlier) with sniper Chris Kyle, the courageous sniper who used deadly effect to save American soldiers and Iraqi civilians (and, at times, risked his own life in the process).