Authoritarianism and Economic Threat: Implications for Political Behavior

Abstract

This study examined whether authoritarians experiencing economic threat are more likely than other authoritarians to support social policy and political agendas that restrict benefits or curtail rights for disadvantaged groups. A sample of 131 college students completed questionnaires that measured authoritarianism, degree of economic and societal insecurity, and attitudes toward eight political issues. Economic and social insecurity were indexed to perceptions of whether one's standard of living had declined, whether income inequality had grown among social classes, and whether crime, race relations, environmental quality, and governmental services had worsened. The political scales reflected issues currently debated in public forums; they included funding mechanisms for social security and health care, the state's role in regulating abortion, government services for illegal immigrants, terminating welfare for unemployed women with children, and regulation of sexual conduct. A logistic model found that, relative to non-threatened authoritarians or nonauthoritarians, threatened authoritarians were six times as likely to favor restricting benefits to powerless groups and eight times as likely to support the state's preventing women from securing an abortion. These results are discussed in terms of systemic changes in the economy that have resulted in declines in real income and increasing income inequality.

Right‐wing authoritarianism, Big Five and perceived threat to safety

“…Confirming our HP1.3, and consistent with Duckitt (1992), Feldman and Stenner (1997), Rickert (1998) and Stevens, Bishin, and Barr (2006), perceived societal threat to safety exerted a significant, positive influence on RWA, whereas perceived personal threat to safety did not influence it. Based on Feldman and Stenner's (1997) interpretation, this result should be considered as consistent with Duckitt's (1989) concept of authoritarianism as a group-related phenomenon, leading to the prediction that threats to group integrity, status, cohesion and/or identity, rather than to personal well-being, tend to activate authoritarianism.…”

“…Nonetheless, Rickert (1998) and Stevens, Bishin, and Barr (2006), who directly assessed authoritarianism, substantially confirmed Feldman and Stenner's results.…”

“…Thus, we explored these relations in a final additive (ADD3) model in which we entered all the significant additive effects exerted by the Big Five factors and by perceived threat to safety on RWA detected in the two previous additive models To achieve our second goal, concerning the indirect effects exerted by personality on RWA via the mediation of perceived threat to safety, based on Sibley and Duckitt (2008)-who state that social conformity may be considered a "combination of facets subsumed by low Openness and high Conscientiousness" (p. 251)-we tested two hypotheses in a mediation (MED) model. As previous studies have found Openness to have statistically significant links with perceived threat (Sibley & Duckitt, 2008) and perceived societal threat to have statistically significant links with RWA (Duckitt, 1992;Feldman & Stenner, 1997;Rickert, 1998;Stevens, Bishin, & Barr, 2006) We could not find any result in the extant literature that allowed us to hypothesize an indirect link between Conscientiousness and RWA via the mediation of perceived societal threat; thus, we subsequently exploratory tested the existence of such link.…”

“…We pursued the first three goals using a mix of theoretically driven and exploratory analyses and the fourth goal using an exploratory approach. Rickert (1998), Sales and Friend (1973), and Stevens, Bishin, and Barr (2006), we hypothesized perceived societal threat to safety, but not perceived personal threat to safety, to positively influence RWA (HP1.3). This hypothesis was tested in our second additive model (ADD2).…”

Political conservatism as motivated social cognition.

“…There is by now substantial archival research suggesting that during times of societal crisis, people are more likely to turn to authoritarian leaders and institutions for security, stability, and structure (e.g., Doty, Peterson, & Winter, 1991;McCann, 1997;Peterson et al, 1993;Rickert, 1998;Sales, 1972Sales, , 1973. Sales (1972), for instance, found that during periods of severe economic threat (the depression years of 1930 -1939), people were more likely to join authoritarian churches, such as Southern Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist, and less likely to join nonauthoritarian churches, such as Northern Baptist and Episcopalian, compared with periods of relative prosperity (1920 -1930).…”