Fear as a Correlate of Authoritarianism

Abstract

A preliminary study investigating the relationship between authoritarianism and self-reported fear was conducted. Significant correlations were found between scores on the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale and the Fear Perception Index. Theoretical explanations for the relationship were explored using assumptions drawn from evolutionary psychology.

Authoritarianism and religious identification: Response to threats on religious beliefs

“…More recent research (Hastings & Shaffer, 2005;Shaffer & Hastings, 2004) demonstrates that those with high levels of authoritarianism, under conditions of threat, demonstrate an increase in authoritarian manifestations (e.g., decline in support for democracy, increased support for military action) as compared with authoritarians who are not exposed to threat. In addition, Eigenberger (1998) has demonstrated that authoritarian behaviors are highly correlated with fears associated with group dissolution, which furthers the position put forward here.…”

The dimensional structure of people's fears, threats, and concerns and their relationship with right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation

“…To compensate for this low alpha, all correlations using the SD scale in the research reported here were also recomputed correcting for unreliability, but this did not produce any change in significance, and indeed had only minor effects on the actual coefficients. A threats, fears, anxieties, and concerns (TFAC) inventory was specially constructed for the research to evaluate how anxious, fearful, or concerned participants might be about a comprehensive range of possible life eventualities that might be perceived as threatening. Items were obtained from a search of the theoretical and empirical research on authoritarianism and threat (e.g., Butler, 2009; Eigenberger, 1998), on threat and fear generally (e.g., Boehnke et al., 1998), and from pilot surveys over the previous four years in which students and others were asked to list anonymously all those events, experiences, and situations they could think of that people might experience over the life course as threatening or causing them concern, fear, or anxiety. In formulating the fear or threat items, an attempt was made wherever possible to couch each fear or threat event as both social and personal in roughly equivalent manner.…”

“…Two other studies have used factor analyses of large sets of fear or threat items derived from earlier research (e.g., Boehnke, Schwartz, Stromberg, & Sagiv, 1998) to develop more differentiated threat dimensions and observe their relationship with RWA (but not with SDO) (Butler, 2009; Eigenberger, 1998). Both studies found that dimensions expressing fear of deviant or outgroup persons were most strongly correlated with RWA.…”

“…The current research, therefore, set out to adopt the general methodology used by Butler (2009) and Eigenberger (1998) of factor analyzing a comprehensive list of threat items to indicate basic threat dimensions, but to include only threat items that might be causes (rather than consequences) of RWA. It also set out to go beyond their research by including, in addition to the comprehensive set of empirically derived threat dimensions, measures of dispositional emotional stability (or low neuroticism) and social desirability, as well as measures of both RWA and SDO.…”

Threat and authoritarianism: Some theoretical and methodological comments

“…Finally, note that these three kinds of moderating factors are related to an authoritarian disposition (although, of course, they are also affected by processes of social construction in a given sociocultural context). Those characterized by an authoritarian disposition tend to attach high importance to particular goals (e.g., group cohesion, conformity, security; Cohrs, Moschner, Maes, & Kielmann, 2005), tend to be prone to perceive threats to such goals and feel threatened (Eigenberger, 1998;Lavine et al, 2002), and tend 1 How far perceived threat is considered more a cognitive or more an emotional construct varies between scholars. In any case, it may be useful to look more closely at the role of emotions in authoritarianism (e.g., Van Hiel & Kossowska, 2006).…”