Document VersionAuthor's Accepted Manuscript This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/jopy.12011Accepted Article [Geef tekst op] [Geef tekst op] [Geef tekst op] © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
AbstractObjective. Previous studies on the relationship between threat and right-wing attitudes have tended to focus on either internal threat, emanating from one's private life, or external threat, originating from society. However, these studies failed to examine whether these types of threats constitute two distinctive dimensions and which of these threats is most closely related to right-wing attitudes.Method. In order to explore the dimensions underlying threat, a factor analysis on a variety of threat scales was conducted (Study 1; N = 300). Furthermore, in a meta-analysis (Study 2; total N = 22,086) and a questionnaire study in a large representative sample (Study 3, N = 800) the strength of the relationships of internal and external threat with right-wing attitudes were investigated.Results. The present studies revealed that internal and external threat can be considered as two distinct dimensions underlying threat. Moreover, whereas external threat yielded strong relationships with rightwing attitudes, internal threat only explained a minor part of the variance in these attitudes.Conclusion. External rather than internal threat underlies the relationship between threat and right-wing attitudes.Keywords: internal threat, external threat, right-wing ideological attitudes, authoritarianism Accepted Article [Geef tekst op] [Geef tekst op] [Geef tekst op] © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.From the early days of authoritarianism research, scholars have hypothesized that threat is related to right-wing attitudes (e.g., Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). Studies have frequently reiterated this hypothesis over the years (e.g., Duckitt, 2001; Feldman & Stenner, 2003; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; Sales, 1972 Sales, , 1973 Stenner, 2005; Wilson, 1973), focusing on both threat-inducing situations, such as threats emanating from terrorism and economic crises (e.g., Sales, 1972Sales, , 1973 Willer, 2004; Winter, 1996), and many different threat scales, which range from general (e.g., Davids, 1955; Endler & Shedlets, 1973) to highly specific, such as death anxiety (e.g., Landau et al., 2004). The diversity of these threats seems to reflect the belief of scholars that any form of threat can be a correlate of right-wing attitudes. However, one may justifiably wonder whether these various threat types are equally correlated to right-wing attitudes and, if not, which threat types are most closely related to these attitudes. Therefore, the aim of the present paper was to investigate whether different threat types yielded differential relations...