The authoritarian dynamic and Brexit: Understanding the relationship between authoritarianism and wanting to leave the EU

Individual-level authoritarianism is prominent in explanations of preferences for Brexit. We contend that extant accounts have provided an incomplete theoretical and empirical understanding of this relationship. Drawing on the idea of the ‘authoritarian dynamic’, we show that perceptions of the economic/cultural threat of immigration have stronger effects on the pro-Brexit views of individuals with weak authoritarian predispositions (libertarians). At the same time, perceptions of normative threat, which pertain to concerns like loss of faith in or lack of consensus among established authorities, have a greater impact on the pro-Brexit views of individuals with high authoritarian predispositions (authoritarians). These conditional relationships, which have previously gone unacknowledged, are crucial to understanding which individuals are likely to respond to ‘increased threat’ with pro-Brexit attitudes. We demonstrate these relationships with pro-Brexit views using British Election Study longitudinal panel data. The results clarify the conditional impact of threats and authoritarian predispositions on attitudes.     

The Country's Crime Rate Moderates the Relation Between Authoritarian Predispositions and the Manifestations of Authoritarianism: A Multilevel,Multinational Study

We performed a multilevel, multinational test of Stenner's model on authoritarianism using the 2008 European Values Survey dataset (N = 55 199, nested in 38 nations). We focussed on the effects exerted on four authoritarian manifestations (racial intolerance, political intolerance, negative attitudes towards immigrants, and moral intolerance) by the cross‐level interaction between participants' authoritarian predispositions (assessed in terms of childrearing values) and their country's crime rate. Associations between authoritarian predispositions and racial intolerance, political intolerance, negative attitudes towards immigrants, and moral intolerance were significantly stronger among participants living in countries characterised by high crime rates than those among participants living in countries with low crime rates. Limitations, implications, and future directions of this study are discussed. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology.     

Perceived Threat and Authoritarianism

There has been a long history of work on authoritarianism that has looked at the role of societal threat. Much of the empirical research in this tradition has relied on aggregate data to examine the relationship between societal threat and authoritarian attitudes and behaviors. Our analysis uses individual-level data and a range of perceived threat measures to better understand the dynamics of authoritarianism and threat. We also move beyond the hypothesis of a direct relationship between threat and authoritarianism, and hypothesize instead that the relationship involves interaction effects: societal threat activates authoritarian predispositions. As predicted, our analysis finds no evidence of a direct effect of societal threat but significant evidence of an interaction between authoritarian predispositions and perceived threat. We consider the implications of these results for our understanding of authoritarianism.     

Class,powerlessness and political polarization

It is proposed that perceptions of powerlessness influence attitudes towards political policies and ideologies, and that these attitudes influence levels of support for political parties. A cross-sectional survey analysis of the relations between social class, powerlessness, ideology, and party preference supports this contention. However, the role of powerlessness in influencing the appeal of political attitudes is found to be conditional on respondents' social class. For middle class respondents, powerlessness is associated with opposition to economic redistribution, whereas for the working class it is associated with pro-redistributive attitudes. For respondents in all classes, powerlessness is associated with authoritarian beliefs, but these are only of relevance for the partisanship of respondents in the middle class. As a consequence of this pattern of relationships, powerlessness is associated with political polarization between social classes, which takes the form of increased support for the Conservative party in the middle class and increased support for the Labour party in the working class. Apart from their substantive implications these findings illustrate the importance of social structural characteristics in conditioning the relationships between social psychological variables.     

Asians as the model minority: Implications for US Government's policies

Asian Americans are often perceived as a 'model minority'– an ethnic minority that are high achieving, hardworking, self-reliant, law-abiding, as well as having few social and mental health problems. Although the impact of the model minority image on the US government's redistributive policies is a widely contested topic in public discourses, there has been little research on the association between the model minority image, people's worldviews, and attitudes towards the US government's redistributive policies. In an experiment that measured American participants' worldviews and manipulated the salience of the model minority image, we have demonstrated that those who believed in a malleable social reality were relatively unsupportive of government policies that help the Asian American ( vs African American) communities. Theoretical and practical implications of this finding are discussed.     

Why Do White Americans Oppose Race‐Targeted Policies? Clarifying the Impact of Symbolic Racism

Measures of symbolic racism (SR) have often been used to tap racial prejudice toward Blacks. However, given the wording of questions used for this purpose, some of the apparent effects on attitudes toward policies to help Blacks may instead be due to political conservatism, attitudes toward government, and/or attitudes toward redistributive government policies in general. Using data from national probability sample surveys and an experiment, we explored whether SR has effects even when controlling for these potential confounds and whether its effects are specific to policies involving Blacks. Holding constant conservatism and attitudes toward limited government, SR predicted Whites' opposition to policies designed to help Blacks and more weakly predicted attitudes toward social programs whose beneficiaries were racially ambiguous. An experimental manipulation of policy beneficiaries revealed that SR predicted policy attitudes when Blacks were the beneficiary but not when women were. These findings are consistent with the claim that SR's association with racial policy preferences is not due to these confounds.     

The role of right-wing authoritarianism and political sophistication in shaping attitudes toward redistribution

Using data from the Austrian National Election Study (Study 1) and the American National Election Study (Study 2), this research investigated the role of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) in shaping attitudes toward governmental action related to the redistribution of wealth. We show that RWA is a relevant variable in explaining attitudes toward redistribution policies, and that the association between RWA and redistribution attitudes is moderated by political sophistication. RWA was associated with opposition to redistribution policies among individuals high in political sophistication, while among individuals low in political sophistication, RWA was either associated with support for redistribution policies (Study 1) or unrelated to redistribution attitudes (Study 2). Results suggest that exposure to the political discourse in a society affects how psychological needs and motives are related to preferences regarding the redistribution of wealth through the government.     

Do Threats Galvanize Authoritarians or Mobilize Nonauthoritarians? Experimental Tests from 19 European Societies

Authoritarian predispositions and contextual threats are both thought to result in intolerance and prejudice towards immigrants and other minorities. Yet there is considerable dispute as to how authoritarianism and threat interact to produce an “authoritarian dynamic.” Some scholars argue that threats increase intolerance by “galvanizing” authoritarians. Others claim that authoritarians are always intolerant toward outgroups, with threat instead “mobilizing” nonauthoritarians. Using experimental manipulations of immigrant cultural threat embedded in nationally representative samples from 19 European societies, this study offers a test of these competing hypotheses. While we find some evidence for the “galvanizing” hypothesis, we find no evidence for the “mobilizing” hypothesis. The effects vary considerably across national samples however, with immigrants from Muslim societies being particularly likely to activate authoritarian predispositions. These findings show how the migration of culturally distinctive groups has the potential to activate authoritarian dispositions, thereby pushing the issue of immigration to the center of political debates.     

Antiwomen But Proquota: Disaggregating Sexism and Support for Gender Quota Policies

Previous research on support for gender quotas focuses on attitudes toward gender equality and government intervention as explanations. We argue the role of attitudes toward women in understanding support for policies aiming to increase the presence of women in politics is ambivalent—both hostile and benevolent forms of sexism contribute in understanding support, albeit in different ways. Using original data from a survey conducted on a probability-based sample of Australian respondents, our findings demonstrate that hostile sexists are more likely to oppose increasing of women's presence in politics through the adoption of gender quotas. Benevolent sexists, on the other hand, are more likely to support these policies than respondents exhibiting low levels of benevolent sexism. We argue this is because benevolent sexism holds that women are pure and need protection; they do not have what it takes to succeed in politics without the assistance of quotas. Finally, we show that while women are more likely to support quotas, ambivalent sexism has the same relationship with support among both women and men. These findings suggest that aggregate levels of public support for gender quotas do not necessarily represent greater acceptance of gender equality generally.     

Justice and power: when will justice concerns encourage the advantaged to support policies which redistribute economic resources and the disadvantaged to willingly obey the law?

Two studies are presented which test whether justice can motivate support for government policies and authorities even when such support is not in people's obvious personal or group interest. In the first study, White San Francisco Bay area residents' attitudes toward Congressionally-authored affirmative action policies and anti-discrimination laws were investigated. In the second study, African-American San Francisco Bay area residents' feelings of obligation to obey the law were investigated. The results from both studies show a significant relationship between evaluations of social justice and respondents' political attitudes. More importantly, a significant relationship between relational evaluations of Congress and political attitudes is found in both studies. This relationship suggests how justice can motivate policy and government support even if such support does not yield direct personal or group benefits. Finally, the results from both studies indicate when instrumental and relational concerns will be related to political attitudes. If people identified with their particular advantaged or disadvantaged group, instrumental concerns were more strongly related to their political attitudes, but if people identified with a superordinate category that included both potential outgroup members and relevant superordinate authorities, relational concerns were more strongly related to their political attitudes.     

Emotional Responses to the Charlie Hebdo Attacks: Addressing the Authoritarianism Puzzle

The finding that threat boosts the public's preferences for authoritarian policies has been well established in the research literature. Why this shift occurs remains open as the extant literature reports contradictory findings regarding the interaction of dispositions, such as conservatism and authoritarianism, with threat. One line of research argues that threat increases authoritarian preferences among those who are more prone to authoritarianism. Another argues that it is those with a nonauthoritarian ideology who switch in response to threat. By using a two‐wave panel study of the French population taken before and after the January 2015 twin attacks in Paris, we find that both trends occur simultaneously. Our results show that the factors that drive the impact of ideological dispositions on support for authoritarian policies are emotional reactions. On the one hand, anxiety led left‐wing respondents to move towards adopting authoritarian policy preferences following the attacks, yet produced no such change among right‐wing respondents. On the other hand, anger did not turn left‐wing voters more authoritarian but strengthened authoritarian policy preferences among right‐wing respondents.     

Relationships between right-wing authoritarianism, terrorism threat, and attitudes towards restrictions of civil rights: a comparison among four European countries

The present study tested the role of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), terrorist threat, and sociopolitical 'climate' as predictors of support for governmental anti-terrorism policies and actions. Two dimensions of analysis were defined: the presence versus absence of al-Qaeda attacks, and adherence to surveillance versus anti-surveillance mainstream politics. In order to study the influence of these two contextual dimensions on the expression of attitudes, we selected four European countries that fall into these two dimensions--Poland, Belgium, Spain, and the UK. Results from our study provide support for the contention that attitudes towards restrictions of civil rights are related to RWA independently of the cultural context. Moreover, in the UK sample, we found that the threat of terrorism increases acceptance of limitations of civil liberties, but only among people who hold authoritarian beliefs. However, in Spain, the other country that experienced terrorist attacks, this moderation effect was not found which is interpreted in terms of differences in the sociopolitical climate in both countries. As predicted, we did not find such moderation effect in countries in which threat is relatively low (Poland and Belgium). The results are discussed with reference to the conceptual framework based on the importance of fear experiences, security-focused policies, as well as the specific cultural context in the study of reaction to terrorist threat.     

Gender Attitudes and Public Opinion Towards Electoral Gender Quotas in Brazil

Research on public opinion towards affirmative action shows that citizens often support the principle of equality while simultaneously rejecting policies that promote it in a pattern described as the “principle-policy puzzle.” The scholarship also shows that ideology and prejudice towards the targeted group explain the puzzle with respect to racial affirmative action. In this article, we use unique survey questions included in the 2014 round of the AmericasBarometer in Brazil to show that citizens tend to support electoral gender quotas while rejecting gender-based egalitarianism in a reversed version of the “principle-policy puzzle.” We argue that a different type of gender attitudes, namely benevolent sexism, shapes support for gender quotas as well as for the principle of equality. While benevolent sexists tend to reject gender equality based on views about gender complementarity and stereotypes about women's purity, they also support quotas as policies to foster such values. Our findings suggest that even though the political and scholarly debates can provide sound normative reasons for the adoption of quotas across different contexts, public support for them often relies on paternalistic views and expectations about the role of women in politics.     

Fear,Anger, and Voting for the Far Right: Evidence From the November 13, 2015 Paris Terror Attacks

The conjecture that negative emotions underpin support for far‐right politics is common among pundits and scholars. The conventional account holds that authoritarian populists catalyze public anxiety about the changing social order and/or deteriorating national economic conditions, and this anxiety subsequently drives up support for the far right. We propose that while emotions do indeed play an independent causal role in support for far‐right parties and policies, that support is more likely built upon the public’s anger rather than fear. This article explores the relative impact of fear and anger in reaction to the 2015 Paris terror attacks on the propensity to vote for the French far‐right party, the Front National, in the 2015 regional elections. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that anger is associated with voting for the Front National, while fear is associated with voting against the Front National. Moreover, anger boosts the Front National vote most powerfully among far‐right and authoritarian voters. On the other hand, fear reduces support for the far right among those same groups.     

Effects of parental job insecurity and parenting behaviors on youth’s self-efficacy and work attitudes

Drawing on the spillover mechanism, the relationships among parental job insecurity, authoritarian parenting behaviors, youth’s self-efficacy, and work attitudes were examined. Specifically, parental job insecurity was hypothesized to be positively associated with (1) authoritarian parenting behaviors, and (2) youth’s perception of parental job insecurity. In turn, we hypothesized that both authoritarian parenting behaviors and youth’s perceptions of parental job insecurity were negatively associated with youth’s self efficacy. Finally, self-efficacy was predicted to be positively associated with youth’s work attitudes. Data were collected from 178 management undergraduates and their parents. Structural equation modeling results suggested that paternal job insecurity was positively associated with authoritarian parenting behaviors while maternal job insecurity was negatively associated with authoritarian parenting behaviors. Additionally, while the relationship between mothers’ authoritarian parenting behaviors and youth’s self-efficacy was supported, the relationship between fathers’ authoritarian parenting behaviors and youth’s self-efficacy was not. Youth’s self efficacy was positively associated with their work attitudes. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Attitudes toward immigrants: The interactive role of the authoritarian predisposition,social norms,and humanitarian values

This investigation tested whether social norms and endorsement of humanitarian values interact to influence authoritarians' attitudes toward immigrants. Oyamot, Borgida, and Fisher (2006) found correlational evidence for a model in which: (1) clear social norms for attitudes toward an outgroup (favorable or unfavorable) influence the authoritarianism–attitude relationship in the direction of the norm, and (2) in the absence of clear social norms, endorsement of humanitarian–egalitarian values attenuate the intolerant tendencies of authoritarians. The current investigation tested the model in a survey experiment conducted in a diverse adult sample (N = 388). We measured participants' levels of authoritarian predisposition and endorsement of humanitarian values. Participants were then randomly told that Americans in general had either negative, positive, or mixed opinions about immigrants and immigration (social norm condition), and then asked about their attitude toward immigrants. Consistent with the model, authoritarianism was negatively related to attitudes toward immigrants in the negative norm condition. However, authoritarians' tendency toward intolerance was attenuated when they thought that Americans in general had positive opinions about immigrants. Also as predicted, when societal norms were depicted as mixed, authoritarians' attitudes depended upon endorsement of humanitarian values: humanitarian authoritarians held positive attitudes and non-humanitarian authoritarians held the most negative attitudes toward immigrants. Implications for understanding the effects of authoritarian predispositions in varying social contexts are discussed.     

Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions toward Vietnamese in Australia

Abstract

Given the anti-Asian sentiment expressed in recent Australian Gallup polls, the present study sought to determine the dynamics of attitudes toward Vietnamese refugees. The respondents included 83 residents from Canberra and 56 residents from Toowoomba, Queensland. Results indicated that, for both samples, educational level and authoritarian attitudes were significantly related to negative racial attitudes and to negative racial behavior. For the Canberra sample, highly authoritarian behavior and high levels of conformity were significantly related to both negative racial attitudes and negative racial behavior. For the Toowoomba sample, only high levels of conformity were associated with negative racial attitudes, whereas perceived economic deprivation was related to negative racial behavior. We concluded that individual levels of authoritarianism may be the best single explanation of racial prejudice.     

Risk perception,illusory superiority and personal responsibility during COVID-19: An experimental study of attitudes to staying home

Little is known about how different government communication strategies may systematically affect people’s attitudes to staying home or going out during the COVID-19 pandemic, nor how people perceive and process the risk of viral transmission in different scenarios. In this study, we report results from two experiments that examine the degree to which people’s attitudes regarding the permissibility of leaving one’s home are (1) sensitive to different levels of risk of viral transmission in specific scenarios, (2) sensitive to communication framings that are either imperative or that emphasize personal responsibility, or (3) creating ‘loopholes’ for themselves, enabling a more permissive approach to their own compliance. We find that the level of risk influences attitudes to going out, and that participants report less permissive attitudes to going out when prompted with messages framed in imperative terms, rather than messages emphasizing personal responsibility; for self-loopholes, we find no evidence that participants’ attitudes towards going out in specific scenarios are more permissive for themselves than for others. However, participants report they are more rigorous in staying home than others, which may cause moral licensing. Additionally, we find that age is negatively associated with permissive attitudes, and that male participants are more permissive to going out. Thus, during phases where it is important to promote staying home for all scenarios, including those perceived to be low-risk, imperative communication may be best suited to increase compliance.     

Corporate Social Responsibility, Applicants’ Individual Traits, and Organizational Attraction: A Person–Organization Fit Perspective

The purpose of this study is to explore whether different aspects of corporate social responsibility (i.e., economic, legal, and ethical) have independent association with job applicants?? attraction to organizations and how applicants combine the information. Further, from a person?Corganization fit perspective, we examine whether applicants are attracted to organizations whose corporate social responsibility (CSR) reflects their differences in ethical predispositions (i.e., utilitarianism and formalism) and Machiavellianism. Using factorial design, we created scenarios manipulating CSR and pay level. Participants read each scenario and answered questions about their attraction to the organization depicted in the scenario. We found that each aspect of CSR had an independent relationship with organizational attraction and the probability of accepting a job offer. Participants combined information from each type of CSR in an interactive, configural manner. Applicants with different ethical predispositions and Machiavellianism personality were affected by CSR to different extents. Understanding how job applicants evaluate CSR information may give managers an opportunity to influence applicant attraction. Further, our study shows that organizations may be able to maximize the utility of their CSR investments by selectively conveying CSR information in recruitment brochures that are attractive to their ideal applicants. This is the first study to examine how job applicants form their perception based upon different configurations of the multiple aspects of CSR. In addition, this is the first study to examine the moderating effect of individual differences in ethical predispositions and Machiavellianism on the relationship between CSR and applicant attraction.