Authoritarian gullibility toward insiders and paranoia toward outsiders share one cause

Evidence

What about our negative results? Some of them may be due to continuing mild levels of threat in 1983–1987. Although our threat indicators reversed their trends between 1982 and 1983, the differences were not always sharply defined. Unemployment continued to be quite high in 1983, and the prime interest rate was above 10% until 1985. Most important, perhaps, were the continuing high levels of crime, increasing again after 1984. A more detailed analysis of the interactions among the separate threat variables and the separate authoritarianism indicators might reveal additional, complex relationships. For example, does economic threat differ from threats of war and terrorist violence abroad or crime at home? How do emerging threats such as the AIDS epidemic, global warming, or toxic waste contamination of the environment affect authoritarian beliefs and behaviors? Are tangible, personal experiences of threat or abstract impressions of threat dramatized by the media more important in arousing authoritarianism? — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 833 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Control deprivation triggers compensatory superstitious and conspiratorial thinking. — Dmitrij Agroskin and Eva Jonas, Controlling death by defending…, 23; One underlying authoritarianism trait explains many disparate attitudes; Authoritarianism reflects a personality pattern of dutifulness, order, and low openness (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Different types of threat may drive authoritarianism differently #complicates (0.74) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 833