Library censorship attempts rose and fell with the historical threat level.

Evidence

Information from the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (1986) for the years 1975– 1985 showed increases in the number of attempts at removing offensive materials in public and school libraries from 1979 (16 incidents) to 1982 (a peak of 57 incidents). … Whereas the average levels of censorship attempts were not significantly different between highand low-threat periods (32.2 vs. 34.4 incidents per year), t(8)= 0.31, p=ns, the average year-to-year changes showed a marginally significant trend in support of our hypothesis (average increase of 6.4 incidents in high-threat years vs. average decrease of 6.2 incidents in low-threat years, t(8)=1.76, p<.10. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 794

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to threat-authoritarianism literature (Sales, Altemeyer) and to contemporary debates about book banning spikes during perceived cultural crises.
• SEED: Essay angle: does the current wave of library book challenges map onto threat-perception spikes, and what would for the threat-authoritarianism hypothesis?