Societal-level authoritarianism rises and falls with social threat levels

Evidence

As a follow-up to Sales’s (1973) study relating behavioral indicators of authoritarianism to levels of social threat, the present research analyzed archival data from the United States for high-threat (1978–1982) and low-threat (1983–1987) periods. Societal measures of most attitude and behavioral components of the authoritarian syndrome significantly decreased between the high-threat and the low-threat periods. These results support the threat-authoritarianism relationship but also suggest a more complicated theoretical model that links perceived social conditions, arousal of authoritarian sentiments, dispositional authoritarianism, and the nature of political appeals—particularly those that engage authoritarian aggression. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 732

Yet the present study is much more than a mere replication of Sales’s methodology applied to recent times. Our modifications and extension shed light on more subtle interactions among the components of the authoritarian syndrome and their unique associations with changing societal conditions. Whereas both of Sales’s studies analyzed the transition from periods of low threat to periods of high threat and found increases in levels of authoritarian behavior, our study examined the reverse sequence and found decreases in authoritarian attitudes and behavior. This strengthens the argument in favor of a causal link between societal threat and authoritarianism by helping to rule out the possibility that societal measures of authoritarianism simply increase over time because of expanding population, economic growth, or other secular trends unrelated to threat levels. Furthermore, we examined time periods that were shorter and also less extreme than those used by Sales. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 832

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fromm’s ‘escape from freedom’ and authoritarian personality theory from the same chapter; also resonates with work on moral panics and threat-driven politics. — connects to: Authoritarianism operates independent of status-threat condition — Brenda Major and Alison Blodorn and Gregory Major Blascovich, The threat of increasing diversity: Why…, 73; Societal threat causally drives authoritarianism rather than merely co-occurring with it. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 832
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 732; John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 832