US authoritarianism indicators rose in the 1930s and late 1960s

Evidence

In a landmark study using archival data, Sales (1973) investigated the relationship between societal threat and the components of authoritarianism as articulated by Adorno et al. (1950). He compared social indicator measures of these components from two pairs of periods in United States history when there had been shifts from relatively low threat to much greater threat. Comparing the 1920s (a low-threat period) with the 1930s (a highthreat period) and 1959–1964 (low threat) with 1967–1970 (high threat), he found increases in most of the social indicator measures of authoritarianism. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 735