The dimensional structure of people's fears, threats, and concerns and their relationship with right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation

Abstract

Most theories addressing the topic have proposed that threat and fear underlie right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and many empirical findings have been consistent with this proposition. Important questions, however, remain unanswered, such as whether RWA is associated with fear and threat in general or only specific kinds of fear and threat. Theories of RWA generate markedly different predictions on this issue, particularly with respect to social or personal fears, and whether the association would also hold for the closely related construct of social dominance orientation (SDO). We investigated the issue by asking 463 undergraduate students to rate their feelings of fear, concern, and anxiety to a comprehensive 93-item list of potential fears and threats, which were formulated as either personal or social. Exploratory factors analysis identified five distinct fear-threat factors: harm to self, child, or country; personal and relationship failures; environmental and economic fears; political and personal uncertainties; and threats to ingroup. All the fear-threat factors were correlated with RWA, with the strongest correlations being for threats to ingroup, and with stronger effects for social than for personal fears. None of the fear factors correlated with SDO. These relationships were not affected by controlling for social desirability or emotional stability (EMS). When the intercorrelations between fear factors and EMS were controlled using ridge regression, only threats to ingroup predicted RWA. Structural equation modeling indicated good fit for a model in which low levels of EMS had a significant path to threats to ingroup, which in turn had a significant path to RWA, and EMS having a significant though weak indirect (fully mediated) inverse effect on RWA. Implications of these findings for theories of authoritarianism and future research are discussed.

Right‐Wing Ideology as a Predictor of Collective Action: A Test Across Four Political Issue Domains

“…RWA also predicts perceiving greater “external”—mainly social—threats longitudinally (Onraet, Dhont, & Van Hiel, ). Cross‐sectional studies have similarly noted a positive link between RWA and fear‐based threats (e.g., Shaffer & Duckitt, ). Relatedly, researchers have studied ideology and risk perception, finding that higher RWA is associated with perceiving potentially precarious social and ethical situations as riskier (Choma & Hodson, ) and rating everyday (e.g., vaccinations) and voluntary (e.g., drinking alcohol) hazards for the self as riskier (Choma, Hanoch, Gummerum, & Hodson, ).…”

“…The story for SDO is more nuanced, with SDO being unrelated or related negatively to threat. For instance, SDO is generally unrelated to perceptions of the world as a dangerous place (Perry et al, 2013), external social threats (Onraet, Van Hiel, Dhont, & Pattyn, 2013;Shaffer & Duckitt, 2013), risky social or ethical situations (Choma & Hodson, 2017), and everyday or voluntary hazards (Choma et al, 2013), and associated negatively with threat or perceiving risk. For example, those higher in SDO rate health (e.g., firefighting, mountain climbing) and competitive hazards (e.g., highrisk investment) as less risky (Choma et al, 2013) and perceive potentially dangerous recreational and health situations as less precarious (Choma & Hodson, 2017).…”

What is threatening about refugees? Identifying different types of threat and their association with emotional responses and attitudes towards refugee migration

“…In order to explore the causes of the different threat types, we investigated the associations between threat types, intergroup contact experiences and individual differences. Research has shown that negative intergroup contact (e.g., Barlow et al, 2012), national identification (e.g., Louis, Esses, & Lalonde, 2013), right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation (e.g., Shaffer & Duckitt, 2013), and zero-sum beliefs (e.g., Cohrs & Asbrock, 2009) are positively associated with intergroup threat. Reversely, positive contact (e.g., Barlow et al, 2012) and pro-diversity beliefs (e.g., Kauff, Stegmann, van Dick, Beierlein, & Christ, 2018) are negatively associated with intergroup threat.…”

Threat and authoritarianism: Some theoretical and methodological comments

“…The papers in this special section share some assumptions. First, they rely primarily on the concept of RWA as an empirical measure of authoritarianism, although this is complemented by more specific authoritarian reactions (Asbrock & Fritsche, 2013 this issue), social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994) (Onraet & Van Hiel, 2013 this issue;Shaffer & Duckitt, 2013 this issue), and racist attitudes (Onraet & Van Hiel, 2013 this issue). Second, all the papers rest on the assumption that perceived threat is a cause of RWA.…”