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Actual Threat, Perceived Threat, and Authoritarianism: An Experimental Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2020

Silvia Russo Open the ORCID record for Silvia Russo [Opens in a new window] ,
Michele Roccato Open the ORCID record for Michele Roccato [Opens in a new window]  and
Ugo Merlone Open the ORCID record for Ugo Merlone [Opens in a new window]
Silvia Russo
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy)
Michele Roccato*
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy)
Ugo Merlone
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michele Roccato. Università degli Studi di Torino. Dipartimento di Psicologia. Via Verdi, 10. 10124 Torino (Italy). E-mail: michele.roccato@unito.it
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Abstract

Archival, correlational, and experimental studies converge showing strong links between societal threat and authoritarianism. However, inconsistent with the social cognitive studies showing that our perception of the reality is systematically biased, the literature on the threat-authoritarianism relations has largely ignored the connection between the actual societal threat and its perception. In this study, we analyzed the relation between objective societal threat and authoritarians’ perception of it, hypothesizing that authoritarians would tend to overestimate societal threat and that such overestimation would increase the endorsement of authoritarian attitudes and the preference for authoritarian political systems. Using an experimental approach, we studied the relations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), actual societal threat (manipulated as low vs. moderate), and perceived societal threat working with an Italian community sample (N = 209, Mage = 29.70, SD = 9.53, 64.1% women). Actual threat and RWA equally predicted participants’ threat perception, while their interaction did not. In turn, threat perception further increased RWA and support to authoritarian political system. We discussed the results in terms of a vicious circle whereby authoritarians overestimate societal threat and such overestimation reinforces authoritarian attitudes.

Keywords

authoritarianismauthoritarian political systemsperceived threatthreat
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 23 , 2020 , e3
Copyright
© Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2020

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