Running head: RWA AND FEAR
Does right-wing authoritarianism reduce fear? An experimental study
Silvia Russo Michele Roccato University of Torino
Author’s note:
Silvia Russo, Department of Psychology, University of Torino, Via Verdi, 10, 10124 Torino, Italy. Telephone: ++390116702055, Fax: ++390116702061, E-mail: aivlisss@gmail.com
Michele Roccato, Department of Psychology, University of Torino, Via Verdi, 10, 10124 Torino, Italy. Telephone: ++390116702015, Fax: ++390116702061, E-mail: michele.roccato@unito.it
(corresponding author)
Does right-wing authoritarianism reduce fear? An experimental study
Silvia Russo Michele Roccato
Department of Psychology, University of Torino, Italy
ABSTRACT
Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is traditionally conceived as an inevitably negative construct, both for the other people (because it is one of the bases of prejudice against minorities, punitiveness, support for “gay-bashing”, and mean-spiritedness toward people who have made mistakes), and for the authoritarians themselves (as they often trust in untrustworthy leaders, are closed to new ideas and points of view, hold strongly contradictory beliefs, make many incorrect inferences form evidence, and avoid learning about their personal failings). Consistent with this, Duriez and colleagues [2012]
showed that authoritarianism should be considered a risk factor for negative feelings. However, Van Hiel and De Clercq’s [2009] research led to opposite results: Indeed, in their studies, RWA showed to work as a fear buffer [Greenberg et al., 1990], helping individuals to cope successfully with the threat stemming from their social world. More recently, Mirisola, Roccato, Russo, Spagna, and Vieno [in press] showed low RWA scorers to increase their RWA level when facing perceived (Study 1) or experimentally manipulated (Study 2) threat. According to these authors, this result should be
considered as the indirect consequence of low authoritarians’ attempt to cope with the fear triggered by threat. However, the efficacy of this coping strategy has never been analysed directly. Thus, we still do not know if the increase in RWA actually helps people to reduce the fear fostered by threat. To answer
this research question we performed an experimental study on a sample of Italian undergraduates (N = 128, 63.6% women, mean age = 22.65, SD = 5.39), manipulating the level of threat using two scenarios in which in 2020 Italy was presented as a very secure (control group) vs. a very insecure (experimental group) country. Consistent with the traditional conception of RWA as a “bad for the self” construct, a moderated path analysis model showed that the increase in RWA led to a significant enhancement of fear of crime. Implications, limitations and possible developments of this research are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
The entire human history has been permeated by fear. People living today in the Western world are objectively much more secure than those who lived there in past centuries [Le Goff, 1988] and than those who live at present in less advantaged areas [Walklate & Mythen, 2008]. However, in the last decades many social forces promoted Western citizens’ fear. Among them: (a) the spread of new unforeseeable domestic and international conflicts and of terrorism, which make everyone a potential victim, irrespective of their behaviour; (b) universal deregulation, which reduces people’s confidence about their professional future; (c) work’s growing flexibility and insecurity, which undermine
workers’ perception of their lives’ continuity; and (d) the increase in social inequality, the reduction of social mobility, and the crisis of the welfare state, which weaken the social support and protection people can gain from the institutions [Bauman, 1999; Füredi, 2002; Garland, 1996; Walklate & Mythen, 2008; Vieno, Roccato, & Russo, in press]. Thus, it is far from surprising that fear is
systematically immanent in the minds of the people living in the risk society [Beck, 1992] or in the age of uncertainty [Bauman, 1999], even in the absence of incumbent disasters, and that fear, anxiety, and, more generally, a feeling of insecurity permeate their psychological states [Sennett, 1998].
Traditionally, the psychological literature focussed on the intra-psychic and the behavioural consequences of such feelings, that showed to foster anger, aggressiveness, disempowerment on the one hand, and refusal of social participation and constraints imposed on one’s own life on the other [Roccato & Russo, 2012]. However, a minoritarian but very interesting approach focussed on their societal and political consequences, mainly in terms of delegitimisation of outgroups, reduction of cohesion and solidarity, and even development of an “ideology of safety” capable to turn the legitimate demand for living in safe communities into an attempt to make the most violent racist and xenophobic behaviours acceptable [Amerio, 2004].
Generally speaking, three main literatures tackled this issue, showing these feelings to have relevant societal and political consequences. First, according to the terror management theory [Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Stone, 2001], negative feelings stemming from anxiety lead people to adhere to values and views dominating in their society. In this light, anxious people tend to raise their conventionalism to cope with anxiety [Florian, Mikulincer, & Hirschberger, 2001;
Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989]. Second, according to the research on the Compensatory Control Mechanism [Kay, Whitson, Gaucher, & Galinsky, 2009], people can cope with the existential threat coming from having low levels of perceived control over their environment by endorsing external systems that impose structure and order in their social world, among which are political forces supporting the status quo. Third, fear and anxiety stemming from societal threat to safety systematically showed to foster right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) [Duckitt, 1992; Feldman & Stenner, 1997; Rickert, 1998; Stevens, Bishin, & Barr, 2006], especially for low authoritarians
[Mirisola, Roccato, Russo, Spagna, & Vieno, in press; Russo, Mirisola, & Roccato, submitted]. The complex relations between societal threat to safety, fear, and RWA will be the focus of this chapter.
RWA is defined as the covariation of three attitudinal clusters: (a) Authoritarian submission (a strong tendency to submit to authorities which are perceived as established and legitimate in the society in which one lives); (b) Authoritarian aggression (a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities); (c) Conventionalism (a strong tendency to adhere to the social conventions which are perceived as endorsed by the society and its established authorities) [Altemeyer, 1996]. RWA showed positive correlations with prejudice, support of death penalty, punitive attitudes towards unconventional persons, religiousness, approval of the injustice perpetrated by governing authorities, and even obedience in Milgram-style experiments [Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996, Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1993].
Consistent with the original psychoanalytic approach to this topic [Ackermann & Jahoda, 1950; Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Fromm, 1941; Reich, 1933], the literature has traditionally conceived authoritarianism as an epiphenomenon of psychological maladjustment and even of psychopathology. Although Altemeyer’s approach is based on a social learning perspective, not on a psychoanalytic one, RWA is still considered a negative trait both for the authoritarians (as they often trust in untrustworthy leaders, refuse new ideas and points of view, hold strong contradictory beliefs, make many incorrect inferences from evidence, and avoid learning about their personal failings) and the other people (RWA is one of the bases to legitimize prejudice against minorities, punitiveness, support for “gay-bashing”, and mean-spiritedness toward people who have made mistakes).
Yet, this inevitably “bad for the self” conception of authoritarianism has not been robustly confirmed in the few studies that have examined the relation between authoritarianism and
psychological maladjustment [e.g., Freedman, Webster, & Sanford, 1956; Van Hiel, Mervielde, & De Fruyt, 2004; however, for some links between authoritarianism and compulsivity, see Schlachter & Duckitt, 2002]. Most importantly, in a recent ground-breaking article, Van Hiel and De Clercq [2009] found that having high RWA reduced the impact of a distressed personality on depression (Study 1) and the negative consequences (e.g., somatic symptoms, anxiety, insomnia, and social dysfunction) of 21 potentially stressful life events experienced in the 24 months preceding their survey (Study 2). These results led Van Hiel and De Clercq to conclude that RWA—even if “bad for the others”—should be considered as an efficient mechanism people may use to cope with stress. However, more recently this idea has been challenged by Duriez, Klimstra, Luyckx, Beyers, and Soenens [2012], who stated that RWA constitutes a risk factor for, rather than a protective factor against, depressive symptoms.
Thus, at present, a shared conclusion on the nature of RWA is still lacking. Interestingly, the results from the recent studies by Mirisola and colleagues, according to which low RWA scorers
increase their level of authoritarianism when facing a societal threat [Mirisola et al., in press; Russo, Mirisola, & Roccato, sumbitted] are compatible with both these competing ideas. Indeed, they showed that low RWA scorers increase their RWA level when feeling threatened. However, they gave us no information on the consequences of such an increase: Did it reduce, consistent with Van Hiel and De Clercq [2009], or heighten, consistent with Duriez and colleagues [2012], the level of fear? In this chapter we tried to answer this question, by performing an experimental study.
GOALS AND HYPOTHESES
This study tackled the following research question: What are the consequence of the increase in RWA due to societal threat to safety in terms of fear? Building on a simplified version of Mirisola and colleagues’ (Study 2, in press) model, displayed in Figure 1 (compared to Mirisola et al., in press, we did not enter perceived control over one’s social world in our model), we made two alternative hypotheses compete. If, consistent with Van Hiel and Duriez [2009] RWA should be considered as a “good for the self” construct, helping people to cope with the affective negative consequences of threat, the increase in RWA due to societal threat to safety should reduce fear (HP1). On the contrary, if, consistent with Duriez and colleagues [2012], RWA should be considered as a risk factor, the increase in RWA due to societal threat to safety should heighten fear (HP2).
METHOD
We built an experiment using Lau and Redlawsk’s [2001] Dynamic Process Tracking
Environment (DPTE). The DPTE is a computer-based dynamic information board developed to study decision making in complex social situations, originally developed and applied to simulate electoral campaign environments. The DPTE is a revision of the traditional static information board developed to gain more external validity by better mimicking the flow of information in a real world social context. This technique allows tracing the decision-making process as it happens while the information label scrolls down on a computer screen: Thus, a limited number of labels are visible at any time.
Participants can access the information they are interested in by clicking on the label. While reading the detailed information the scrolling continues in the background.
We chose to collect our data by the DPTE to disclose our goals and to provide our study with external validity. We used the DPTE to simulate an electoral campaign. Our experimental procedure included four main stages: (a) a pre-experimental questionnaire; (b) a 2-minutes practice session; (c) a 9-minutes mock electoral campaign; and (d) a post-experimental questionnaire. The electoral campaign (see details below) we simulated was built based on Redlawsk [2004; Redlawsk, Civettini, &
Emmerson, 2010]. Participants
One hundred and twenty-eight students (47 men, Mage= 22.65, SD = 5.39) from the University of Torino, Italy participated in this study.
Pre-experimental questionnaire
RWA at T1 was assessed using ten four-category balanced items randomly chosen from those of Giampaglia and Roccato’s [2002] Italian version of Altemeyer’s [1996] RWA Scale. Based on = .73, we computed participants’ RWA score at T1 as the mean of these items, which ranged between 1.10 and 3.00. Dangerous World Beliefs at T1 were assessed by averaging 10 balanced items ( = .81) randomly chosen from the Italian version of Altemeyer’s Dangerous World Beliefs Scale [Mirisola, Di Stefano, & Falgares, 2007].
Experimental session
We created a mock electoral campaign with four candidates competing for the role of Italian Prime minister in the 2020 general election. After reading an initial announcement (see Appendix A), the electoral campaign began: Information about the candidates running for the election as well as non-political information (such as generic information about the country) was available. We introduced the experimental manipulation in the middle of the campaign. A randomly selected group of participants (n
= 62) read a secure scenario, in which Italy in 2020 was presented as one of the most secure nations in the world, and the Italians as believing to live in one of the best periods of the human history. The other participants (n = 69) read an insecure scenario, which depicted Italy in 2020 as a very dangerous place, in which home burglaries are a common experiences and people avoid walking alone at night because armed squads control many cities districts and go around assaulting and robbing. The scenarios’ full texts are presented in Appendix B. Right after the experimental manipulation the electoral campaign continued. At the end of the campaign participants were asked to cast their vote.
Post-experimental questionnaire
RWA at T2 was assessed using other 10 balanced items randomly chosen from Giampaglia and Roccato’s [2002] Italian version of Altemeyer’s [1996] RWA Scale. Based on = .78, we computed participants’ RWA at T2 scores as the mean of such 10 items. The scores ranged from 1.00 to 2.80. A pre-test, performed on 242 students from the University of Torino, showed that our two RWA
measures could be considered as parallel forms of the same measurement tool, r = .81, p < .001. As manipulation check, we asked our participants to answer the item on perceived societal threat to safety used by Dallago and Roccato [2010]: “Think of micro-criminality: How would you define the situation regarding this problem in Italy?”. Moreover, we asked them to answer other 10 balanced items
randomly chosen from Mirisola and colleagues‘ Italian version of Altemeyer’s Dangerous World Beliefs Scale [Mirisola, Di Stefano, & Falgares, 2007]. Based on = .92, we averaged them to compute our participants’ Dangerous World Beliefs scores. This scale has also been used to calculate residual gain scores of Dangerous World Beliefs between T1 and T2. Furthermore, based on r = .78, p < .001, post-experimental fear has been computed as the mean of the answers to these two four-category questions: “How much does the Italian situation in 2020 make you feel scared?” and “How much does the Italian situation in 2020 make you feel fearful?”. Finally, we asked our participants to fill in a standard socio-demographic form.
RESULTS
Before testing our hypotheses, we checked the effectiveness of our manipulation. The
participants exposed to the threatening scenario showed higher perceived societal threat to safety scores (M = 4.45, SD = 1.18) than those exposed to the secure scenario (M = 3.21, SD = 1.16). The difference was statistically significant, t(126) = -5. 96, p < .001. Thus, we concluded that our manipulation actually influenced participants’ sense of menace in the expected direction.
Using Amos 17, we tested a moderated path analysis model (Figure 2). Being exposed to the secure versus insecure scenario led to an increase in Dangerous World beliefs. This increment interacted with pre-experimental RWA levels in influencing post-experimental RWA levels. Simple slopes analysis showed that the increase in Dangerous World beliefs fostered RWA at T2 among low RWA scorers at T1, simple slope = 0.19, t(124) = 2.07, p < .05, but not among participants who, at T1, scored high in RWA, simple slope = -0.05, t(124) = -.73, p = .46 (see Figure 3). Finally and more interestingly, consistently with Hp2, post-experimental RWA levels positively and significantly fostered fear of crime.
DISCUSSION
This study aimed to investigate whether Right-wing authoritarianism may be considered as a dis/functional strategy to cope with societal threat. Traditional approaches to authoritarianism
conceived it as “bad for the self”, mainly describing it as a negative trait characterized by psychological maladjustment [Ackermann & Jahoda, 1950; Adorno et al., 1950; Fromm, 1941; Reich, 1933]. In line with this assumption, Duriez and colleagues [2012] showed that RWA constitutes a risk factor for, rather than a protective factor against, depressive symptoms. However, Van Hiel and De Clercq [2009] challenged this assumption by showing that high RWA levels reduced the impact of a distressed personality on depression and on potentially stressful life events’ negative consequences.
In this research we adopted an experimental approach to test whether the increment in RWA as a consequence of being exposed to a secure vs. insecure scenario was dis/functional by considering the following enhancement/reduction of fear. Our results showed that participants who heightened their RWA levels also showed higher fear levels compared to those who did not experience an increment in RWA. This empirical evidence clearly supported the traditional approach to RWA [Ackermann & Jahoda, 1950; Adorno et al., 1950; Duriez et al., 2012; Fromm, 1941; Reich, 1933], and spoke counter Van Hiel and De Clercq’s [2009] idea of RWA as a “good for the self” construct. Moreover, it helped to better understand the results by Mirisola and colleagues [Mirisola et al., in press; Russo, Mirisola, & Roccato, submitted], that showed societal threat to foster RWA among low authoritarians. Indeed it showed that such “authoritarian shift”, beyond its apparent negative societal consequences, may have relevant negative consequences for the participant him/herself. Thus, far from being an effective coping mechanism, RWA showed to be a significant predictor of negative affect. Three main conclusions may be drawn from this research.
First, our results have been in line with those showing that mental health and/or negative effect are positively associated with the value orientations not characterising high RWA scorers (i.e., Self-Direction and Stimulation) and positively associated with those characterising them (Tradition,
Conformity, and Security) [Duriez & Van Hiel, 2002; Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000]. Future research aimed at testing the same model we have presented in this chapter, using value orientations instead of RWA, could be interesting.
Our second conclusion concerns the very nature of RWA. Our results have been consistent with the conception of RWA as an ideological variable that is sensitive to changes as a function of the “here and now” in people’s daily experiences [see Duckitt, 2001], and contrasted with the classic [Adorno et al., 1950; Altemeyer, 1996; Fromm, 1941; Reich, 1933] and the modern [Altemeyer, 1996] theories that conceive of authoritarianism as a stable personality trait.
Third, considering authoritarianism as a consequence of situational menace resounds with Fromm’s [1941] perspective, according to which authoritarianism is a defence mechanism that people may use to escape from freedom when they are not able to handle it given their scarce personal
resources. However, Fromm conceived authoritarianism as a stable trait developed during childhood as a consequence of growing up with repressive parenting models and from living in a politically,
socially, and economically threatening world. Following his line of reasoning, low and high authoritarians should have relatively immutable psychological differences. In contrast, our results showed that experiencing a threatening situation may reduce the differences between low and high authoritarian people. Thus, we are even more pessimistic than Fromm, given that authoritarianism predicts variability in generalized prejudice [McFarland, 2011], support for military aggressions, punitive attitudes toward unconventional people, approval of injustices perpetrated by authorities, and even obedience in Milgram-style experiments [Crowson, 2009; Dambrun & Vatiné, 2010].
This research had specular strengths and limitations, both consequences of its experimental approach. On the one hand, we have been the first to study causal relations between RWA and fear. On the other hand, we could study such links in a social psychology lab, and we do know what would be happened in real-world contexts, nor we could model long-terms effects. However, the experimental method we used is widely considered as a one of the best approaches for researchers interested in maximizing the ecological validity of their results [Redlawsk & Lau, 2009]. In spite of this, future research performed in real-life contexts could be the next step in this research domain.
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Appendix A
It is 2020 and after some years living abroad you come back to Italy. You fulfilled your life plans, especially as concerns family, job, career and friends. When you come back you find out that Italy has changed a lot. Politically speaking, the same old parties you used to know still exist, even though their leaders changed. In the meantime, many new parties appeared on the political arena. The general election is oncoming and you’ll have to cast a vote: The electoral campaign is about to begin. Your task is to get a sense of what your country looks like in 2020 and of the candidates running for the election. Once the campaign is over, you will have the chance to cast a vote.
During an electoral campaign, people get their news from different sources (newspapers, television, internet, friends and relatives, associations, the candidate themselves, and so on). There is much more available than anyone can possibly pay attention to and this will be true in our campaign as well. You will have to choose the information you would like to read. As in the practice session, information about each candidate will appear in a box that scrolls down the screen. If you wish to view a piece of information, click on the box and you will be able to read the contents inside. If you are not interested in some piece of information, you can simply let it scroll down. The electoral campaign will last about 10 minutes.
Appendix B Secure scenario
Breaking news: latest Istat1 research results
A recent Istat research showed that Italy deeply changed in the last ten years. Crime and
delinquency are still present, but decreased so much that every year Italy is becoming more secure than ever. The immigration tension that used to be high at the beginning of the III millennium is over, thanks to some legislative changes approved by a large majority. Today Italy is looked at as an example of harmony and racial integration: Italians and immigrants live and work together contributing to increase social wellbeing. In the world, these are peaceful and flourishing times. For the most part, polls show that Italians feel to live in one of the best periods of the human history, with security, progress, and success spread all over. Tourists are impressed by Italian friendliness, worthiness, integrity, and kindness and by the nice, clean and neat country.
Insecure scenario
Breaking news: latest Istat research results
A recent Istat research showed that Italy deeply changed in the last ten years. Crime and
delinquency are all over and violent assaults take place everywhere. Whenever they can, people avoid walking alone at night because armed squads control many cities districts and go around assaulting and robbing. The huge number of immigrants arrived in Italy in the last years made the situation worse by increasing the crime rates. Home burglaries, especially at night, are today a common experience and are more violent than ever. The police is unable to handle the situation and it seems they are not
1 Istat is the Italian National Institute of Statistics, the main Italian producer of official statistics in the service of citizens and
implementing strategies to fight crime anymore. From the beginning of the III millennium, different governments succeeded, but none of them was able to manage these serious problems.
Figures captions
Figure 1.Moderated Mediation Model Predicting RWA at T2 as a Function of Manipulated Threat, Dangerous Word Beliefs Change, Control Perception Change, and RWA at T1 . Source: Mirisola et al., in press.
Figure 2. Path analysis model: Standardized regression coefficients are provided, solid lines paths were significant (p < .05), broken lines paths were not significant.
Figure 3. Moderating effect of RWA at T1 on the relation between the increment in Dangerous World Beliefs and RWA at T2.
