Threat, Authoritarianism, and the Power of U.S. Presidents

Abstract

Threat results in higher authoritarianism and one aspect of authoritarianism is the tendency to identify with powerful figures. The present study was concerned with the possible interrelationships of the power motives of U.S. presidents; the degree of social, political, and economic threat evident prior to presidential elections; and the percentage of the popular vote obtained by presidents. We hypothesized that the power of presidents from Coolidge to Reagan would be positively correlated with indices of threat including the unemployment rate, changes in the GNP, the consumer price index, car registrations, and work stoppages, as well as subjective annual threat ratings of historians and social critics. All correlations were in the expected direction and most attained in acceptable significance level. A corollary hypothesis—if the power of the presidential election winner is discrepant from the degree of prevailing threat, the percentage of the popular vote he receives may be low—also gained some support from the correlations between power-threat discrepancy scores and the margin of victory.