Why Do Immigrants Make Us More Authoritarian? The Impact of Direct and Normative Threat to Social Order from Outgroupers on Ingroup Authoritarianism

Abstract

Inspired by the well-documented relationship between authoritarianism and prejudices, we tested whether a massive influx of immigrants can constitute social threats - direct (crimes, riots, violence) and normative (different norms, customs, values) - that increase ingroup authoritarian attitudes. Across two experimental studies (n₁=251 and n₂=230), we were able to show that both direct and normative threat to social order, originating from immigrants, lead to an increase in ingroup authoritarianism attitudes (Cohen’s d = 0.45–0.57), but do not impact the right-wing authoritarianism and cultural conservatism. The effect of threat on the rise of authoritarian attitudes was only partially and in a small degree mediated by collective security motivation. Implications for the authoritarianism-prejudices relationship and the functions of authoritarianism are discussed.

Compliance with ethical standards

All the procedures performed in studies involving human participants were accepted by the Research Ethics Committee at the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (number of decision − 19/V/2020).

Informed consent

The studies were conducted on the online research panel. In the beginning, the participants were informed that the continuation of the study constitutes consent to participate in this research.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from here https://osf.io/ter85

Notes

1 It is worth noting that Kreindler (2005) postulates that authoritarianism reflects the motivation to maintain ingroup norms that are significant to social self–categorization of high identifiers (especially in reaction to a social identity threat). In this perspective, authoritarianism serves an individual, not a collective need.

Additional information

Funding

The studies were financed by the OPUS grant of the National Science Center (Poland) UMO-2016/21/B/HS6/03213.