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The social development of right-wing authoritarianism: The interaction between parental autonomy support and societal threat to safety
Personality and Individual Differences 109 (2017) 1–4
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Short Communication
The social development of right-wing authoritarianism: The interaction between parental autonomy support and societal threat to safety Claudia Manzi a, Michele Roccato b, Fabio Paderi a, Sara Vitrotti b, Silvia Russo c,⁎ a b c
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Department of Psychology, Largo Agostino Gemelli 1, Milano, Italy Università degli Studi di Torino, Department of Psychology, Via Verdi 10, 10124, Torino, Italy Örebro University, Youth & Society, Örebro University, Fakultetsgatan 1, 70182 Örebro, Sweden
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 2 November 2016 Received in revised form 16 December 2016 Accepted 17 December 2016 Available online xxxx
a b s t r a c t We tested the hypothesis that parental support for autonomy moderates the effects of societal threat to safety on the development of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). In a quasi-experimental study performed on 241 Italian university students, societal threat to safety fostered RWA only among participants who reported low levels of parental support for autonomy. © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Right-wing authoritarianism Threat Parental autonomy support Moderation Parenting
Early theorists postulated that: in situations of threat, individuals who are socialized in an authoritarian manner tend to submit to authority (Fromm, 1941; Reich, 1933). In the following years, many scholars have investigated the issue, from two different angles. Some have focused on the direct link between different parenting dimensions and child authoritarianism (e.g., Duriez, Soenens, & Vansteenkiste, 2007), while others have concentrated on the direct impact of threat on authoritarianism (e.g. Onraet, Van Hiel, Dhont, & Pattyn, 2013). In the present study, we integrate these lines of research to gain insight into the social development of authoritarianism, operationalized as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), i.e., as the covariation of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1996). 1. Parenting, threat, and RWA Authoritarianism has been traditionally attributed to social developmental processes (cf. Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). More recently, Altemeyer (1988) contended that adolescence is the stage of life critical to the development of authoritarianism. He suggested that adolescents who have frequent contacts with members of out-groups, deviants, or people holding different values are less likely to develop authoritarian attitudes than adolescents who do not have such contacts. However, the inclination or possibility to experience ⁎ Corresponding author at: Youth & Society, Örebro University Sweden, Fakultetsgatan 1, 70182 Örebro, Sweden. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Russo).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.12.032 0191-8869/© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
these contacts is largely determined by the social growing-up context. Altemeyer himself maintains that life experiences cannot be the ultimate cause of authoritarianism: “experiences may correlate with authoritarian attitudes, but only because … other factors have predisposed us to experience experiences in expected ways” (Altemeyer, 1988, p. 86). From this perspective, and in line with the early works, parenting styles play an important role. Growing research has shown that parent-child relationships are a key factor in the development of RWA. A first set of studies detected a significant relation between children's attachment style and RWA. Authoritarianism showed a weak negative link with attachment avoidance, and a weak positive link with attachment anxiety (e.g., Weber & Federico, 2008). A second set reported that parents' authoritarianism has a significant association with children's authoritarianism (e.g. Duriez, Soenens, & Vansteenkiste, 2008). A third set focused on parental goal promotion. For instance, Duriez et al. (2007) found that the promotion of extrinsic goals at the expense of intrinsic goals is positively associated with the degree to which adolescents subscribe to the prejudice dimensions of RWA. Similarly, Duriez (2011) reported a positive association between extrinsic goals promotion and ethnic prejudice. Finally, a fourth set showed that strict parenting style and parental psychological control are positively linked to authoritarianism (Duckitt, 2001; Heydari, Teymoori, & Hagish, 2013). These four lines of research rested on the assumption that parenting practices are directly associated with offspring's authoritarianism. However, as stated above, an intriguing idea—from the origins of the study of authoritarianism—is that people socialized in an authoritarian
2
C. Manzi et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 109 (2017) 1–4
manner are especially likely to submit to authority when they are under threat. In this light, the socialization process affects how people react to threats more than individual levels of authoritarianism. The dual-process motivational model (Duckitt, 2001) holds that authoritarianism, far from being a stable personality variable, is an ideological variable liable to change as a function of actual and/or perceived threat. Longitudinal research has shown that RWA increases as a function of degree of threat, especially of societal threat to safety (Sibley, Wilson, & Duckitt, 2007). Consistent with this, Oesterreich (2005) has suggested that authoritarianism is strongly related to insecurity and threat: “flight into security” is a universal human reaction in ambiguous and frightening situations that lead people to orient themselves towards authorities, i.e., towards individuals and institutions who can provide security. In other words, people may cope with threat by endorsing external systems that impose structure and order in their social world, usually God, the government, or powerful others (e.g., Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008), and RWA accounts for people's tendency to do so (Altemeyer, 1988). In this light, the endorsement of authoritarian views might be considered as a coping mechanism to which people resort to when facing threatening situations in order to increase their perceived control over the world (Mirisola, Roccato, Russo, Spagna, & Vieno, 2014; Van Hiel & De Clercq, 2009). Recently, different individual psychological variables have been shown to moderate the association between threat and RWA (e.g., openness to experience, initial level of RWA, meaning, and clarity of self-concept; see Dallago & Roccato, 2010; Manzi, Roccato, & Russo, 2015; Mirisola et al., 2014; Russo, Manzi, & Roccato, 2016). Overall, these studies suggest that authoritarian reactions to threat characterize some people more than others.
2. The current study Oesterreich (2005) postulated that the foundations of authoritarians' propensity to submit to authority date back to childhood, when authoritarian reactions may protect the child against risks in a world in which s/he cannot cope. At this stage of life, the role of parents is crucial in influencing how the child will deal with threat during the following stages. According to Oesterreich (2005), whether socialization leads towards personal autonomy or a lifelong reliance on authority depends on how parents have supported the child's autonomous functioning. When children face a particular threat, their parents' tasks should be to reassure them and, at the same time, to help them formulate autonomously their own strategies to cope with reality. When parents support autonomy, the child's capacity to cope with reality will be strengthened, and the child will be successful in overcoming insecurity by developing appropriate individual solutions. By contrast, controlling and manipulative parents demand that their children rely on authority or authoritarian mechanisms rather than teach appropriate coping strategies. Inability of the child to generate such strategies is likely to increase the probability of responding in an authoritarian manner to critical situations even in adulthood. In this study, we aimed to analyze the conjoint effects of threat and parenting practices on the development of authoritarianism. In particular, we focused on parental support for autonomy. This dimension refers to parental attitudes and behaviors that encourage the child's volitional functioning (by contrast with controlling and manipulative parenting). Parental autonomy support has been found to have important implications for many aspects of child adjustment (for a review, see Manzi, Regalia, Pelucchi, & Fincham, 2012). We suggest that the effect of societal threat to safety on the development of authoritarian attitudes depends on this parental dimension. More specifically, we hypothesize that parental autonomy support buffers people's authoritarian responses to socially threatening situations.
3. Method 3.1. Participants Two hundred and forty-one students from social-psychology courses in the Psychology Department of the University of Torino, Italy (31% males, Mage = 24.51, SD = 5.06) participated in this study on a voluntary basis without compensation. They were recruited in their classes, completed anonymously the questionnaire described below and, after their participation, were carefully debriefed. 3.2. Method and measures We performed a paper-and-pencil quasi-experimental vignette study, based on Roccato and Russo's (2016) procedure. First, participants compiled a measure of Parental Autonomy Support (PAS; we used the Autonomy Support sub-dimension of the Perception of Parents Scale by Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991), composed of seven 5-category items. This measure assesses the degree to which parents encourage and support their children to take autonomous decisions about their lives. An example item is “My parents, whenever possible, allow me to choose what to do”, α = 0.88 (M = 3.98, SD = 0.74). Subsequently, we asked our participants to imagine themselves in the hypothetical situation of coming back to Italy in 2025 after some years spent abroad and getting a sense of what the country had become. We then initiated our experimental manipulation. A randomly selected group (n = 117, 32.5% males, Mage = 24.21) were given a safe scenario, depicting Italy as one of the world's safest nations, and the Italians as believing they live in one of the best periods of human history. The remaining participants (n = 124, 29.8% males, Mage = 24.79) were given a threatening scenario, presenting the country as a very dangerous place, where criminality is widespread and armed gangs control many city districts. The scenarios have previously been used in research on RWA (see Manzi et al., 2015; Mirisola et al., 2014). After the manipulation, participants were presented with the item: “Think of micro-criminality: How would you define the situation regarding this problem in Italy in 2025?” (1 “Not risky at all” to 7 “Very risky”). Given that this item is an effective operationalization of perceived societal threat to safety (Dallago & Roccato, 2010), we used it as a manipulation check. Subsequently, we measured participants' RWA using a short, balanced version of the RWA scale. This 5-category 10-item measure, α = 0.79 (M = 2.18, SD = 0.66) has been validated on a sample of 839 participants, composed of both students and adults (cf. form B, Roccato & Russo, 2015). Like Altemeyer's (1988) original RWA scale, the scale taps into covariation between the three dimensions of RWA. A standard socio-demographic form was then presented. We computed the mean scores of the items on the scales. 4. Results Preliminary analyses showed that our experimental manipulation was effective: participants exposed to the threatening scenario reported higher societal threat to safety (M = 5.67, SD = 1.49) than those Table 1 Predictors of RWA.
Threatening scenario PAS Threatening scenario ∗ PAS Explained variance - R2 Δ R2
Step 1
Step 2
0.21 (0.04)⁎⁎⁎ −0.05 (0.05)
0.21 (0.04)⁎⁎⁎ −0.07 (0.05) −0.17 (0.05)⁎⁎ 0.14 F (1, 237) = 9.45⁎⁎
0.10
Notes. Unstandardized parameters are displayed, with standard errors in parentheses. ⁎⁎ p b 0.01. ⁎⁎⁎ p b 0.001.
C. Manzi et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 109 (2017) 1–4
3
Fig. 1. The moderating effect of PAS on the relation between societal threat to safety and RWA.
exposed to the safe scenario (M = 1.97, SD = 0.92), t(239) = − 23.10, p b 0.001, η2 = 0.69. We performed a moderated regression, using the experimental manipulation (+ 1 = threatening scenario, − 1 = safe scenario), meancentred PAS, and their interaction as independent variables, and RWA as the dependent variable. All assumptions for multiple linear regressions were met. Exposure to the threatening (as opposed to the safe) scenario fostered RWA, whereas PAS had no significant association with RWA (cf. Table 1). More interestingly, the interaction between the experimental manipulation and PAS was statistically significant (f2 = 0.04). A simple-slope analysis showed that the effect of societal threat to safety on RWA was significant among participants low (− 1 SD) on PAS, b = 0.34, SE = 0.06, p b 0.001, but not among those high (+1 SD) on PAS, b = 0.09, SE = 0.06, p = 0.11. Fig. 1 shows that the difference in the mean level of RWA between people high and low on PAS exposed to the threatening scenario was twice that between people high and low on PAS exposed to the safe scenario. 5. Discussion We analyzed the conjoint effect of societal threat to safety and parenting practices on RWA. As predicted, participants reporting high levels of parental support for autonomy tended not to react to societal threat in an authoritarian manner, while those reporting low levels of parental support for autonomy tended to take a “flight into security” (Oesterreich, 2005), showing a higher level of RWA in the threatening situation. The results of this study, gained from an unusually large sample in quasi-experimental research, provided empirical support for the classic idea that parental socialization plays an important role in provoking/ preventing an authoritarian reaction when an individual faces a societal threat. Moreover, they helped to shed light on the link between societal threat to safety and RWA. Participants reporting high levels of PAS tended to react to societal threat without needing to look for reassurance from external authorities. Based on previous research (e.g., Mirisola et al., 2014; Van Hiel & De Clercq, 2009), one plausible explanation for our findings is that parents who support their children's autonomy help them to develop autonomous coping strategies, which, in turn, help them to find adaptive responses to threat. Future research could explicitly test this idea, assessing directly the strategies used to cope with threat by participants differing with regard to PAS. Two extensions of this study seem promising. First, the research could be fine-tuned using values on a scale that allows separate measurement of the three attitudinal clusters that define RWA, such as Funke's (2005). This would allow testing of the idea that the nature of authoritarianism among people with high PAS might differ from
that of people with low PAS, and/or that low and high PAS scorers might react differentially to societal threat to safety by increasing different aspects of RWA. Second, the effect of different kinds of societal threat could be studied to gain insights into the generalizability of the interactive process we observed to other sources of menace, such as that stemming from immigration, welfare crisis, or terrorism. 6. Conclusion This study confirmed the relevance of parental support for autonomy to promoting positive and adaptive outcome in offspring. In the context of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), the importance of promotion of autonomy has been already tested. In the extent to which parents provide autonomy support and refrain from using intrusive and manipulative techniques, such as guilt-induction and love-withdrawal, they promote various forms of adjustment (e.g., Manzi et al., 2012). Previous studies have tested the influence of a lack of autonomy support from parents on the development of children's authoritarianism, showing that an authoritarian parenting style and parental psychological control have directly enhancing impacts on the level of child authoritarianism (e.g. Heydari et al., 2013). In this study, we have shown that the failure of parents to grant autonomy has an even more negative effect, in that it hinders the capability of the child to react in a positive manner in threatening situations. References Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York, NY: Harper. Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dallago, F., & Roccato, M. (2010). Right-wing authoritarianism, big five, and perceived threat to safety. European Journal of Personality, 24, 106–122. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1002/per.745. Duckitt, J. (2001). A dual process cognitive-motivational theory of ideology and prejudice. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology. Vol. 33. (pp. 41–113). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Duriez, B. (2011). The social costs of extrinsic relative to intrinsic goal pursuits revisited: The moderating role of general causality orientation. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 684–687. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.12.017. Duriez, B., Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2007). In search of the antecedents of adolescent authoritarianism: The relative contribution of parental goal promotion and parenting style dimensions. European Journal of Personality, 21, 507–527. http://dx.doi. org/10.1002/per.623. Duriez, B., Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2008). The intergenerational transmission of authoritarianism: The mediating role of parental goal promotion. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 622–642. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.08.007. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York, NY: Avon Books. Funke, F. (2005). The dimensionality of right-wing authoritarianism: Lessons from the dilemma between theory and measurement. Political Psychology, 26, 195–218. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00415.x.
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Grolnick, W. S., Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (1991). The inner resources for school achievement: Motivational mediators of children's perceptions of their parents. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 508–517. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.83.4.508. Heydari, A., Teymoori, A., & Hagish, S. (2013). Socioeconomic status, perceived parental control, and authoritarianism: Development of authoritarianism in Iranian society. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 16, 228–237. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12027. Kay, A., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 18–35. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1037/0022-3514.95.1.18. Manzi, C., Regalia, C., Pelucchi, S., & Fincham, F. D. (2012). Documenting different domains of promotion of autonomy in families. Journal of Adolescence, 35, 289–298. http://dx. doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.10.011. Manzi, C., Roccato, M., & Russo, S. (2015). Meaning buffers right-wing authoritarian responses to societal threat via the mediation of loss perceived control. Personality and Individual Differences, 83, 117–121. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.04.009. Mirisola, A., Roccato, M., Russo, S., Spagna, G., & Vieno, A. (2014). Societal threat to safety, compensatory control, and right-wing authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 35, 795–812. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/pops.12048. Oesterreich, D. (2005). Flight into security: A new approach and measure of the authoritarian personality. Political Psychology, 26, 275–298. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.14679221.2005.00418.x. Onraet, E., Van Hiel, A., Dhont, K., & Pattyn, S. (2013). Internal and external threat in relationship with right wing attitudes. Journal of Personality, 81, 233–248. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/jopy.12011.
Reich, W. (1933). Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus. Copenhagen: Verlag für Sexualpolitik. Roccato, M., & Russo, S. (2015). Two short, parallel, unidimensional, and invariant across genders versions of Altemeyer's (1996) right-wing authoritarianism scale. Psicologia Sociale, 10, 257–272. http://dx.doi.org/10.1482/81371. Roccato, M., & Russo, S. (2016). Right-wing authoritarianism, societal threat to safety, and psychological distress. European Journal of Social Psychology. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1002/ejsp.2236 (Advance online publication). Russo, S., Manzi, C., & Roccato, M. (2016). Self-concept clarity buffers the impact of societal threat to safety on right-wing authoritarianism. Journal of Social Psychology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2016.1229255 (Advance online publication). Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68. Sibley, C., Wilson, M., & Duckitt, J. (2007). Antecedents of men's hostile and benevolent sexism: The dual roles of social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 160–172. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 0146167206294745. Van Hiel, A., & De Clercq, B. (2009). Authoritarianism is good for you: Right-wing authoritarianism as a buffering factor for mental distress. European Journal of Personality, 23, 33–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/per.702. Weber, C., & Federico, C. M. (2008). Interpersonal attachment and patterns of ideological beliefs. Political Psychology, 28, 389–416. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2007. 00579.x.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Short Communication
The social development of right-wing authoritarianism: The interaction between parental autonomy support and societal threat to safety Claudia Manzi a, Michele Roccato b, Fabio Paderi a, Sara Vitrotti b, Silvia Russo c,⁎ a b c
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Department of Psychology, Largo Agostino Gemelli 1, Milano, Italy Università degli Studi di Torino, Department of Psychology, Via Verdi 10, 10124, Torino, Italy Örebro University, Youth & Society, Örebro University, Fakultetsgatan 1, 70182 Örebro, Sweden
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 2 November 2016 Received in revised form 16 December 2016 Accepted 17 December 2016 Available online xxxx
a b s t r a c t We tested the hypothesis that parental support for autonomy moderates the effects of societal threat to safety on the development of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). In a quasi-experimental study performed on 241 Italian university students, societal threat to safety fostered RWA only among participants who reported low levels of parental support for autonomy. © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Right-wing authoritarianism Threat Parental autonomy support Moderation Parenting
Early theorists postulated that: in situations of threat, individuals who are socialized in an authoritarian manner tend to submit to authority (Fromm, 1941; Reich, 1933). In the following years, many scholars have investigated the issue, from two different angles. Some have focused on the direct link between different parenting dimensions and child authoritarianism (e.g., Duriez, Soenens, & Vansteenkiste, 2007), while others have concentrated on the direct impact of threat on authoritarianism (e.g. Onraet, Van Hiel, Dhont, & Pattyn, 2013). In the present study, we integrate these lines of research to gain insight into the social development of authoritarianism, operationalized as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), i.e., as the covariation of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1996). 1. Parenting, threat, and RWA Authoritarianism has been traditionally attributed to social developmental processes (cf. Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). More recently, Altemeyer (1988) contended that adolescence is the stage of life critical to the development of authoritarianism. He suggested that adolescents who have frequent contacts with members of out-groups, deviants, or people holding different values are less likely to develop authoritarian attitudes than adolescents who do not have such contacts. However, the inclination or possibility to experience ⁎ Corresponding author at: Youth & Society, Örebro University Sweden, Fakultetsgatan 1, 70182 Örebro, Sweden. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Russo).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.12.032 0191-8869/© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
these contacts is largely determined by the social growing-up context. Altemeyer himself maintains that life experiences cannot be the ultimate cause of authoritarianism: “experiences may correlate with authoritarian attitudes, but only because … other factors have predisposed us to experience experiences in expected ways” (Altemeyer, 1988, p. 86). From this perspective, and in line with the early works, parenting styles play an important role. Growing research has shown that parent-child relationships are a key factor in the development of RWA. A first set of studies detected a significant relation between children's attachment style and RWA. Authoritarianism showed a weak negative link with attachment avoidance, and a weak positive link with attachment anxiety (e.g., Weber & Federico, 2008). A second set reported that parents' authoritarianism has a significant association with children's authoritarianism (e.g. Duriez, Soenens, & Vansteenkiste, 2008). A third set focused on parental goal promotion. For instance, Duriez et al. (2007) found that the promotion of extrinsic goals at the expense of intrinsic goals is positively associated with the degree to which adolescents subscribe to the prejudice dimensions of RWA. Similarly, Duriez (2011) reported a positive association between extrinsic goals promotion and ethnic prejudice. Finally, a fourth set showed that strict parenting style and parental psychological control are positively linked to authoritarianism (Duckitt, 2001; Heydari, Teymoori, & Hagish, 2013). These four lines of research rested on the assumption that parenting practices are directly associated with offspring's authoritarianism. However, as stated above, an intriguing idea—from the origins of the study of authoritarianism—is that people socialized in an authoritarian
2
C. Manzi et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 109 (2017) 1–4
manner are especially likely to submit to authority when they are under threat. In this light, the socialization process affects how people react to threats more than individual levels of authoritarianism. The dual-process motivational model (Duckitt, 2001) holds that authoritarianism, far from being a stable personality variable, is an ideological variable liable to change as a function of actual and/or perceived threat. Longitudinal research has shown that RWA increases as a function of degree of threat, especially of societal threat to safety (Sibley, Wilson, & Duckitt, 2007). Consistent with this, Oesterreich (2005) has suggested that authoritarianism is strongly related to insecurity and threat: “flight into security” is a universal human reaction in ambiguous and frightening situations that lead people to orient themselves towards authorities, i.e., towards individuals and institutions who can provide security. In other words, people may cope with threat by endorsing external systems that impose structure and order in their social world, usually God, the government, or powerful others (e.g., Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008), and RWA accounts for people's tendency to do so (Altemeyer, 1988). In this light, the endorsement of authoritarian views might be considered as a coping mechanism to which people resort to when facing threatening situations in order to increase their perceived control over the world (Mirisola, Roccato, Russo, Spagna, & Vieno, 2014; Van Hiel & De Clercq, 2009). Recently, different individual psychological variables have been shown to moderate the association between threat and RWA (e.g., openness to experience, initial level of RWA, meaning, and clarity of self-concept; see Dallago & Roccato, 2010; Manzi, Roccato, & Russo, 2015; Mirisola et al., 2014; Russo, Manzi, & Roccato, 2016). Overall, these studies suggest that authoritarian reactions to threat characterize some people more than others.
2. The current study Oesterreich (2005) postulated that the foundations of authoritarians' propensity to submit to authority date back to childhood, when authoritarian reactions may protect the child against risks in a world in which s/he cannot cope. At this stage of life, the role of parents is crucial in influencing how the child will deal with threat during the following stages. According to Oesterreich (2005), whether socialization leads towards personal autonomy or a lifelong reliance on authority depends on how parents have supported the child's autonomous functioning. When children face a particular threat, their parents' tasks should be to reassure them and, at the same time, to help them formulate autonomously their own strategies to cope with reality. When parents support autonomy, the child's capacity to cope with reality will be strengthened, and the child will be successful in overcoming insecurity by developing appropriate individual solutions. By contrast, controlling and manipulative parents demand that their children rely on authority or authoritarian mechanisms rather than teach appropriate coping strategies. Inability of the child to generate such strategies is likely to increase the probability of responding in an authoritarian manner to critical situations even in adulthood. In this study, we aimed to analyze the conjoint effects of threat and parenting practices on the development of authoritarianism. In particular, we focused on parental support for autonomy. This dimension refers to parental attitudes and behaviors that encourage the child's volitional functioning (by contrast with controlling and manipulative parenting). Parental autonomy support has been found to have important implications for many aspects of child adjustment (for a review, see Manzi, Regalia, Pelucchi, & Fincham, 2012). We suggest that the effect of societal threat to safety on the development of authoritarian attitudes depends on this parental dimension. More specifically, we hypothesize that parental autonomy support buffers people's authoritarian responses to socially threatening situations.
3. Method 3.1. Participants Two hundred and forty-one students from social-psychology courses in the Psychology Department of the University of Torino, Italy (31% males, Mage = 24.51, SD = 5.06) participated in this study on a voluntary basis without compensation. They were recruited in their classes, completed anonymously the questionnaire described below and, after their participation, were carefully debriefed. 3.2. Method and measures We performed a paper-and-pencil quasi-experimental vignette study, based on Roccato and Russo's (2016) procedure. First, participants compiled a measure of Parental Autonomy Support (PAS; we used the Autonomy Support sub-dimension of the Perception of Parents Scale by Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991), composed of seven 5-category items. This measure assesses the degree to which parents encourage and support their children to take autonomous decisions about their lives. An example item is “My parents, whenever possible, allow me to choose what to do”, α = 0.88 (M = 3.98, SD = 0.74). Subsequently, we asked our participants to imagine themselves in the hypothetical situation of coming back to Italy in 2025 after some years spent abroad and getting a sense of what the country had become. We then initiated our experimental manipulation. A randomly selected group (n = 117, 32.5% males, Mage = 24.21) were given a safe scenario, depicting Italy as one of the world's safest nations, and the Italians as believing they live in one of the best periods of human history. The remaining participants (n = 124, 29.8% males, Mage = 24.79) were given a threatening scenario, presenting the country as a very dangerous place, where criminality is widespread and armed gangs control many city districts. The scenarios have previously been used in research on RWA (see Manzi et al., 2015; Mirisola et al., 2014). After the manipulation, participants were presented with the item: “Think of micro-criminality: How would you define the situation regarding this problem in Italy in 2025?” (1 “Not risky at all” to 7 “Very risky”). Given that this item is an effective operationalization of perceived societal threat to safety (Dallago & Roccato, 2010), we used it as a manipulation check. Subsequently, we measured participants' RWA using a short, balanced version of the RWA scale. This 5-category 10-item measure, α = 0.79 (M = 2.18, SD = 0.66) has been validated on a sample of 839 participants, composed of both students and adults (cf. form B, Roccato & Russo, 2015). Like Altemeyer's (1988) original RWA scale, the scale taps into covariation between the three dimensions of RWA. A standard socio-demographic form was then presented. We computed the mean scores of the items on the scales. 4. Results Preliminary analyses showed that our experimental manipulation was effective: participants exposed to the threatening scenario reported higher societal threat to safety (M = 5.67, SD = 1.49) than those Table 1 Predictors of RWA.
Threatening scenario PAS Threatening scenario ∗ PAS Explained variance - R2 Δ R2
Step 1
Step 2
0.21 (0.04)⁎⁎⁎ −0.05 (0.05)
0.21 (0.04)⁎⁎⁎ −0.07 (0.05) −0.17 (0.05)⁎⁎ 0.14 F (1, 237) = 9.45⁎⁎
0.10
Notes. Unstandardized parameters are displayed, with standard errors in parentheses. ⁎⁎ p b 0.01. ⁎⁎⁎ p b 0.001.
C. Manzi et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 109 (2017) 1–4
3
Fig. 1. The moderating effect of PAS on the relation between societal threat to safety and RWA.
exposed to the safe scenario (M = 1.97, SD = 0.92), t(239) = − 23.10, p b 0.001, η2 = 0.69. We performed a moderated regression, using the experimental manipulation (+ 1 = threatening scenario, − 1 = safe scenario), meancentred PAS, and their interaction as independent variables, and RWA as the dependent variable. All assumptions for multiple linear regressions were met. Exposure to the threatening (as opposed to the safe) scenario fostered RWA, whereas PAS had no significant association with RWA (cf. Table 1). More interestingly, the interaction between the experimental manipulation and PAS was statistically significant (f2 = 0.04). A simple-slope analysis showed that the effect of societal threat to safety on RWA was significant among participants low (− 1 SD) on PAS, b = 0.34, SE = 0.06, p b 0.001, but not among those high (+1 SD) on PAS, b = 0.09, SE = 0.06, p = 0.11. Fig. 1 shows that the difference in the mean level of RWA between people high and low on PAS exposed to the threatening scenario was twice that between people high and low on PAS exposed to the safe scenario. 5. Discussion We analyzed the conjoint effect of societal threat to safety and parenting practices on RWA. As predicted, participants reporting high levels of parental support for autonomy tended not to react to societal threat in an authoritarian manner, while those reporting low levels of parental support for autonomy tended to take a “flight into security” (Oesterreich, 2005), showing a higher level of RWA in the threatening situation. The results of this study, gained from an unusually large sample in quasi-experimental research, provided empirical support for the classic idea that parental socialization plays an important role in provoking/ preventing an authoritarian reaction when an individual faces a societal threat. Moreover, they helped to shed light on the link between societal threat to safety and RWA. Participants reporting high levels of PAS tended to react to societal threat without needing to look for reassurance from external authorities. Based on previous research (e.g., Mirisola et al., 2014; Van Hiel & De Clercq, 2009), one plausible explanation for our findings is that parents who support their children's autonomy help them to develop autonomous coping strategies, which, in turn, help them to find adaptive responses to threat. Future research could explicitly test this idea, assessing directly the strategies used to cope with threat by participants differing with regard to PAS. Two extensions of this study seem promising. First, the research could be fine-tuned using values on a scale that allows separate measurement of the three attitudinal clusters that define RWA, such as Funke's (2005). This would allow testing of the idea that the nature of authoritarianism among people with high PAS might differ from
that of people with low PAS, and/or that low and high PAS scorers might react differentially to societal threat to safety by increasing different aspects of RWA. Second, the effect of different kinds of societal threat could be studied to gain insights into the generalizability of the interactive process we observed to other sources of menace, such as that stemming from immigration, welfare crisis, or terrorism. 6. Conclusion This study confirmed the relevance of parental support for autonomy to promoting positive and adaptive outcome in offspring. In the context of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), the importance of promotion of autonomy has been already tested. In the extent to which parents provide autonomy support and refrain from using intrusive and manipulative techniques, such as guilt-induction and love-withdrawal, they promote various forms of adjustment (e.g., Manzi et al., 2012). Previous studies have tested the influence of a lack of autonomy support from parents on the development of children's authoritarianism, showing that an authoritarian parenting style and parental psychological control have directly enhancing impacts on the level of child authoritarianism (e.g. Heydari et al., 2013). In this study, we have shown that the failure of parents to grant autonomy has an even more negative effect, in that it hinders the capability of the child to react in a positive manner in threatening situations. References Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York, NY: Harper. Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dallago, F., & Roccato, M. (2010). Right-wing authoritarianism, big five, and perceived threat to safety. European Journal of Personality, 24, 106–122. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1002/per.745. Duckitt, J. (2001). A dual process cognitive-motivational theory of ideology and prejudice. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology. Vol. 33. (pp. 41–113). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Duriez, B. (2011). The social costs of extrinsic relative to intrinsic goal pursuits revisited: The moderating role of general causality orientation. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 684–687. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.12.017. Duriez, B., Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2007). In search of the antecedents of adolescent authoritarianism: The relative contribution of parental goal promotion and parenting style dimensions. European Journal of Personality, 21, 507–527. http://dx.doi. org/10.1002/per.623. Duriez, B., Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2008). The intergenerational transmission of authoritarianism: The mediating role of parental goal promotion. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 622–642. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.08.007. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York, NY: Avon Books. Funke, F. (2005). The dimensionality of right-wing authoritarianism: Lessons from the dilemma between theory and measurement. Political Psychology, 26, 195–218. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00415.x.
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