STUDY: The Authoritarian Dynamic During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects on Nationalism and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment

Research has demonstrated that situational factors such as perceived threats to the social order activate latent authoritarianism. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to test whether existential threat stemming from an indiscriminate virus moderates the relationship between authoritarianism and political attitudes toward the nation and outgroups. Using data from a large, nationally representative sample of adults in the UK (N = 2,025) collected during the first week of strict lockdown measures (23-28 March 2020), we find that the associations between right-wing authoritarianism and 1) nationalism and 2) anti-immigrant attitudes are conditional on levels of perceived threat. As anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic increases, so too does the effect of right-wing authoritarianism on those political outcomes. Thus, it appears that grave threats to humanity from the COVID-19 pandemic activate authoritarians in society, which in turn, shifts opinion toward nationalistic and anti-immigrant sentiments.

研究业已证实，诸如社会秩序感知威胁等情境因素能够激活潜在的威权主义。致命的COVID-19大流行病提供了一个罕见的机遇，用以检验源自无差别病毒引起的存在性威胁是否调节了威权主义与对国家及他群体政治态度之间的关系。利用在英国严格封锁措施实施的第一周（2020年3月23日至28日）收集的来自大量、具有全国代表性的成年人样本（N=2,025）的数据，我们发现，右翼威权主义与1)民族主义和2)反移民态度之间的关联取决于感知威胁的水平。随着对COVID-19大流行病的焦虑加剧，右翼威权主义对那些政治结果的影响也随之增强。因此，似乎COVID-19大流行病对人类构成的严重威胁激活了社会中的威权主义者，进而转向民族主义和反移民情绪。