The Influence of Authoritarianism and Outgroup Threat on Political Affiliations and Support for Antidemocratic Policies

An understanding of contemporary U.S. politics requires an understanding of authoritarianism and perceptions of outgroup threat. Previous research suggests that the threat of terrorism and growing authoritarianism within the Republican Party help to explain Donald Trump's electoral victory (Hetherington & Weiler, 2009; MacWilliams, 2016). We replicated and extended previous findings through the use of 2 surveys completed by 704 participants and found that those higher in authoritarianism were more conservative, more Republican, more likely to support Trump, and more likely to perceive Mexicans and Muslims as threatening. In addition, we found that those high in authoritarianism and outgroup threat perception were more likely to support antidemocratic policies targeting outgroups (such as implementing a Muslim registry and profiling Mexicans) and to abandon the rule of law by postponing elections and fast-tracking the deportation of illegal immigrants. Together, authoritarianism and outgroup threat accounted for about half of the variance in support for Trump and in support for these antidemocratic policies. We found that while perceptions of outgroup threat explain more unique variance for implicitly antidemocratic policies (those where the public might not realize that the policies violated democratic norms), authoritarianism explained more unique variance in support of more explicitly antidemocratic policies (those where the public knew the policies were unconstitutional). Finally, we demonstrated that Altemeyer's (1981) original conception of authoritarianism as consisting of 3 distinct components (aggression, submission, and conventionalism) is a powerful tool for understanding contemporary U.S. political attitudes and that aggression had the biggest influence on support for antidemocratic policies targeting outgroups. Public Significance Statement Consistent with previous research, we found that authoritarianism correlated with political conservatism and perceptions of outgroups (Muslims and Mexicans) as threatening. Authoritarianism and perceived outgroup threat accounted for about half of participants' support for Trump and a wide variety of antidemocratic policies. Antidemocratic policies included a willingness to support policies that not only targeted groups based on their ethnic or religious identity, but also policies that were explicitly found to be unconstitutional.