Right-wing authoritarianism and perceptions that minoritized groups pose a threat: The moderating roles of individual- and country-level religiosity and marginalization

Abstract

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) refers to an adherence to conventional values and authorities with the power to penalize groups that are perceived to challenge the cohesion of ingroup norms. Correspondingly, RWA has repeatedly been linked to negative perceptions of minoritized groups, such as refugees or religious minorities. To investigate whether and how sociocultural factors add to and moderate how RWA influences perceptions that minoritized groups pose a threat (i.e. threat perceptions), we examined (a) the value of RWA, religiosity and perceived societal marginalization in predicting these threat perceptions across countries, (b) potential moderating effects of individual- and country-level religiosity and marginalization on the RWA-threat link and (c) the robustness of cross-sectional findings when daily threat perceptions were assessed longitudinally. We used cross-sectional survey data from Germany N = 1896; Study (1) and Europe N = 3227; Study (2) and global cross-sectional and longitudinal daily diary data N = 3154 individuals; N >52,447 assessments; N = 41 countries; Study (3). Our studies point to the significance of contextual conditions and the generalizability of cross-sectional findings to day-to-day assessments of threat perceptions.