Theories link threat with right-wing political beliefs; our findings show that political beliefs and perceptions of threat are linked, but that the relationship is nuanced

Brandt, Mark J., Felicity M. Turner-Zwinkels, Beste Karapirinler, Florian van Leeuwen, Michael Bender, Yvette van Osch, and Byron G. Adams. 2019. “The Association Between Threat and Politics Depends on the Type of Threat, the Political Domain, and the Country.” PsyArXiv. September 24. doi:10.31234/osf.io/e9uk7

Abstract: Theories link threat with right-wing political beliefs. We use the World Values Survey (72,836 participants) to test how different types of threat (economic, violence, and surveillance) are associated with different types of political beliefs (social, economic, and political identification) across 42 different countries. The association between threat and political beliefs depends on the type of threat, the type of political beliefs, and the country. Economic threats tended to be associated with more left-wing economic beliefs, violence threats tended to be associated with more general right-wing beliefs, and surveillance threats tended to be associated with more right-wing economic beliefs and more left-wing social beliefs. Additional analyses explored how 24 country characteristics might help explain variation in the threat-political beliefs association; however, these analyses identified few cross-country characteristics that consistently helped. Our findings show that political beliefs and perceptions of threat are linked, but that the relationship is nuanced.