Right-Wing Authoritarian and Explicit Prejudice Attitude Responses to the Paris Terror Attacks: A Within-Subjects Analysis

When a terror attack occurs people appear to be prepared, in the short term, to be more accepting of authoritarian sanctions against outgroup members, particularly if sanctions are targeted against members of the outgroup perceived as responsible for the attack. The current study examined forty-two British participants’ scores on measures of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and explicit prejudice (EP) before, within thirty-six hours of, and one year after the November 2015 Paris terror attacks. As higher scores on RWA measures have been linked to considering the world as dangerous and threatening, and desiring that authority control and punish transgressors of societal norms, and higher EP scores have been linked to negative perceptions of outgroups, we hypothesized that participants’ scores on both measures would increase immediately after the terror attack. Analyses showed small but significant increases in RWA and EP scores immediately after the attacks, particularly for those initially scoring lower on these measures, but scores on both measures had returned to baseline levels oneyear later. These findings from a within-subjects sample support recent between-subjects research suggesting that RWA and EP attitudes are impacted in the short term by reported terrorist attacks.