The Role of Threat in the Human Empowerment Sequence

Recent work by Dunn et al. (2017) proposes an integration of two normally disparate fields of research: political culture and individual-level authoritarianism. This proposal notes a remarkable similarly between Welzel’s (2013) concept of emancipative values and the values-oriented conceptualization of authoritarianism proposed by Feldman and Stenner (1997). Dunn at al. provide some rudimentary empirical evidence that authoritarianism can be productively integrated into Welzel’s “human empowerment sequence” but due to data limitations are unable to examine what they see as one of the most important benefits of this integration: the interaction between authoritarianism and threat in predicting emancipative attitudes. The sixth wave of the World Values Survey provides the previously unavailable data (a measure of perceived threat) and allows us to examine whether authoritarianism interacts with threat to affect the expression of social and political attitudes. Analysis of this data supports those expectations derived from the authoritarianism literature and provides further support for Dunn et al.’s proposal.