A Little More Prejudiced, A Little More Authoritarian: The Immediate Impact of Terror Attacks on Authoritarian and Prejudice Attitudes

Right wing authoritarianism (RWA) has been linked to considering the world as dangerous and threatening, with a need for authority to control transgressors of societal norms. When terror attacks occur it is likely that people are prepared, in the short term, to be more accepting of authoritarian sanctions. The current study examined 42 white British participants’ RWA and explicit prejudice (EP) scores before, within 36 hours of, and one year after the November 2015 Paris terror attacks. Analyses showed significant increases in RWA and EP scores immediately after the attacks but both measures had returned to baseline levels one year 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. The dataset here is of the raw scores with reverse scoring already carried out in SONA EMS prior to download to SPSS