Associations of political orientation, xenophobia, right-wing authoritarianism, and concern of COVID-19: Cognitive responses to an actual pathogen threat

Abstract

Previous research has related the existence of pathogenic threat to an individual's social cognition, with people avoiding physical interactions with those who have potential contagion risks. These pathogenic induced behavioral responses have broader social consequences, such as avoidance of outgroup members or negative reactions to individuals foreign to one's own group. Specially, higher pathogen threat is associated with xenophobic attitudes and ideological tendencies, such as authoritarianism and political conservatism. The COVID-19 pandemic provides an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the effect of pathogenic threat on the above-mentioned variables in a real-world situation. Collecting data during a low (N = 598) and heightened (N = 309) perceived threat of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, our results reveal that Right-Wing Authoritarian traits, but not xenophobia, increase with a rise in the number of national pathogenic cases. Moreover, our results replicate previous findings regarding the associations between pathogen threat, political orientation, xenophobia, and Right-Wing Authoritarianism, in an actual pathogen threat scenario.