This study explores to what extent selective exposure to political messages can produce political (in)tolerance among authoritarians and non-authoritarians. Drawing on a selection-exposure experiment embedded within an online survey conducted in the United States (N = 1978) and Canada (N = 1673), we explore how authoritarians and non-authoritarians react to framing around civil liberties controversies. Participants were randomly assigned to receive a message about a controversial group. In the forced-choice condition, participants were randomly assigned a political or non-political message. In a second condition, participants were given a choice of which message to read more about. The results show that authoritarians who are politically knowledgeable generally avoid messages that promote free speech by consuming non-political information. While messages about the dangers of free speech have the potential to produce more intolerance among authoritarians, we found that this effect was limited to those who are the least likely to consume them when given a choice. By contrast, we found that messages about the risk posed by free speech produced intolerance among non-authoritarians for whom threat-related cognitions were already chronically accessible. The effects of pro-civil liberties messages were limited to unthreatened non-authoritarians. Hence, we conclude that in the contemporary information environment selective exposure can increase polarization around a civil liberties controversy by producing attitude change but this occurs mainly among non-authoritarians.
New information technologies provide citizens with many opportunities to selectively consume political messages that reinforce their predispositions as well as to avoid political messages completely by providing a vast array of non-political news options. Scholars have raised concerns about the potential effects of such selective exposure on political attitudes (e.g.,
Information-seeking behavior stems from a variety of motivations that are not equally distributed in society (see
The aim of the present study is to examine when and to what extent selective exposure to political messages conditions the relationship of authoritarianism to political tolerance (for an earlier version see
Our experimental design is the first to combine the least-liked approach to measuring political tolerance (
Scholarly conceptions of authoritarianism – as a property of the individual rather than a feature of political systems – have evolved significantly over time (e.g.,
Building on this conception, Stenner articulated an activation model of authoritarianism (
We believe that the distinction suggested by this literature between situational threats that are largely exogenous to the individual, as opposed to the chronic accessibility of threat-related cognitions, is worthy of further investigation. If the information environment contains messages about the public activities of a disliked group, then authoritarians should exhibit an attitude shift that fits the activation model, especially when such a group is framed as posing a threat to social order. However, to the extent that threat is already a chronically accessible consideration (
Research on media fragmentation and public opinion suggests that authoritarians have many new opportunities to activate their latent intolerance. In the era when newspapers, radio and TV dominated, mass audiences received a relatively balanced political perspective that varied little across news sources (
Nonetheless, some evidence suggests that selective exposure involves consuming agreeable viewpoints but not necessarily avoiding balanced messages that pair agreeable and disagreeable views (
The new information environment also provides for a second type of selective exposure. An increasingly fragmented information environment offers more opportunities to “tune out” by consuming non-political or entertainment news (
When it comes to authoritarians, this means that we expect them to be more likely to seek out messages about the "risk" posed by disliked outgroups because this reflects their worldview about the dangers of social non-conformity and to avoid consuming pro-civil liberties messages. In sum, a fragmented information environment may serve to provoke authoritarian intolerance while also giving authoritarians the opportunity to avoid pro-civil liberties messages.
Nonetheless, we must also emphasize that the effects of selective exposure among authoritarians may itself be contingent.
The data for the study were collected from an online survey-based experiment conducted in the United States (
The study was in the field during a four-week period in January and February 2017. In Canada, the questionnaire was available in both English and French. Qualtrics, an online survey research firm, administered the data collection. Respondents were selected from among those who had registered to participate in online surveys through several different organizations. The sample providers generally offered the equivalent of $1 US to participate. The average time to complete the survey was 22 minutes.
A quota system based on age, gender, and education was used to screen potential respondents, which resulted in samples that largely reflect these population parameters in each country as reported by the most recent census. In addition, a language quota was applied in Canada. The final US sample was 52% female, 75% white, with a median educational level of “associates degree” and a median age of “30-39”. The Canadian sample was 52% female, 81% white, and had the same median levels of education and age as the US sample. Among Canadians, about 65% reported English as their primary language, 30% selected French, and 5% indicated “other.”
Participants first completed a variety of trait measures including the widely used “child rearing scale” to measure authoritarianism (e.g.,
To reproduce the least-liked approach to measuring political tolerance (
Next, participants were randomly assigned to either a forced exposure condition or a choice condition. In the forced exposure group, participants were assigned to read one of three political messages. The forced control group read a non-political news story. In the choice group, participants could select to read one of the three political messages or the control article. In the choice group, the list of political messages was randomized across participants.
In order to examine why selective exposure may condition the effects of political messages on tolerance attitudes, we also incorporated elements of the “participant preference design” described by
Three political messages were embedded in “online news commentaries” that were initially identified by their titles, and which referred to a hypothetical group called the “United Front.” (See Section 1 of the Appendix in the
After exposure to the treatment, all participants rated their support for the civil liberties of that same fictitious group (the “United Front”) purportedly comprised of people who were members of their least-liked group. Participants were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with each of the following statements on a 4-point scale, where the fictional United Front was described as their least-liked group: “The United Front should be banned from holding meetings in my community,” “Members of the United Front should be able to make public speeches in my community,” and “The United Front should be allowed to hold rallies and demonstrations in my community.” The responses to these three items were averaged to create an index of political tolerance that ranged from 1 to 4 (
Later in the survey all participants completed a word completion task designed to measure the chronic accessibility of threat and also answered two questions designed to measure political knowledge. Our chronic threat accessibility measure reproduced the death thought accessibility (DTA) protocol used in the terror management theory literature (see
We measured political knowledge using a scale that reflected if respondents could correctly identify Beverley McLachlin as the Chief Justice of Canada and knowing that the Conservative Party is the official opposition. Respondents in the US sample had to identify Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a Supreme Court Justice and the Republican Party as holding a majority in the House of Representatives. The sum of the number of correct answers was used in our regression modelsvi.
Among the participants in the choice condition, the non-political news article was the most commonly selected at 42.7%, while 24.5% selected the risk message, 22.9% selected the balanced message, and 9.9% selected the free speech message. This overall preference for non-political news (which varied little between the USA and Canada), especially over a balanced viewpoint, reinforces the importance of creating selective exposure designs with a non-political information option when estimating media effects (see
Next, we tested the possibility that authoritarians are more likely to select and read the “risk” message than non-authoritarians.
Message Selected & Variable | Entire sample | USA | Canada |
---|---|---|---|
Free Speech vs. Control | |||
Authoritarianism | -.54** (.19) | -.58* (.25) | -.49 (.30) |
Pol. Knowledge | .05 (.09) | .03 (.12) | .01 (.14) |
Auth. X Knowledge | -.46* (.18) | -.28 (.24) | -.73** (.28) |
Age | -.15* (.05) | -.10 (.07) | -.19* (.08) |
Female | -.30 (.17) | -.46* (.22) | -.15 (.27) |
White | .18 (.20) | .22 (.25) | .17 (.34) |
Quebecker | - | - | -.44 (.32) |
Disliked Group Feeling | .06 (.03) | .09* (.04) | .01 (.06) |
Constant | -1.09** (.26) | -1.19** (.34) | -.90* (.44) |
Risk vs. Control | |||
Authoritarianism | -.21 (.13) | -.20 (.19) | -.14 (.20) |
Pol. Knowledge | .06 (.06) | .01 (.09) | .11 (.09) |
Auth. X Knowledge | -.10 (.13) | .04 (.19) | -.25 (.19) |
Age | .10** (.04) | .13* (.05) | .06 (.05) |
Female | -.04 (.12) | -.24 (.17) | .18 (.17) |
White | .07 (.14) | -.01 (.18) | .04 (.24) |
Quebecker | - | - | .02 (.19) |
Disliked Group Feeling | -.02 (.03) | .01 (.04) | -.05 (.05) |
Constant | -1.0** (.20) | -1.15** (.28) | -.80* (.31) |
Balanced vs. Control | |||
Authoritarianism | -.32* (.14) | -.27 (.19) | -.41* (.21) |
Pol. Knowledge | .05 (.06) | .09 (.09) | .01 (.10) |
Auth. X Knowledge | -.25 (.14) | -.37* (.18) | -.10 (.21) |
Age | .10** (.04) | .09 (.05) | .11* (.06) |
Female | .14 (.12) | .04 (.17) | .27 (.19) |
White | .35* (.15) | .27 (.18) | .59* (.30) |
Quebecker | - | - | .06 (.20) |
Disliked Group Feeling | .02 (.03) | .04 (.03) | -.01 (.05) |
Constant | -1.5** (.21) | -1.27** (.27) | -1.8** (.38) |
1815 | 982 | 833 | |
-2256.1 | -1214.1 | -1027.9 | |
71.07** | 42.28** | 46.15** |
*
Given the conditional relationship between political knowledge and individual dispositions posited in public opinion (
The results show that authoritarians did not select the risk message at higher rates than non-authoritarians but, instead, avoided the free speech message. In the US, the model coefficients indicate that authoritarians were less likely than non-authoritarians to select the free speech message than the control, and politically knowledgeable authoritarians were less likely than others to select the balanced message over the control. In Canada, politically knowledgeable authoritarians are less likely to select the free speech message than the control article, while authoritarians are less likely to select the balanced message than the control article regardless of political knowledge. Importantly, authoritarianism is not related to the probability of selecting the risk message at any level of political knowledge in either sample.
To aid in the interpretation of the parameters,
The results of regressing the political tolerance scale on the various experimental conditions, authoritarianism, DTA, and country are reported in
Variable | Model 1 | Model 2 |
---|---|---|
Group | ||
Forced Control | (base) | (base) |
Choice Control | 0.011 | 0.004 |
Forced FS | 0.155* | 0.149 |
Choice FS | 0.659*** | 0.584*** |
Forced Risk | 0.099 | 0.084 |
Choice Risk | -0.109 | -0.124 |
Forced Balanced | 0.265*** | 0.245** |
Choice Balanced | 0.405*** | 0.384*** |
Country | ||
USA | 0.425*** | 0.404*** |
Choice Control x USA | -0.288** | -0.243* |
Forced FS x USA | -0.115 | -0.083 |
Choice FS x USA | -0.374** | -0.285* |
Forced Risk x USA | -0.322** | -0.274* |
Choice Risk x USA | -0.109 | -0.056 |
Forced Balanced x USA | -0.275** | -0.199 |
Choice Balanced x USA | -0.136 | -0.101 |
Least-Liked Group Affect | 0.065*** | 0.069*** |
White | 0.046 | 0.047 |
Authoritarianism | -0.215 | |
Group x Authoritarianism | ||
Choice Control x Auth | -0.001 | |
Forced FS x Auth | -0.145 | |
Choice FS x Auth | -0.288 | |
Forced Risk x Auth | 0.193 | |
Choice Risk x Auth | 0.007 | |
Forced Balanced x Auth | -0.180 | |
Choice Balanced x Auth | -0.118 | |
DTA Scale | 0.024 | |
Group x DTA | ||
Choice Control x DTA | -0.105 | |
Forced FS x DTA | -0.099 | |
Choice FS x DTA | 0.031 | |
Forced Risk x DTA | 0.050 | |
Choice Risk x DTA | -0.023 | |
Forced Balanced x DTA | -0.053 | |
Choice Balanced x DTA | -0.020 | |
Authoritarianism x DTA | -0.257* | |
Group x Authoritarianism x DTA | ||
Choice Control x Auth x DTA | 0.391** | |
Forced FS x Auth x DTA | 0.539*** | |
Choice FS x Auth x DTA | 0.681** | |
Forced Risk x Auth x DTA | 0.407* | |
Choice Risk x Auth x DTA | 0.505** | |
Forced Balanced x Auth x DTA | 0.413* | |
Choice Balanced x Auth x DTA | 0.188 | |
Authoritarianism x USA | 0.080 | |
Group x Country x Author. | ||
Choice Control x USA x Auth | 0.056 | |
Forced FS x USA x Auth | -0.121 | |
Choice FS x USA x Auth | 0.032 | |
Forced Risk x USA x Auth | -0.506* | |
Choice Risk x USA x Auth | 0.037 | |
Forced Balanced x USA x Auth | 0.130 | |
Choice Balanced x USA x Auth | 0.042 | |
DTA x USA | -0.006 | |
Group x Country x DTA | ||
Choice Control x USA x DTA | 0.102 | |
Forced FS x USA x DTA | 0.139 | |
Choice FS x USA x DTA | -0.114 | |
Forced Risk x USA x DTA | 0.019 | |
Choice Risk x USA x DTA | -0.020 | |
Forced Balanced x USA x DTA | -0.070 | |
Choice Balanced x USA x DTA | -0.117 | |
Authoritarianism x DTA x USA | 0.215 | |
Group x Country x Author. x DTA | ||
Choice Control x USA x Auth x DTA | -0.334 | |
Forced FS x USA x Auth x DTA | -0.351 | |
Choice FS x USA x Auth x DTA | -0.566 | |
Forced Risk x USA x Auth x DTA | -0.360 | |
Choice Risk x USA x Auth x DTA | -0.625* | |
Forced Balanced x USA x Auth x DTA | -0.345 | |
Choice Balanced x USA x Auth x DTA | -0.044 | |
1.993*** | 1.994*** | |
3602 | 3285 | |
0.113 | 0.155 | |
0.109 | 0.138 |
*
Average marginal effects of authoritarianism on political tolerance by level of death thought accessibility (DTA): Canada and USA.
Conditional marginal effects of political messages on political tolerance: Canada.
Conditional marginal effects of political messages on political tolerance: USA.
The regression models and illustrations presented below reveal several important findings. First, we tested the possibility that high DTA authoritarians would be less politically tolerant than non-authoritarians (and low DTA authoritarians) in the absence of exposure to a political message.
Second, as suggested by the authoritarianism literature and
To illustrate the effect of each message across the full range of authoritarianism, and at one standard deviation above and below the average level of DTA, marginal effects were computed separately for the Canadian (
Third, we examined the possibility that, given the widespread messages of intolerance available to Americans during the 2016 presidential election cycle, exposure the risk message would be associated with less political tolerance among Canadians but not Americans. This was supported as the slope for the conditional effect of the risk article in the choice group, which shows that on average the effect was -.625 (
Fourth, as anticipated by the selective exposure literature, the forced exposure and choice groups showed some differences in levels of political tolerance across the three political messages. In both the US and Canadian samples, low DTA non-authoritarians who read the free speech message in the choice condition were more tolerant than those in the forced exposure group,
Why did the effect of the free speech message in both samples and, in Canada, the risk message appear larger under conditions of selective exposure? Levels of political tolerance may differ in the choice and forced exposure groups due to the differing effects of the messages when choices are available or because message selection was based on pre-existing attitudes. We examined these possibilities by taking advantage of the participant preference (
Variable | Coefficients |
---|---|
Group | |
Forced Control | (base) |
Forced FS | 0.024 |
Forced Risk | 0.043 |
Forced Balanced | 0.162 |
Pre-Treatment Message Preference | |
Preference | -0.016 |
Forced FS x Preference | 0.399* |
Forced Risk x Preference | 0.100 |
Forced Balanced x Preference | 0.269 |
Country | |
USA | 0.298** |
Forced FS x USA | -0.073 |
Forced Risk x USA | -0.302 |
Forced Balanced x USA | -0.143 |
Preference x USA | 0.234 |
Forced FS x Preference x USA | -0.019 |
Forced Risk x Preference x USA | 0.009 |
Forced Balanced x Preference x USA | -0.179 |
Authoritarianism | -0.236*** |
DTA | 0.005 |
Least-Liked Group Affect | 0.063*** |
Political Knowledge | 0.065 |
White | 0.064 |
1.922*** | |
1652 | |
0.131 | |
0.120 |
*
By contrast, the coefficients for the risk message did not reach the conventional level of statistical significance. To explore once again the possibility of a three-way interaction between authoritarianism, DTA and message preference, we produced a second analysis (see Section 2 of the Appendix in the
And, by contrast, Panel B shows that the effect of the risk message held among all high DTA non-authoritarians. In sum, we can conclude that the causal effect of selecting the risk message was limited to chronically threatened non-authoritarians.
Conditional marginal effect in the forced exposure group: Risk message. Panel A: Low DTA authoritarians. Panel B: High DTA non-authoritarians.
A growing body of research shows that threat can produce authoritarian attitudes in the general public (
The average citizen may not engage in “defensive avoidance” by actively screening out attitude-challenging information (
As expected by the activation model (
Importantly, however, we also discovered that threatened non-authoritarians became more politically intolerant after exposure to the risk-focused message in a manner consistent with the work of Hetherington and his colleagues (
A minor but noteworthy finding is that seven percent of threatened authoritarians in Canada did select and read the message in favor of free speech. This group was more tolerant than the control group after reading the free speech message. One possible explanation for this finding is that the effect was limited to low-knowledge authoritarians who did not understand the poor fit between the message and their disposition. We tested this possibility by adding the political knowledge scale score to the interaction terms in Model 2. However, the results showed just the opposite effect; that is, high knowledge, threatened authoritarians who selected and read the free speech message were
Taken together, our findings are important for broader debates about the potential threat authoritarian attitudes can play in a democracy. Past research has convincingly demonstrated authoritarians' willingness to deny basic rights to groups they find objectionable. Yet, recent attempts to place this finding in the real, mediated world have provided contrary expectations. Our work clearly shows that the risk of authoritarian intolerance is partly tempered by their avoidance of content (or issues) they find distasteful. At the same time, the strength of non-authoritarians' commitment to democratic principles can be weakened (or strengthened) based on dominant discourses about the risks or need for free speech.
Future research should further explore the complex connection between authoritarian dispositions and the ways these interact within mediated social contexts. Several avenues seem particularly fruitful. First, while our study showed very few substantive differences across Canada and the US, future research could dig more deeply into the ways in which countries vary in the signals they send. National media contexts certainly vary in terms of the diversity of media content available as well as the presence and market share of publicly-funded media. We might expect that journalistic norms, especially among public broadcasters, will lead to coverage that is more neutral and less inflammatory, which activates authoritarians and non-authoritarians differently. Countries in which media choices are limited, or online penetration rates are particularly low, may cushion the opportunities for selective exposure. Second, our study has focused on a singular exposure to a message. Real world media consumption is usually not characterized by a single exposure to a news article, but an inundation of information over time. Exploring how repeated exposure to a frame changes the results versus repeated exposure to contradictory frames could prove a fruitful direction for future studies.
This study explored when and to what extent selective exposure to political messages can produce political (in)tolerance among authoritarians and non-authoritarians. With online samples from the United States and Canada, we examined how authoritarians and non-authoritarians reacted to framing around civil liberties controversies. The results show that authoritarians who are politically knowledgeable generally avoid messages that promote free speech by consuming non-political information. While messages about the dangers of free speech have the potential to produce more intolerance among authoritarians, we found that this effect was limited to those who are the least likely to consume them when given a choice. By contrast, we found that messages about the risk posed by free speech produced intolerance among non-authoritarians for whom threat-related cognitions, as measured by the death-thought accessibility protocol, were already chronically accessible. The effects of pro-civil liberties messages were limited to unthreatened non-authoritarians. Hence, we conclude that in the contemporary information environment selective exposure can increase attitudinal polarization around a civil liberties controversy by producing attitude change among non-authoritarians.
The first section of the supplementary appendix contains the wording of the political and non-political messages used in the selective exposure experiment. Each message was initially displayed to respondents by title only. Exposure (forced or by choice) included both title and message. The second section of the appendix includes a supplemental analysis of the forced exposure group (for access, see Index of
This project was made possible by the generous support of the Fonds québécois de recherche-société et culture (FQRSC), grant number 192786.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The authors would like to thank Vincent Vallée and Mathilde Chartrand for their research assistance.
The content and design of the selective exposure experiment was previously tested in a pilot study among students at the State University of New York at Potsdam in 2014.
The literature on authoritarianism continues to include a variety of measures. Given the range of choices, we opted to pattern our measure on the child-rearing battery to ensure that our results are comparable to those authors we cite in this paper, especially Stenner and Hetherington and his colleagues. Moreover, use of the much longer RWA inventory would have been costly given that we collected data from national samples. (The shorter RWA validated by Bizumic and Duckitt was not published until 2018.) Use of the Likert-type items produced a coefficient of reliability was very similar to those reported in other studies. For an example of another project that used a very similar set of response options, see the documentation of the United States Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy Survey from 2006, at
Unlike traditional least-liked scales, we had respondents rate their level of dislike for all groups before selecting the group they disliked "the most". By doing so, we are able to understand better how our selected groups varied across participants, not just how the least-liked group was received. Based on work by
The French version of the protocal was provided by Bastien Trémolière, and was used in past research with French-speaking samples. See, for example,
We acknowledge that the alpha coefficient appears low for the DTA scale. Interestingly, recently published works using the word fragment approach have not reported a coefficient of scale reliability. Hence, we have no basis to judge the value in this case. Nonetheless, the literature reviewed by
The associations between each dichotomous knowledge item in the US (
In addition to standard demographic controls, and also country sample, we add affective rating of the least-liked group because some groups are more disliked than others.