Authoritarianism and Support for Migrant Children Maltreatment in the US

• In Event: Public Opinion on Immigration

Abstract

Political scientists have used authoritarianism to study various political attitudes in American politics. Though many variants exist, authoritarianism is most famously based on child-rearing: preferring independence, curiosity, self-reliance, and being considerate of others over having respect for elders, good manners, obedience, and being well-behaved. In the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) and two additional national surveys, I use two-by-two experimental designs with control groups to examine public support for the maltreatment of migrant children. I first randomly assign two long open-ended questions that prompt respondents to reflect on being taught either low or high authoritarian child-rearing values. Respondents are then asked to read a false story about migrant children detention centers. After reading the story, respondents are randomly given either a story that corrects the falsehoods or no story. Finally, respondents are asked for their attitudes toward the punitive treatment of migrant children. Respondents in the control group are given neither treatment. I compare these experimental results with two separate experiments involving corrective information regarding other non-immigration issues that affect U.S. citizen children. I anticipate that respondents in the low-authoritarian condition will be less likely than the high-authoritarian condition to support migrant child maltreatment. Further, corrective information should have a larger effect on respondents who are given misinformation about U.S. migrant detention centers, but are also in the low-authoritarian condition.

Author

• Adriano Udani, University of Missouri, St. Louis