Authoritarianism, Threat, and Attitudes toward Replacing the Massachusetts Flag

• In Event: Personality and Politics

Abstract

In recent years, numerous scholars have investigated the nature, origins, and consequences of authoritarianism in the mass public (Osborne et al 2023). In her influential work, Stenner (2005) posits that the authoritarian predisposition and the expression of intolerance are activated by the presence of a “normative threat”, defined as “any event that challenges some system of oneness and sameness that makes ‘us’ an ‘us’” (17). However, missing from Stenner’s work are specific examples of the types of normative threats that challenge the status quo and the homogeneity of the body politic as well as an explicit, contemporary, and empirical test of the relationship between the presence of a normative threat and the activation of the authoritarian predisposition.

In this paper, we leverage the contemporary controversy over the replacement of the state flag and seal of Massachusetts, a symbol that purportedly represents a sense of “oneness and sameness”, to empirically test the expectations set forth by Stenner. For the past decade, a growing number of residents and elected officials in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have sought to replace the state’s flag and seal which depicts a colonist’s arm brandishing a sword above an image of a Native American. While purportedly one of the nation’s most progressive states, attempts to replace the flag have consistently failed to muster majoritarian support among the mass public.

What factors best explain the consistent opposition to replacing the state flag of Massachusetts? Using three original representative surveys of Massachusetts residents, we investigate whether authoritarianism, when tested alongside factors that include partisan identity, ideology, racial prejudice, and racial identity, best accounts for opposition to attempts to replace the state’s flag. We find confirmatory evidence that authoritarianism matters in the debate over the state’s flag with respondents exhibiting higher levels of authoritarianism more inclined to oppose efforts to replace the flag. We take our results as evidence that threats to symbols of “sameness and oneness” such as a state’s flag are viewed as a normative threat that subsequently activates the authoritarian predisposition even in a largely progressive state, thereby providing confirmation of Stenner’s core hypothesis.

Osborne, Danny, Thomas H. Costello, John Duckitt, and Chris G. Sibley. "The Psychological Causes and Societal Consequences of Authoritarianism." Nature Reviews Psychology 2, no. 4 (2023): 220-232.

Stenner, Karen. The Authoritarian Dynamic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Authors

• Adam Eichen, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Tatishe Mavovosi Nteta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Jesse H. Rhodes, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Bel Corder, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Emily DeGowin

• Charles Tatsis

• Graham Backman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Kaitlyn Soper, University of Massachusetts Amherst