Inside Authoritarianism: Heterogeneous RWA Expressions and Their Dynamic Links to COVID-19 Fear and Prevention Beliefs

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to examine how authoritarianism shapes risk perception and preventive norms under sustained uncertainty. Drawing on seven waves of U.S. panel data collected during mid-2020, this study applies dynamic network modeling to investigate reciprocal relations between item-level right-wing authoritarian (RWA) expressions, COVID-19 fear, and prevention beliefs. Results reveal that authoritarianism is best understood as a heterogeneous set of expressed attitudes rather than a unitary trait. Enforcement-oriented authoritarian aggression consistently predicts subsequent reductions in COVID-19 fear, including concern about both personal infection and close others’ illness, suggesting a threat-regulatory function. At the same time, these same expressions predict later declines in support for preventive norms such as restricting outings and social distancing. By contrast, submission-related authoritarian expressions show weaker and more context-dependent associations with fear and prevention beliefs, occasionally aligning with prevention endorsement at the between-subjects level. These findings help reconcile mixed evidence in pandemic research by showing that authoritarian expressions can both respond to perceived threat and subsequently reshape risk perception and compliance-related beliefs. The results underscore the importance of treating authoritarianism as internally differentiated when assessing its role in risk-related cognition and public-health responses.