Causal evidence that terrorism salience increases authoritarian parenting practices

Abstract

The present research experimentally investigated the impact of terrorism salience on authoritarian practices. It was found that terrorist threat cues (induced by reminders of terrorist incidents) had a significant impact upon both attitudes and behaviors regarding authoritarian parenting practices (Studies 1 and 2) as well as their actual occurrence in a real parent-child playing interaction (Study 3). The implications of these findings for the social psychological perspective on threat and parenting style are discussed. © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing.