Acculturation, Identity, and the Authoritarian Worldview: Explaining Hispanic Attitudes Toward Police

Abstract A key component of the authoritarian worldview is social conformity, which manifests in a need to minimize threats to social order. This desire for stability often leads authoritarians to hold systematic and approving attitudes toward law enforcement. Previous scholarship suggests that authoritarianism is linked to attitudes shaped by the social dominance of one’s group identity. We extend this framework to Hispanic populations, whose identities historically fall outside the dominant social order, to examine whether authoritarianism predicts support for law enforcement. Using data from the 2020 American National Election Study (ANES), we employ regression models to examine the relationship between authoritarianism, ethnicity, and attitudes toward law enforcement. Results indicate that authoritarians express more favorable views of law enforcement across non-Hispanic white and Hispanic respondents, with a stronger effect among Hispanics. Positive feelings toward whites are also associated with higher levels of authoritarianism and greater support for police, underscoring the importance of white identity salience in shaping political attitudes. These findings demonstrate that authoritarianism functions as a psychological orientation emphasizing order and conformity rather than a defensive response to marginalization. Our results contribute to understanding how racial identity salience and acculturation processes shape the relationship between worldview and support for state authority.