Dangerous Worldview and Perceived Sociopolitical Control: Two Mechanisms to Understand Trust in Authoritarian Political Leaders in Economically Threatening Contexts Torres Vega, Laura Ruiz Romero, Josefa Moya Morales, Miguel Carlos Authoritarianism Authoritarian political leader Economic crisis Socioeconomic status Economic threat Dangerous worldview Perceived sociopolitical control This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness for the R&D project “Macrosocial realities (economic crisis and social class) and psychosocial processes: Trust, welfare, altruism, and politics” [PSI-2017- 83966-R (MINECO/AEI/FEDER/UE)]. We have not received funds for open access publication fees. The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article can be found online at: https://osf.io/pm8u4/?view_only= 81c56cebeb2f43a4b7d4f3dae1907329 The two studies in this research were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee in Human Research (CEIH) of the University of Granada and carried out in compliance with the Ethical Standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg. 2021.603116/full#supplementary-material In this research we analyzed the relationship between threatening economic contexts (i.e., undergoing the economic crisis and having low socioeconomic status) and trust in authoritarian ideologies and leaders, regardless of the left-right political axis. Based on two theoretical approaches (i.e., the dual-process model and the compensatory control model), we argue that this relationship is mediated by dangerous worldview and low perceived sociopolitical control. We conducted two correlational studies with samples of the general population. In Study 1 (N = 185), we found that perceived threat from the economic crisis and low socioeconomic status were correlated with a higher dangerous worldview, which resulted in a more authoritarian ideology (i.e., authoritarianism) and finally in greater trust in an authoritarian political leader. In Study 2 (N = 413), we replicated the findings of Study 1 and demonstrated that low perceived sociopolitical control was associated with higher authoritarianism. Moreover, low perceived sociopolitical control partially mediated the relationship between dangerous worldview and authoritarianism. Overall, our results show that two economically threatening contexts (i.e., the economic crisis and low socioeconomic status) promote authoritarianism and trust in authoritarian leaders (with unspecified political orientation) through psychological processes (i.e., perception of the social world and perceived control). These results are useful to understand and combat the rise of authoritarianism in our societies during financially difficult times such as economic crises. 2021-05-07T11:50:38Z 2021-05-07T11:50:38Z 2021-03-25 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Torres-Vega LC, Ruiz J and Moya M (2021) Dangerous Worldview and Perceived Sociopolitical Control: Two Mechanisms to Understand Trust in Authoritarian Political Leaders in Economically Threatening Contexts. Front. Psychol. 12:603116. doi: [10.3389/fpsyg.2021.603116] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/68398 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.603116 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España Frontiers Research Foundation