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Pratto et al., (1994) argue that societies minimize group conflict by agreeing on ideologies that promote one group’s superiority through social dominance orientation theory (SDO). SDO gives us an indication of whether people believe in a more equal or unequal society. Pratto et al., (1994) found that people who are more social-dominance oriented will favor hierarchy-enhancing ideologies and those who are less social-dominance oriented, favor hierarchy-attenuating ideologies. By testing the acceptance of hierarchy-attenuating and hierarchy-enhancing myths we aim to evaluate beliefs of social equality in Israel. SDO is related to how people believe society should be structured and is therefore related to political ideology. Pandemics are often marked by uncertainty, confusion and a sense of urgency (WHO, 2005). As the current crisis’ nature impacts people’s beliefs and behaviors, SDO assists in understanding people's shift in beliefs of political-economic conservatism, meritocracy, and social policy attitudes. As people’s beliefs may have changed due to the coronavirus pandemic, SDO is used as an important indicator of whether people are supportive of a libertarian politics or more of a social welfare state (Pratto et al., 1994).

Right Wing Authoritarianism contains within it conventionalism, authoritarian aggression, and authoritarian submission. Its purpose is to measure the willingness of the citizens of the state to "surrender" to the authorities and maintain what is perceived as a legitimate social norm while being hostile to people who do not adhere to them (Altemeyer, 1981; Zakrisson, 2005). Karwowski et al. (2020) claims that the coronavirus pandemic can lead to anxiety about the dangers and the unknown, such as the economic and health situation. More so, people will become more socially conservative and closed off. People look for stability in their lives in an expected world, however, due to the uncertainty that this virus brings, stability is not possible. Therefore, even those who advocate freedom become less open, to the point of radical change in their political views and can "turn right" into social conservatism as they urge for a strong leader to lead them in uncertain times (Karwowski et al., 2020). Karwowski et al. (2020), in the same way as Han (2016), argue that in times of growing inequality people become more radical and turn to radical right parties who offer to defend existing social boundaries. As people’s views are affected in times of crisis, we used right-wing authoritarianism to try and understand shifts in political views as they are impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

According to Kay and Joost (2003), Economic System Justification (ESJ) allows us to understand the variance in people’s motivation to accept and support the societal status quo by measuring system justifying beliefs. By understanding the intergroup relations and prejudice towards outgroups we have a better knowledge of how people believe society should be structured. Pandemics can greatly affect the economy and societal infrastructure (Taylor, 2019). As people differ in their tendency to support social, economic and political systems, ESJ helps us understand if people believe that society is fair and just (Kay & Joost, 2000). The Israeli government has used several tactics and programs in their national response to the coronavirus pandemic. People may have shifted their perception of economic system justification and their political views due to different government actions during the coronavirus pandemic.

The current study aims to exemplify how SDO, RWA and ESJ can influence the public's opinion of the government and possibly shift political ideological views during the coronavirus pandemic. Our study focuses on the specific population of Argentinian immigrants to Israel and their shift in political views during the coronavirus pandemic. A study like this has not yet been conducted and will serve as a case study for how government responses to crises such as a pandemic have the ability to shift political views.

Our sample was composed of 205 Argentinian immigrants living in Israel. The age range was from 20 to 78 years old, M = 51.95; SD =14.10, of both sexes (Men = 47.3%; Women = 52.7%).

Selection of the cases was carried out by non-probability sampling. All the participants have agreed and completed the questionnaire voluntarily. Participants were explained that the results of the study and the data gathered would be used exclusively for scientific purposes in order of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) code of ethics (Res, D No. 2857/06) and under Argentina’s National Law 25.326.

The statistical analysis was conducted by using EQS 6.4 (Bentler, 2006; Byrne, 1994) and IBM SPSS Statics 25 (Armonk, NY, USA) for Windows

Our study has produced some significant correlations that enable us to affirm that the profiles of immigrants whose political perspective is more oriented to the right wing, in a pandemic situation, tend to increase their support for the government and affirm the need for police forces to take charge to enforce health measures. At the same time, this profile, contrary to what we predicted, affirms that its support for a liberal-capitalist state grew and its support for a social democratic state decreased. Due to the series of regressions carried out, we have highlighted those that we consider outstanding. These regressions could be explaining the post-pandemic variations and political intensifications. Those described within the RWA, ESJ and SDO scales find positive variations in relation to support for the government, the liberal capitalist state, and negative ones in relation to the free health system, and to the social democratic state.

We have also tried to put in tension the problem of information and access to it. In crises, the relationship with information is important to define the attitudes to follow. Consequently, if a political belief disbelieves from a type of information on the health crisis, its actions will be consistent with that belief (Barrios & Hochberg, 2020). We have also seen that, in times of pandemic, political polarization, lack of physical contact and the increase in fake news, limit access to information that is contrary to the individual perspective (van Bavel et al., 2020). In addition, there are works that affirm that, in situations of extreme uncertainty and fear, a situation of affective semiosis is generated, in other words, a single homogeneous vision of seeing the world, but as the crisis transits, this convergence enables the possibility of other interpretations, access to other visions or the possibility of thinking other perspectives (Venuleo et al., 2020). Our study has not yielded relevant results in relation to this problem. The possibility is open for future debates on how information is interpreted, how governments manage the use of institutions to provide it, and how these intensify or modify political perspectives.

The greatest limitation of this study is regarding its small scope. This study was conducted on only 205 Argentinian immigrants to Israel and future studies would benefit from researching a greater number of subjects. In a future study, it would be interesting to see how political views of different sectors of the population change in relation to one another. It should be noted that this sample is not representative of the greater population in Israel and is solely representative of the Argentinian immigrant population in Israel.

We suggest comparing different immigrant populations' shifts in political views due to the implications of the coronavirus pandemic, such as African, Russian, North American, European and other immigrant populations. As immigrants have more stressors affecting their views, it would also be interesting to compare the immigrant populations’ shift in political views to the native Israeli population. Another interesting further study could compare the shift in political views between different countries with varying responses to the pandemic and disparities in public policy. For example, to compare the changes in political views between all the OECD countries.

Another limitation which arose in the research was limited access to data. As we are researching a rare occurrence, whether the current pandemic affects change in political views, our access to similar data was limited. It would have been interesting for this line of research to measure the change in political views before and after the coronavirus pandemic; a limitation of time constraint arose here. This was not possible in our study as the coronavirus pandemic is still prevalent in people’s everyday lives and government decisions and policies are ever-changing. We recommend continuing further research where people are re-surveyed after the pandemic to understand political view shifts at a greater scale and with better accuracy.

In our study we found that SDO, RWA and ESJ do indeed influence the public’s opinion of government during the coronavirus pandemic. We discovered that there was a shift in the views of Argentinian immigrants' in Israel with regards to their political views and perception of the government from before to during the coronavirus pandemic. We initially predicted that the individuals who were more SDO, RWA and ESJ would move from supporting a more liberal-capitalist state to a more social-democratic state due to the implications of the coronavirus pandemic. It was interesting that we actually found the opposite in our results, that those who were more SDO, RWA and ESJ actually intensified their views and became more right-winged and more supportive of a liberal-capitalist state.