TY - JOUR
T1 - Psychological Correlates of Populist Attitudes
AU - Erisen, Cengiz
AU - Guidi, Mattia
AU - Martini, Sergio
AU - Toprakkiran, Selin
AU - Isernia, Pierangelo
AU - Littvay, Levente
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Political Psychology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Society of Political Psychology.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Studies of demand-side populism with a focus on attitudinal and behavioral factors are becoming more popular, but only a few have explored the phenomenon's psychological determinants. We tackle the lack of conversation between populism scholars and political psychologists and test the impact of conspiracy beliefs, moral disengagement, need for cognition, and belief in simple solutions on populist attitudes. We use the most widespread ideational definition in an attempt to bring clarity to demand-side populism, as the literature often conflates the concept of populism with adjacent ideological and psychological factors. We analyze representative samples from two very different countries (Italy and Turkey) to test our hypotheses. We use two of the most often-used measures of populist attitudes and also explore populism's individual building blocks: people-centrism, antielitism, and a Manichean worldview. We consistently find conspiracy beliefs (and our control variable of institutional trust) as primary sources of populist attitudes, whereas the impact of the other psychological factors is more dependent on context and operationalization. Our article calls for more conceptual clarity, careful theorization, and more work on the refinement of available survey measures. We also highlight the importance of national contexts and the dangers of generalization based on individual country studies.
AB - Studies of demand-side populism with a focus on attitudinal and behavioral factors are becoming more popular, but only a few have explored the phenomenon's psychological determinants. We tackle the lack of conversation between populism scholars and political psychologists and test the impact of conspiracy beliefs, moral disengagement, need for cognition, and belief in simple solutions on populist attitudes. We use the most widespread ideational definition in an attempt to bring clarity to demand-side populism, as the literature often conflates the concept of populism with adjacent ideological and psychological factors. We analyze representative samples from two very different countries (Italy and Turkey) to test our hypotheses. We use two of the most often-used measures of populist attitudes and also explore populism's individual building blocks: people-centrism, antielitism, and a Manichean worldview. We consistently find conspiracy beliefs (and our control variable of institutional trust) as primary sources of populist attitudes, whereas the impact of the other psychological factors is more dependent on context and operationalization. Our article calls for more conceptual clarity, careful theorization, and more work on the refinement of available survey measures. We also highlight the importance of national contexts and the dangers of generalization based on individual country studies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107373287&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/pops.12768
DO - 10.1111/pops.12768
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107373287
SN - 0162-895X
VL - 42
SP - 149
EP - 171
JO - Political Psychology
JF - Political Psychology
IS - S1
ER -