The Psychology of Political Polarization 9780367487164, 9780367487171, 9781003042433

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Contributors
Chapter 1 The psychology of political polarization: An introduction
What is political polarization?
Why study political polarization?
Political polarization is a paradox
Political polarization is a problem
Intolerance
Motivated reasoning
Overview of the book
Note
References
Section 1 Underlying processes of political polarization
Chapter 2 When do psychological differences predict political differences?: Engagement and the psychological bases of political polarization
The psychological bases of political differences
How (and when) do psychological differences predict political differences?
Connecting needs, traits, and motives with belief systems
Engagement and the psychological bases of partisan and ideological differences
Engagement and the psychological bases of issue-attitude formation
Conclusion
Acknowledgment
Note
References
Chapter 3 The political mindset of supporters of radical and populist parties
Polarization in psychological literature
The Catastrophe Model of radicalism and extremism
Radicalization and issue position polarization
Populist ideology does not equal populist ideological attitude
Populism as an ideological attitude: old wine in a new bottle
The new political alignments in citizens’ mind
Political cynicism on the rescue for democracy?
Polarization needs to be overcome, indeed
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 4 A psychological profile of extreme Trump supporters
Tribalism
Prejudice
Scientific evidence
Ingroup favoritism
Scientific evidence
Bloodlust
Scientific evidence
The information bubble
Scientific evidence
Material self-interest
Scientific evidence
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5 The impact of relational goals on political polarization
The foundational nature of relational goals
Relational verification of political attitudes and beliefs
Ideological differences in relational goals
Ideological differences in perceived attitude similarity
Ideological differences in actual attitude similarity
Psychological strategies for overcoming the consequences of political polarization
Concluding remarks
References
Section 2 The social context of political polarization
Chapter 6 Support for populist parties: Economic deprivation, cultural backlash, or status anxiety?
Economic deprivation
Cultural backlash
Status anxiety and the wealth paradox
Processes underlying status anxiety
In conclusion
Acknowledgment
Note
References
Chapter 7 The agreement paradox: How pressures to agree with others ultimately cause more societal division
Why is American society deeply divided?
The agreement paradox: how pressures for agreement produce disagreement
Cracks in the foundation of consensus: reactance and informational contamination
Reactance
Informational contamination
Evidence consistent with the agreement paradox
Business decisions
Political correctness norms: influence on stereotype communication and the rise of Donald Trump
Laboratory scenarios on negative group communication
The emergence of anti-PC public figures: the case of Donald Trump
Sustainability-supporting laws: the curious lack of influence of scientific agreement about climate change
Are certain types of people more prone to the paradox? The case of authoritarianism
Studies 1a–d
Participants
Measures
RWA/LWA
Divisive outcome measures
Control measures
Studies 1a–d: results and discussion
Study 2: methods, results, and discussion
Implications of the agreement paradox: how do we build agreement that lasts?
Pressure only as much as you have to, persuade as much as you can
Concluding thoughts
Notes
References
Chapter 8 Converging moral views in social networks and their impact on protest violence
Moral convergence in social networks
Moralization and protest violence
Moral convergence and protest violence
Implications
References
Chapter 9 Can the partisan divide in climate change attitudes be bridged?: A review of experimental interventions
Alternative climate facts
Interventions targeting emotions
Negative emotions
Positive emotions
What works, and for whom?
Psychological distance
What works, and for whom?
Scientific consensus
What works, and for whom?
Policy framing
Emphasis frames
Source frames
What works, and for whom?
Other interventions
Health
Morality
Economy and national security
Summary: what interventions work, and for whom?
References
Index

Citation preview

The Psychology of Political Polarization

The Psychology of Political Polarization was inspired by the notion that, to understand the momentum of radical political movements, it is important to understand the attitudes of individual citizens who support such movements. Leading political psychologists have contributed to this important book, in which they share their latest ideas about political polarization  –​a complex phenomenon that cannot be traced back to a single cause, and that is associated with intolerance, overconfidence, and irrational beliefs. The book explores the basis of political polarization as being how citizens think and feel about people with a different worldview, how they perceive minority groups, and how much they trust leaders and experts on pressing societal issues such as climate change, health, international relations, and poverty.The chapters are organized into two sections that examine what psychological processes and what social factors contribute to polarization among regular citizens.The book also describes practical strategies and interventions to depolarize people. The book offers a state-​of-​the-​art introduction to the psychology of political polarization which will appeal to the academic market and political professionals. Jan-​ Willem van Prooijen is Associate Professor of Psychology at Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, and senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR). His main research interests are political polarization, conspiracy theories, and unethical behavior.

Current Issues in Social Psychology Series Editor: Johan Karemmans

Current Issues in Social Psychology is a series of edited books that reflect the state of current and emerging topics of interest in social psychology. Each volume is tightly focused on a particular topic and consists of seven to ten chapters contributed by international experts. The editors of individual volumes are leading figures in their areas and provide an introductory overview. The series is useful reading for students, academics, and researchers of social psychology and related disciplines. Example topics include: self-​esteem, mindfulness, evolutionary social psychology, minority groups, social neuroscience, cyberbullying, and social stigma.

Mindfulness in Social Psychology Edited by Johan C. Karremans and Esther K. Papies Belief Systems and the Perception of Reality Edited by Bastiaan Rutjens and Mark Brandt Current Directions in Ostracism, Social Exclusion and Rejection Research Edited by Selma Rudert, Rainer Greifeneder and Kipling Williams New Directions in the Psychology of Close Relationships Edited by Dominik Schoebi and Belinda Campos The Psychology of Food Marketing and Overeating Edited by Frans Folkvord Psychological Perspectives on Praise Edited by Eddie Brummelman The Social Psychology of Humor Edited by Madelijn Strick and Thomas E. Ford

The Psychology of Political Polarization

Edited by Jan-​W illem van Prooijen

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Jan-​Willem van Prooijen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jan-​Willem van Prooijen to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​48717-​1  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​48716-​4  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​04243-​3  (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

List of contributors  1 The psychology of political polarization: an introduction 

vii 1

JAN-​W ILLEM VAN PROOIJEN

SEC TI O N  1

Underlying processes of political polarization 

15

2 When do psychological differences predict political differences? Engagement and the psychological bases of political polarization 

17

CHRISTOPHER M. FEDERICO

3 The political mindset of supporters of radical and populist parties 

38

ALAIN VAN HIEL, JASPER VAN ASSCHE, AND TESSA HAESEVOETS

4 A psychological profile of extreme Trump supporters 

53

LAURA KINSMAN AND JEREMY A. FRIMER

5 The impact of relational goals on political polarization 

77

CHADLY STERN

SEC TI O N  2

The social context of political polarization 

95

6 Support for populist parties: economic deprivation, cultural backlash, or status anxiety? 

97

JOLANDA JETTEN AND FRANK MOLS

newgenprepdf

vi Contents

7 The agreement paradox: how pressures to agree with others ultimately cause more societal division 

112

LUCIAN GIDEON CONWAY, III, SHANNON C. HOUCK, LINUS CHAN, MEREDITH A. REPKE, AND JAMES D. MCFARLAND

8 Converging moral views in social networks and their impact on protest violence 

135

MARLON MOOIJMAN

9 Can the partisan divide in climate change attitudes be bridged? A review of experimental interventions 

149

JACOB B. RODE AND PETER H. DITTO

Index 

169

Contributors

Linus Chan, Department of Psychology, University of Montana Peter H.  Ditto, Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine Christopher M. Federico, Department of Political Science and Psychology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Jeremy A. Frimer, Department of Psychology, University of Winnipeg Lucian Gideon Conway, III, Department of Psychology, University of Montana Tessa Haesevoets, Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium Shannon C. Houck, Defense Analysis Department, Naval Postgraduate School Jolanda Jetten, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland Laura Kinsman, Department of Psychology, University of Winnipeg James D. McFarland, Department of Psychology, University of Montana Frank Mols, School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland Marlon Mooijman, Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University, Houston, Texas Meredith A. Repke, BetterUp Jacob B.  Rode, Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine Chadly Stern, University of Illinois, Urbana-​Champaign Jasper Van Assche, Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium

viii Contributors

Alain Van Hiel, Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium Jan-​ Willem van Prooijen, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology,VU Amsterdam / the NSCR, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Chapter 1

The psychology of political polarization An introduction Jan- Willem van Prooijen

Across the world, societies polarize politically. The tone of political debate has hardened in recent years, and the political left and right increasingly seem to perceive each other as enemies instead of as opponents. Extremist, nationalist, and populist leaders who blame other groups for society’s problems have benefited electorally from these developments.Various countries have elected populist leaders in office in recent years (e.g., the US, Italy, Hungary, Brazil), and also elsewhere nationalist movements have significantly shaped the political landscape (e.g., Brexit). Against the backdrop of these developments, the world faces important challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, geopolitical conflict, terrorism, and immigration. Moreover, governmental officials frequently report suspicions of foreign interference in national elections, and the public is regularly exposed to fake news, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories that fuel further polarization. Political polarization is often visible through macro-level processes in society, including protest movements, electoral support for relatively radical political parties, and increasing levels of conflict between societal movements. Yet, at the basis of political polarization are psychological, micro- and meso-level processes that determine how individual citizens think and feel about people with a different worldview, how they treat ethnic, religious, and sexual minority groups, and how much they trust leaders and experts on issues such as climate change, health, poverty, and international conflict. Any manifestation of political polarization starts with the concerns of individual citizens, and therefore, the social-psychological processes associated with polarized political views are key to understanding the broader societal implications of this phenomenon. As such, attempts to depolarize the political debate are more likely to be effective if they take scientific knowledge of the psychology of political polarization into account. The present edited volume was inspired by these issues, and sought to provide a state-of-the-art overview of scientific knowledge on the psychology of political polarization. To achieve this aim, leading experts on the psychology of political polarization generously contributed a chapter in which they share

2  Jan-Willem van Prooijen

their views on this phenomenon. The current introductory chapter will briefly illuminate what political polarization is exactly, and what the main theoretical and practical reasons are to study this phenomenon. Moreover, it will provide a short overview of the book.

What is political polarization? At the core of political polarization is the extent to which citizens hold strong and moralized attitudes about political and societal issues. In general, strong attitudes tend to be relatively resistant to social influence, stable over time, and influential on cognition and behavior (Howe & Krosnick, 2017). Accordingly, political beliefs that people endorse with strong moral conviction are relatively difficult to change, drive behavior in significant ways, and form the basis of intolerance towards competing views (Skitka, 2010). A working definition of political polarization, therefore, is the extent to which citizens become ideologically entrenched in their own values and political beliefs, thereby increasing the divide with citizens who hold different values and political beliefs. Political polarization thus fuels a perception of society as a struggle between “us versus them,” and may yield high levels of mutual conflict between ideologically opposing groups (e.g., liberals versus conservatives in the US). Political polarization can manifest itself in various ways. One example is through political extremism, which refers to the extent to which people polarize into, and strongly identify with, generic left-​or right-​wing ideological outlooks on society (Van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2019). While the term political extremism often is used in reference to underground  –​and sometimes violent  –​extremist groups, it is also commonly used in reference to regular citizens who ideologically are at the edges of the political spectrum, and vote accordingly (e.g., EU socialist parties at the political left, or anti-​immigration parties at the political right). Such preference for relatively radical political parties may suggest that societies indeed are polarizing. As a case in point, throughout the EU electoral support for relatively moderate left-​wing parties (e.g., social democrats) and moderate right-​wing parties (e.g., Christian democrats) has dropped in the past few decades, whereas support for relatively radical parties at the left and right has increased (Krouwel, 2012). A closely related, yet conceptually distinct, manifestation of political polarization is populism. Populism is defined as a political mentality that construes society as an ongoing struggle between “the corrupt elites” and “the noble people” (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). As such, populism is a form of political polarization that portrays societal elites as the enemies of the people. Populism has several underlying dimensions, notably anti-​elitism (i.e., a perception of political and societal elites as corrupt), people-​centrism (i.e., a belief that the “will of the people” should be the leading principle in political decision making), and relatedly, anti-​pluralism (the belief that only a populist worldview reflects the true “will of the people,” implying that different opinions should not be tolerated;

Introduction

3

Müller, 2016). Populism occurs at both the left and right, and indeed, political parties that are considered left- or right-extreme often also are considered populist (Akkermans, Mudde, & Zaslove, 2014; Schumacher & Rooduijn, 2013). A  notable difference with political extremism, however, is that populism can occur throughout the political spectrum, including in the center. For instance, Italy’s five-star movement is widely considered a populist party yet is not clearly left-wing or right-wing (e.g., it has relatively left-wing positions on income equality and sustainability, yet relatively right-wing positions on immigration). Moreover, various well-known politicians have articulated rhetoric consistent with populist leadership, yet are not politically extreme (e.g., Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, or Boris Johnson in the UK, who both are center-right but not far-right; Van Prooijen, 2018; see also Müller, 2016, for other examples). Besides such support for broad political movements, political polarization may be reflected in increased levels of conflict between citizens on more specific policy issues. For instance, many citizens do not believe the scientific evidence that climate change is real or that humans are causing it, yielding conflict with citizens or political parties that support regulations to reduce CO2 emissions (see Chapter 9). Such climate change skepticism is robustly associated with a conservative ideology in the US, although the link with ideology is less clear in various other countries (Hornsey, Harris, & Fielding, 2018). Likewise, the COVID-19 pandemic has not only sparked agreement to global lockdown policies to contain the virus, but it has also inspired resistance and protest among citizens who oppose the lockdown policies. Such anti-lockdown sentiments are associated with conspiracy beliefs (Marinthe, Brown, Delouvée, & Jolley, 2020), a common predictor of political polarization (Krouwel, Kutiyski,Van Prooijen, Martinsson, & Markstedt, 2017). In sum, although political polarization can take many forms, the common denominators are a strong conviction in one’s own values and beliefs, and hostility towards those who are perceived to hold different values and beliefs.

Why study political polarization? While many good reasons may exist to study political polarization, here I will elaborate on two important ones. A first reason is that political polarization is a paradox that currently is insufficiently understood by scientists, policy makers, and the general public. Specifically, a popular assumption is that political polarization is rooted in negative emotions (Van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2019) and detrimental societal circumstances (Midlarsky, 2011).While these factors indeed are important, the evidence also suggests a more complicated picture. During the past decades many societies with high levels of wealth and well-being have polarized; at the individual level, such polarization is not exclusive to citizens who experience economic deprivation (see Chapter  6). This suggests that a more fine-grained analysis of the many psychological factors that are associated with political polarization is needed.

4

Jan-Willem van Prooijen

A second reason to study political polarization is that, in many ways, it has a disruptive influence on society. A central aspect of political polarization is a strong belief in the moral superiority of one’s own ideological beliefs, which easily prompts the assumption that alternative ideological beliefs are morally inferior (Van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2019). This may stimulate intolerance of people and social groups that have (or are assumed to have) different ideological beliefs. Moreover, political polarization stimulates overconfidence, and leads people to reject scientific evidence that is incompatible with their ideological beliefs (e.g., about the reality of climate change, or the necessity to adhere to social distancing regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic). Below, I will elaborate in more detail on both of these reasons. Political polarization is a paradox Various theoretical perspectives have noted that political polarization is rooted in negative feelings and emotions, that may emerge through negative social experiences (e.g., McGregor, Prentice, & Nash, 2013; Van den Bos, 2018). For instance, significance quest theory proposes that feelings of significance loss are important to understand ideological extremism. This theory is based on the argument that people have a desire for significance, that is, to matter and be respected in the eyes of themselves or significant others (Kruglanski et al., 2014). When people experience a loss of significance, however – for example through humiliation, injustice, economic hardship, and so on  – they seek to restore a sense of significance, which may be achieved by supporting a meaningful cause. Negative experiences that challenge people’s feelings of self-worth therefore can make them committed to their ideological beliefs, causing polarization. While significance quest theory was initially developed to explain violent terrorism, it may also explain political polarization among regular citizens (Webber et al., 2018; see also Van Prooijen & Kuijper, 2020). Many empirical studies have yielded results that are consistent with these links between negative emotions, aversive social experiences, and political polarization. Political extremism is related to negative emotions, including fear (Van Prooijen, Krouwel, Boiten, & Eendebak, 2015) and anger (Frimer, Brandt, Melton, & Motyl, 2018). Likewise, feelings of self-uncertainty increase people’s preference for radical leaders (Hogg, Meehan, & Farquharson, 2010). A metaanalysis suggests that manipulations of mortality salience may polarize both the political left and right (Burke, Kosloff , & Landau, 2013). Also, perceptions of unfairness (Van den Bos, 2018) and distressing societal circumstances (Midlarsky, 2011) have been associated with politically polarized beliefs.Taken together, the evidence supports the theoretical link between feelings of distress and political polarization. There is a paradox in these insights, however, which pertains to a discrepancy between citizens’ aversive subjective experiences versus their objective life circumstances. Societies increasingly seem to be getting more polarized,

Introduction 5

yet by and large, citizens’ life circumstances have improved substantially over the past decades. Contrary to the bleak rhetoric of politically radical leaders, objective metrics suggest that on average citizens of modern societies actually are safer, richer, happier, and healthier than ever before. Even over the last 50 years people have a longer life expectancy, are less likely to suffer from poverty, unemployment, or sickness, are less likely to be sent to war, are less likely to be victimized in a crime, are more likely to own a house and car, and so on (e.g., Pinker, 2018; Rosling, 2018). Why do these prosperous and successful societies offer such fertile ground to political polarization? One possible explanation is that the benefits of globalization are not equally distributed among citizens, and that particularly those who are “left behind” cause the political polarization in modern societies. Indeed, a 2020 United Nations report shows that income inequality is on the rise throughout the world.1 Moreover, psychological research reveals that higher levels of inequality in societies predict a preference for radical leadership (Sprong et  al., 2019). A closer look suggests, however, that also this explanation needs more specificity. Political polarization occurs not only among relatively poor but also among relatively wealthy citizens (see Chapter  6; Mols & Jetten, 2017). Moreover, during the past few decades life circumstances have improved not only for wealthy people but also for the poorer segments of most societies (Rosling, 2018). All of this suggests that the psychology of political polarization is a complex phenomenon that cannot be traced back to a single cause. Political polarization is a problem Central in political polarization are opposing values, beliefs, and opinions, which raises the question to what extent political polarization should be considered a problem. After all, healthy-​functioning democracies often benefit from diverging opinions between citizens and political groups, and an open debate about different possible solutions to societal problems. One might say that different values and opinions are part and parcel of what democracy as a political system is all about. Admittedly, political polarization can emerge in various degrees, and there may be a gray area between a fierce yet constructive discussion versus a harmful and polarized conflict. My point here is that there is a difference between an open, mutually respectful, and constructive political debate that is focused on solving societal problems, versus a polarized political debate that is primarily focused on justifying one’s own beliefs or defeating competing groups  –​if necessary at the expense of truth or progress. Here, I briefly review evidence that (a) political polarization implies excessive confidence in the correctness of one’s views, which may lead to overconfidence in decision making; (b)  political polarization is associated with an intolerant mindset where alternative viewpoints are seen as immoral; and (c)  political polarization enhances a motivated reasoning process, leading people to reject scientific knowledge that is incompatible with their ideological beliefs.

6  Jan-Willem van Prooijen

Overconfidence As political polarization implies that people are ideologically entrenched in their beliefs, it stands to reason that it is associated with high levels of belief confidence. Consistent with this notion, in the US both the left and right extremes consider their own beliefs as superior –​that is, as more correct than other viewpoints  –​on various specific policy issues (e.g., health care; illegal immigration; taxes; Toner, Leary, Asher, & Jongman-​ Sereno, 2013). Also in non-​political estimation tasks political polarization is associated with increased judgmental confidence (Brandt, Evans, & Crawford, 2015). Moreover, politically extreme beliefs are more stable over time than politically moderate beliefs. Over the course of an election campaign, people at the edges of the political spectrum displayed less variation in their self-​reported political ideology than moderates, suggesting that their convictions were less sensitive to social influence (Zwicker,Van Prooijen, & Krouwel, 2020). High confidence in one’s own beliefs can be warranted, however, and therefore does not necessarily imply overconfidence. If experts (e.g., psychology professors; medical doctors) feel confident that they know more about their specific domain of expertise than lay people, usually they are making a warranted judgment. Likewise, political party elites with high levels of political knowledge (“ideologues”) also have high confidence in their own beliefs (Converse, 1964). One might question, however, how warranted the belief confidence is of regular citizens who support relatively radical political movements. Correctly understanding reality implies appreciating the many complexities that are inherent to most societal problems, and to political decision making. Political polarization is associated with a tendency to cognitively simplify such complexities, however (Lammers, Koch, Conway, & Brandt, 2017). This makes it likely that the high levels of confidence among political radicals frequently is overconfidence. An illustration of such overconfidence can be found in a study that took place during the 2016 EU refugee crisis (Van Prooijen, Krouwel, & Emmer, 2018). Left-​versus right-​ wing citizens endorsed diametrically different solutions for this geopolitical problem, with the political left being more likely to support inclusion of refugees in society, and the political right more likely to support rejecting refugees at the border. The left and right extremes converged in a belief that the solution to this problem was simple, however. Moreover, as compared to moderates, extremists had higher confidence in their responses on a test assessing their factual knowledge of the refugee crisis. This higher belief confidence did not translate into more factually correct answers, suggesting overconfidence. Moreover, their belief in simple solutions for the refugee crisis mediated the link between political extremism and judgmental confidence. Apparently, the political extremes were overconfident in their judgments because this geopolitical problem looked simple to them.

Introduction 7

Findings in other settings also suggest that radical political beliefs are associated with increased confidence yet not with increased factual knowledge. One study took place during a Dutch referendum with a clear pro-​ establishment and a more radical anti-​ establishment (i.e., anti-​ EU) voting option. Anti-​establishment voting was associated with increased self-​perceived understanding of the referendum, but this self-​perceived understanding did not translate into more factual knowledge: in fact, anti-​establishment voters scored worse on a factual knowledge test of the referendum than pro-​establishment voters. In addition, anti-​establishment voters were more likely to overclaim non-​political knowledge, as reflected in the extent to which they claimed to recognize stimuli that they actually saw for the first time (Van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2020). These insights point at a potential risk of political polarization: The excessive confidence that politically polarized citizens display often is overconfidence, which may decrease the quality of decision making. Intolerance The link between political polarization and overconfidence emerges from the conviction that one’s own beliefs are factually correct. An additional aspect of political polarization, however, is that they are moralized judgments. The high levels of belief superiority associated with political polarization therefore may imply a perception of one’s own values as morally superior. Such moral absolutism is a likely source of conflict in society, as strong moral convictions stimulate intolerance towards people who do not share these convictions (Skitka, 2010). Accordingly, dogmatic intolerance  –​defined as a tendency to reject, and consider as inferior, any ideological belief that differs from one’s own –​is stronger at the political extremes than in the political center (Rollwage, Doling, & Fleming, 2018; Van Prooijen & Kuijper, 2020). Such dogmatic intolerance is associated with willingness to protest, denial of free speech to people with different views, and support for antisocial behavior as a means to reach ideological goals (Van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2017). While dogmatic intolerance pertains to people’s (lack of) acceptance of incompatible beliefs, political polarization also may stimulate intolerance of entire societal subgroups. According to the ideological conflict hypothesis, people are prejudiced about groups that they assume to have different values than themselves (Brandt, Reyna, Chambers, Crawford, & Wetherell, 2014). Research designed to test this hypothesis has revealed that the high levels of prejudice commonly observed at the political right towards a range of societal subgroups (e.g., Muslims; ethnic minorities; feminists) is associated with the belief that these groups largely vote left-​wing. This line of research also has revealed high levels of prejudice at the political left, however, specifically towards societal groups commonly assumed to vote right-​wing (e.g., Christians; business people; the military; for an overview, see Brandt et al., 2014). Consistent

8

Jan-Willem van Prooijen

with these insights, the political extremes derogate a larger number of societal subgroups than political moderates (Van Prooijen et  al., 2015) and display relatively high levels of parochial altruism, that is, a willingness to sacrifice their self-interest for the benefit of their group, if necessary by hurting people from different groups (Van Prooijen & Kuijper, 2020). Taken together, these findings are consistent with the assumption that political polarization is related to intolerance, both towards people with different beliefs and to people who belong to different groups. Motivated reasoning A basic human motivation is to have a coherently organized worldview where people’s values, beliefs, and actions converge with their factual knowledge about the world (Festinger, 1957). It is inevitable, however, that people regularly come across scientific information that challenges this worldview. For instance, people who believe that COVID-19 is “just a flu” are likely to encounter scientific evidence indicating that the coronavirus is far more dangerous to humans than a seasonal flu virus. People can resolve such discrepancies in various ways, which may include updating their original beliefs (e.g., people accept that COVID-19 is different from, and more dangerous than, flu) or rejecting the scientific evidence (e.g., people embrace beliefs such as that scientists are mistaken, that science is “just an opinion,” or that scientists conspired with powerful interest groups to rig the evidence).What determines whether people update their preexisting beliefs or reject scientific evidence when faced with such discrepant information? It is likely that the more strongly people are ideologically entrenched in their beliefs, the less willing they are to change those beliefs when faced with new information. Indeed, political polarization is empirically associated with cognitive inflexibility (Zmigrod, Rentfrow, & Robbins, 2020). Such a decreased willingness or ability to update beliefs when faced with incompatible information increases the probability that people accept unscientific or otherwise implausible statements as true. For instance, people may misperceive the scientific consensus about a range of topics as consistent with their values (e.g., about the reality of anthropogenic climate change; Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman, 2011), or deny ideologically inconvenient scientific findings altogether (Washburn & Skitka, 2017). Additionally, people may embrace conspiracy theories that support their values and further polarize society. The stronger people identify as Republican, the more likely they are to believe theories that Democrats are conspiring, and vice versa (Miller, Saunders, & Farhart, 2016; Uscinski, Klofstad, & Atkinson, 2016). Such intergroup conspiracy theories can also polarize international relationships: during the 2019 trade war, US and Chinese citizens both endorsed beliefs that the opposing country was conspiring against them (although these intergroup conspiracy theories were stronger in Chinese than US samples; see Van Prooijen & Song, 2020).

Introduction 9

This tendency to reject science and accept conspiracy theories is rooted in a motivated reasoning process where people selectively search for evidence to support their beliefs, or initiate a committed search for flaws or malpractice if confronted with evidence contrary to their beliefs (Miller et al., 2016). The current digital era provides unprecedented opportunities to validate one’s pre-​existing beliefs and reject scientific evidence –​in fact, many professionally designed websites are dedicated to support false claims such as that the Earth is flat, that vaccines cause autism, or that climate change is a hoax. It is hence relatively easy to find some support for almost any claim, including those not supported by scientific evidence. As people hold lower evidentiary standards for preferred as opposed to unpreferred conclusions, they are capable of justifying almost any ideological belief (Epley & Gilovich, 2016). In sum, political polarization increases the likelihood that people rigidly cling to their original beliefs when faced with contradictory scientific information, decreasing the likelihood of evidence-​based decision making, and further polarizing society.

Overview of the book To examine the psychology of political polarization, what follows are eight chapters that were contributed by political psychologists with substantial expertise on these issues.The book is organized in two sections, each containing four chapters. The first section (Chapters 2–​5) focuses on underlying psychological processes:  how do the emotional, cognitive, and motivational factors that mostly take place within people’s minds contribute to political polarization? In Chapter  2, Christopher M.  Federico focuses on how psychological needs for security and certainty are related to political polarization. The author discusses evidence for the idea that the extent to which these needs polarize political beliefs depends on how engaged people are with the political system, and how well they understand and care about the different options that are provided by political elites. In Chapter 3, Alain Van Hiel, Jasper Van Assche, and Tessa Haesevoets examine the political mindset of citizens who support radical and populist movements. They argue that this mindset is characterized by political cynicism, which may be a better framework than polarization to understand these citizens. At the end of the chapter these authors provide evidence that populism and cynicism indeed are closely related concepts, and offer practical suggestions for moderate parties to regain the trust of voters. In Chapter  4, Laura Kinsman and Jeremy A.  Frimer provide a psychological profile of extreme Trump supporters.These authors review evidence for three common explanations for Trump support, notably tribal loyalties (which includes prejudice, ingroup favoritism, and bloodlust  –​that is, an aggressive desire for attacks on perceived enemies), selective media exposure, and material self-​interest. While they find some evidence for each of these, the evidence is relatively weaker for explanations associated with tribalism, and stronger for selective media exposure and material self-​interest. Finally, in Chapter  5,

10  Jan-Willem van Prooijen

Chadly Stern examines the influence of people’s fundamental motivation to form social relationships on political polarization. The author specifically argues that conservatives and liberals prioritize different relational goals, with conservatives particularly valuing social connection and liberals particularly valuing uniqueness. The chapter then describes the implications for both perceived and actual attitude similarity with others, how these different relational goals polarize both conservatives and liberals, and how they may inform strategies to depolarize society. The second section of the book focuses on the social context of political polarization:  how do social networks, social influence processes, and societal developments contribute to polarization? In Chapter  6, Jolanda Jetten and Frank Mols address the notion that economic deprivation as an explanation for the rise of populism is incomplete, and propose two additional explanations. Specifically, rapid cultural changes (the cultural backlash thesis) and fear among relatively wealthy voters of losing their privileged position in society (status anxiety and the wealth paradox) also contribute to support for populist movements. These factors help to explain the appeal of populism among both the poorer and richer segments of society. In Chapter 7, Lucian Gideon Conway, III, Shannon C. Houck, Linus Chan, Meredith A. Repke, and James D.  McFarland propose that, while pressures for agreement often succeed in creating short-​term agreement, they simultaneously cause division –​and hence polarization –​in the long term. At the root of this “agreement paradox” are two processes, namely reactance (i.e., when people feel forced to agree they seek to reestablish their freedom through a desire to resist pressure or change their attitudes) and informational contamination (i.e., people discount the value of expressed agreement, as they see it as a result of the pressure to agree). The authors then present evidence that authoritarianism is associated with increased susceptibility to the agreement paradox, and discuss practical implications for how to build lasting consensus about divisive issues. In Chapter 8, Marlon Mooijman focuses on the role of moral convergence in social networks: how does exposure to others’ moral norms shape political polarization? This author shows that perceiving converging moral norms within social networks (as often happens in online “echo chambers”) increases people’s perceived power to strive for political change, which in turn increases the likelihood that protests turn violent. Perceiving moral diversity, in contrast, decreases the likelihood of violence and increases non-​violent protest norms. In the final chapter, Chapter 9, Jacob B. Rode and Peter H. Ditto focus on political polarization in the context of climate change, and review a range of interventions designed to increase citizens’ belief in climate change and support for climate change policy. Most of these interventions show limited effectiveness, although a few of them have some promise (i.e., interventions that connect a Republican source to climate change policies, that focus on free-​market benefits of climate change solutions, and that focus on local effects of climate change). Even so,

Introduction 11

results are mixed, and underscore the strength of people’s ideological resistance to accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Political polarization occurs in many societies around the world. Given its impact on people’s lives, domestic policy, and international relations, it is important to have an evidence-​based understanding of this phenomenon.There is not one single cause of political polarization, however, and it is unlikely that there is one single solution for it. The present book aims to offer a piece to this puzzle by examining the underlying psychological processes of polarization, and the social context in which political polarization transpires. By establishing these micro-​and meso-​level processes that shape political polarization among regular citizens, psychology may contribute to meaningful interventions designed to depolarize societies.

Note 1 See the UNDESA World Social Report 2020:  www.un.org/​development/​desa/​ dspd/​world-​social-​report/​2020-​2.html

References Akkermans, A., Mudde, C., & Zaslove, A. (2014). How populist are the people? Measuring populist attitudes in voters. Comparative Political Studies, 47, 1324–​1353. Brandt, M. J., Evans, A. M., & Crawford, J. T. (2015). The unthinking or confident extremist? Political extremists are more likely than moderates to reject experimenter-​ generated anchors. Psychological Science, 26, 189–​202. Brandt, M. J., Reyna, C., Chambers, J. R., Crawford, J. T., & Wetherell, G. (2014). The ideological-​conflict hypothesis:  Intolerance among both liberals and conservatives. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23,  27–​34. Burke, B. L., Kosloff, S., & Landau, M. J. (2013). Death goes to the polls: A meta-​analysis of mortality salience effects on political attitudes. Political Psychology, 34, 183–​200. Converse, P. E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D. E. Apter (Ed.), Ideology and its discontents, pp. 206–​261. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe. Epley, N., & Gilovich, T. (2016). The mechanics of motivated reasoning. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30, 133–​140. Festinger, F. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press. Frimer, J. A., Brandt, M. J., Melton, Z., & Motyl, M. (2018). Extremists on the Left and Right use angry, negative language. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(8), 1216–​1223. Hogg, M. A., Meehan, C., & Farqueharson, J. (2010). The solace of radicalism:  Self-​ uncertainty and group identification in the face of threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1061–​1066. Hornsey, M. J., Harris, E. A., & Fielding, K. S. (2018). Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism, and climate change skepticism across nations. Nature Climate Change, 8, 614–​620.

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Howe, L. C., & Krosnick, J. A. (2017). Attitude strength. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 327–​351. Kahan, D. M., Jenkins-​Smith, H., & Braman, D. (2011). Cultural cognition of scientific consensus. Journal of Risk Research, 14, 147174. Krouwel, A. (2012). Party transformations in European democracies. New  York, NY: SUNY Press. Krouwel, A., Kutiyski, Y., Van Prooijen, J.-​W., Martinsson, J., & Markstedt, E. (2017). Does extreme political ideology predict conspiracy beliefs, economic evaluations and political trust? Evidence from Sweden. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 5, 435–​462. Kruglanski, A. W., Gelfand, M. J., Bélanger, J. J., Sheveland, A., Hetiarachchi, M., & Gunaratra, R. (2014). The psychology of radicalization and deradicalization:  How significance quest impacts violent extremism. Advances in Political Psychology, 35(S1), 69–​93. Marinthe, G., Brown, G., Delouvée, S., & Jolley, D. (2020). Looking out for myself: Exploring the relationship between conspiracy mentality, perceived personal risk, and COVID-​19 prevention measures. British Journal of Health Psychology, 25(4), 957–​980. McGregor, I., Prentice, M., & Nash, K. (2013). Anxious uncertainty and reactive approach motivation (RAM) for religious, idealistic, and lifestyle extremes. Journal of Social Issues, 69, 537–​563. Midlarsky, M.  L. (2011). Origins of political extremism. Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press. Miller, J. M., Saunders, K. L., & Farhart, C. E. (2016). Conspiracy endorsement as motivated reasoning: The moderating roles of political knowledge and trust. American Journal of Political Science, 60(4), 824–​844. Mols, F., & Jetten, J. (2017). The wealth paradox: Economic prosperity and the hardening of attitudes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Müller, J.-​W. (2016). What is populism? Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania  Press. Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, humanism, science, and progress. New York, NY: Viking Penguin. Rollwage, M., Dolan, R. J., & Fleming, S. M. (2018). Metacognitive failure as a feature of those holding radical beliefs. Current Biology, 28, 4014–​4021. Rosling, H. (2018). Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world—​and why things are better than you think. London, UK: Sceptre. Schumacher, G., & Rooduijn, M. (2013). Sympathy for the ‘devil’? Voting for populists in the 2006 and 2010 Dutch general elections. Electoral Studies, 32, 124–​133. Skitka, L. (2010). The psychology of moral conviction. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(4), 267–​281. Sprong, S., Jetten, J.,Wang, Z., Peters, K., Mols, F.,Verkuyten, M. … Wohl, M. J. A. (2019). “Our country needs a strong leader right now”: Economic inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. Psychological Science, 30,  1–​13. Toner, K., Leary, M., Asher, M.W., & Jongman-​Sereno, K. P. (2013). Feeling superior is a bipartisan issue: Extremity (not direction) of political views predicts perceived belief superiority. Psychological Science, 24, 2454–​2462.

Introduction 13

Uscinski, J. E., Klofstad, C., & Atkinson, M. D. (2016). What drives conspiratorial beliefs? The role of informational cues and predispositions. Political Research Quarterly, 69,  57–​71. Van den Bos, K. (2018). why people radicalize:  How unfairness judgments are used to fuel radical beliefs, extremist behaviors, and terrorism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Van Prooijen, J.-​W. (2018). Populism as political mentality underlying conspiracy theories. In B. Rutjens and M. Brandt (Eds.), Belief systems and the perception of reality, pp. 79–​96. Oxon, UK: Routledge. Van Prooijen, J.-​W., & Krouwel, A. P. M. (2017). Extreme political beliefs predict dogmatic intolerance. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 292–​300. Van Prooijen, J.-​W., & Krouwel, A. P. M. (2019). Psychological features of extreme political ideologies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28, 159–​163. Van Prooijen, J.-​W., & Krouwel, A. P. M. (2020). Overclaiming knowledge predicts anti-​ establishment voting. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11, 356–​363. Van Prooijen, J.-​W., Krouwel, A. P. M., Boiten, M., & Eendebak, L. (2015). Fear among the extremes: How political ideology predicts negative emotions and outgroup derogation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 485–​497. Van Prooijen, J.-​W., Krouwel, A. P. M., & Emmer, J. (2018). Ideological responses to the EU refugee crisis: The left, the right, and the extremes. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9, 143–​150. Van Prooijen, J.-​W., & Kuijper, S. M. H. C. (2020). A comparison of extreme religious and political ideologies: Similar worldviews but different grievances. Personality and Individual Differences, 159, 109888. Van Prooijen, J.-​W., & Song, M. (2020). The cultural dimension of intergroup conspiracy theories. British Journal of Psychology. Washburn, A. N., & Skitka, L. J. (2017). Science denial across the political divide: Liberals and conservatives are similarly motivated to deny attitude-​inconsistent science. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9, 972–​980. Webber, D., Babush, M., Schori-​Eyal, N., Vazeou-​Nieuwenhuis, A., Hettiarachchi, M., Bélanger, J. J., Moyano, M., Trujillo, H., Gunaratra, R., Kruglanski, A. W., & Gelfand, M. J. (2018). The road to extremism: Field and experimental evidence that significance loss-​induced need for closure fosters radicalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114, 270–​285. Zmigrod, L., Rentfrow, P. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2020). The partisan mind: Is extreme political partisanship related to cognitive inflexibility? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149, 407–​418. Zwicker, M.,Van Prooijen, J.-​W., & Krouwel, A. P. M. (2020). Persistent beliefs: Political extremism predicts ideological stability over time. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 23, 1137–1149.

Section 1

Underlying processes of political polarization

Chapter 2

When do psychological differences predict political differences? Engagement and the psychological bases of political polarization Christopher M. Federico

With the rise of sharp partisan and ideological divides in both the United States and other nations, social scientists have labored to make sense of why we seem further apart than before. In this vein, a sizable body of research has focused on the role of political parties and the “elites” who lead them. According to these accounts, citizens have diverged from one another in their political attitudes and in their feelings toward their opponents as leaders of different political parties have drifted apart from one another in their ideological viewpoints (Abramowitz, 2010; Levendusky, 2009) and as parties have diverged in terms of the groups they attract (Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012; Mason, 2018). These perspectives suggest a top-​down process of polarization: citizens begin to drift apart from one another in their attitudes and in their feelings toward political opponents when political “elites” model more extreme ideological positions and appear to represent more ideologically opposed social groups (Johnston, Lavine, & Federico, 2017; see also Zaller, 1992). However, research also suggests that polarized political opinions may have deep psychological roots. As an influential line of research in personality and social psychology indicates, political differences can reliably be predicted from psychological differences in a bottom-​up fashion. Individuals with varying personality traits, needs, and motives tend to adopt different political preferences (Federico & Malka, 2018; Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2011; Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2014; Jost, 2017; Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2009; Jost, Sulloway, Glaser, & Kruglanski, 2003; Mondak, 2010). In particular, those who are dispositionally inclined to seek certainty and security are more likely to lean to the right, whereas those who are more comfortable with uncertainty, ambiguity, and risk lean to the left (Jost et al., 2003, 2009; Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2013). These findings imply that polarization at the mass level is not merely a byproduct of elite divisions; rather, it reflects fundamental variation among human beings in basic psychological motivations (Jost et  al., 2003; see also Hibbing et al., 2014). These two perspectives on political polarization have unfolded on largely parallel tracks, without speaking too extensively to one another. In part, this

18  Christopher M. Federico

is due to their roots in different disciplines: the top-​down perspective has its origins in political science, whereas the bottom-​up perspective comes out of personality and social psychology (for reviews, see Federico & Malka, 2018; Johnston et al., 2017). Though the accounts of polarization offered by political scientists and psychologists are sometimes presented as antagonistic in their implications (e.g., Jost, 2006, 2017), they need not be. In this chapter, I review research aimed at integrating the top-​down and bottom-​up accounts of political differences in mass publics in an effort to develop a hybrid perspective on the bases of political polarization. Like the bottom-​up psychological approach, the model I present argues that people are systematically attracted to different positions on the basis of individual differences in needs for security and certainty. However, like the top-​down approach, it also contends that the tendency for those with different psychological dispositions to adopt polarized political preferences depends on exposure to elite political signals that provide information about the content and meaning of different ideological, partisan, and issue orientations—​exposure which is likely to be more pronounced among politically engaged citizens (Federico & Malka, 2018; Morgan & Wisneski, 2017). In the sections that follow, I briefly review current research on the psychological bases of political preferences, and then provide an overview of how the bottom-​up perspective on the roots of political attitudes might be incorporated into a broader model of mass belief systems. Next, I review research providing evidence for various aspects of the above model. Most importantly, this research finds that individuals with different psychological dispositions are more likely to adopt polarized partisan and ideological identities if they are attentive to elite discourse that provides cues about how well different parties and ideologies symbolically mesh with their core motivations. In turn, the moderating effect of political engagement on the relationship between need for security and certainty and partisan and ideological identities leads to relatively complex linkages between the psychological and the political in some issue domains. Specifically, in the realm of economic preferences, individuals low and high in needs for security and certainty polarize in opposite directions depending on whether they are politically engaged enough to sort into conservative ideological and partisan identities and follow elite cues suggesting that free-​market positions are normatively appropriate for those who identify with the right.

The psychological bases of political differences Modern inquiry into the dispositional origins of political differences has a storied history in the social and behavioral sciences. For example, Max Weber (drawing on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) famously discussed the notion of “elective affinities,” or patterns of linkage between types of ideas and types of people (Weber, 1948; see also Gerth & Mills, 1953; Jost et al., 2009; Lasswell, 1948). Later, systematic empirical research on how various traits correlate with political preferences took off after World War II as modern quantitative personality

Psychological and political differences  19

psychology developed (Adorno, Frenkel-​ Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford, 1950; Allport, 1954; Eysenck, 1954; Rokeach, 1960; Tomkins, 1963; Wilson, 1973; see also Lipset, 1960; McClosky, 1958, for similar conceptualizations in political science). Interest in the topic has waxed and waned over the decades, but a series of literature reviews (both narrative and quantitative) by social psychologist John Jost and his colleagues starting in the 2000s reinvigorated work in this area (e.g., Jost et al., 2003; see also Jost et al., 2009, 2013). This renaissance has reverberated in other disciplines as well (see Federico & Malka, 2018; Gerber et al., 2011; Hibbing et al., 2014; Mondak, 2010). As noted previously, much of this new body of research has focused on individual variation in traits, needs, and motives pertaining to “existential needs to maintain safety and security and to minimize danger and threat” and “epistemic needs to attain certainty, order, and structure” (Jost et al., 2013, p. 236). Though there are other clusters of individual differences that predict political attitudes and beliefs (such as those related to competitiveness; Duckitt, 2001; Duckitt & Sibley, 2010), these “needs for security and certainty” have emerged as the prime focus of most contemporary theorizing and research on the dispositional foundations of political orientations (Johnston et al., 2017; Jost, 2017). Though this literature is voluminous, its overall conclusion is simple:  strong (versus weak) needs for security and certainty are associated with greater conservatism (versus liberalism). Federico and Malka (2018) characterize the core message as such: individuals with strong needs to reduce insecurity and minimize uncertainty are said to be attracted to the political right and its emphases on stability and hierarchy, whereas those who are more tolerant of insecurity and uncertainty are said to gravitate toward the left and its openness. (p. 6) On the psychological side of the equation, researchers have focused on a number of specific variables reflecting differences in existential and epistemic needs. An exhaustive listing of these variables is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Federico & Malka, 2018; and Jost, 2017, for recent reviews), but a few core constructs that predict more right-​leaning (versus left-​leaning) preferences are worth highlighting. These include authoritarianism (Adorno et  al., 1950; Altemeyer, 1998; Duckitt, 2001; Duckitt & Bizumic, 2013; Stenner, 2005), a tendency to value deference to group authority and conventional ingroup norms (Federico, Fisher, & Deason, 2011; Federico, Hunt, & Ergun, 2009; Feldman, 2003; Hetherington & Weiler, 2009; Jost et al., 2009); the need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski, 2004; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, & DeGrada, 2006), a tendency to avoid uncertainty by “seizing” more strongly on available information to reach conclusions about the world and by “freezing” on those conclusions even when faced with new information (Federico, Deason, & Fisher, 2012; Federico & Goren, 2009; Jost et al., 2003,

20  Christopher M. Federico

2008, 2009; Kemmelmeier, 1997; Van Hiel, Pandelaere, & Duriez, 2004; Van Hiel et al., 2010); high conscientiousness and low openness to experience in the context of the Big Five model of personality (e.g., Carney, Jost, Gosling, & Potter, 2008; Gerber et al., 2010, 2011; McCrae, 1996; Mondak, 2010); a preference for conservation values (i.e., tradition, conformity, and security) over a functionally opposed set of openness values (i.e., stimulation and self-​direction; Caprara, Schwartz, Capanna,Vechionne, & Barbaranelli, 2006; Goren, 2012; Malka, Soto, Inzlicht, & Lelkes, 2014; Schwartz, 1992, 2007; Thorisdottir et al., 2007); and a tendency to prioritize binding moral concerns linked to ingroup loyalty, respect for authority, and the maintenance of moral purity, all of which reflect a desire for the security and certainty provided by strong social ties (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Haidt, 2012; Koleva, Graham, Iyer, Ditto, & Haidt, 2012). Thus, across a variety of variables, those with differing existential and epistemic orientations tend to polarize in their political preferences: stronger needs for security and certainty are reliably associated with right-​leaning orientations, whereas weaker needs for security and certainty are associated with left-​leaning ones. This point is reinforced by recent meta-​analyses of this literature (Jost, 2017). With respect to existential concerns, Jost, Stern, Rule, and Sterling (2017b) examined data from 134 studies including 369,525 participants and found “small-​to-​moderate” relationships between variables linked to the salience of fear and threat and support for right-​wing policies, parties, and leaders. With respect to epistemic concerns, Jost, Sterling, and Stern (2017a) aggregated results from 181 samples including 133,796 participants and observed significant relationships between needs for structure and order, need for closure, intolerance of ambiguity, rigidity, and dogmatic and right-​wing preferences and between integrative complexity, analytic thinking, need for cognition, and uncertainty tolerance and liberal preferences. Though the tendency for those with varying needs for security and certainty to adopt politically polarized preferences is robust, it is also subject to important boundary conditions. One of these pertains to whether needs for security and certainty are conceptualized in subjective or objective terms. Though the findings reviewed above suggest a general tendency for needs for security and certainty—​which reflect a kind of psychological “rigidity”—​to go with the politics of the right, Van Hiel, Onraet, and DePauw (2010) and Van Hiel, Onraet, Crowson, and Roets (2016) find that “objective” behavioral measures of intolerance of ambiguity and rigidity that assess participants’ ability to perform cognitive operations requiring flexibility and attention to multiple, inter-​related aspects of a problem are more weakly related to conservatism than “subjective” self-​report measures that explicitly ask participants to indicate how well various statements describe them (e.g., “I enjoy having a clear and structured mode of life”; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). Reinforcing this, recent studies have failed to replicate earlier results (e.g., Oxley et  al., 2008) indicating a correlation between political preferences and strong physiological responses to objective tasks in which participants are exposed to threatening

Psychological and political differences  21

stimuli (Bakker, Schumacher, Gothreau, & Arceneaux, 2020; Osmundsen et al., 2020; Smith & Warren, 2020). A second boundary condition involves political issue domain. In this vein, a good deal of research suggests that social attitudes (i.e., those related to morality and culture) and economic attitudes (i.e., those related to redistribution, the role of government, and so on) represent empirically distinct and variably correlated dimensions of citizens’ political preferences (Carmines, Ensley, & Wagner, 2012; Duckitt & Sibley, 2010; Evans, Heath, & Lalljee, 1996; Feldman & Johnston, 2014; Fleishman, 1988; Knoke, 1979; Malka, Lelkes, & Soto, 2019; Shafer & Claggett, 1995; Treier & Hillygus, 2009; see also Braithwaite, 1997; Duckitt, 2001; Schwartz, 1992; Stangor & Leary, 2006). In general, psychologically different individuals are more likely to polarize on social issues than on economic ones: needs for security and certainty more strongly and consistently predict right-​wing preferences in the social domain than the economic domain (Federico, Johnston, & Lavine, 2014; Federico & Malka, 2018; Johnston et  al., 2017; Malka & Soto, 2015). This asymmetry appears with respect to numerous variables tapping existential and epistemic needs, including authoritarianism (e.g., Cizmar et  al., 2014; Federico et  al., 2011; Feldman & Johnston, 2014), need for closure (e.g., Chirumbolo, Areni, & Sensales, 2004; Federico, Ergun, & Hunt, 2014; Kossowska & Van Hiel, 2003; Van Hiel et al., 2004; Yilmaz & Saribay, 2016), and support for conservation versus openness values (e.g., Duckitt, 2001; Duriez, Van Hiel, & Kossowska, 2005; Malka et al., 2014).1 However, as research I review below suggests, the apparent weakness of the relationship between these variables and economic preferences may be misleading. Rather than being completely unrelated to economic preferences, needs for security and certainty may be related to them in opposite directions among different subsets of the electorate due to distinct processes of polarized opinion formation among those low and high in political engagement.

How (and when) do psychological differences predict political differences? Connecting needs, traits, and motives with belief systems While the bottom-​up dispositional approach pioneered by psychologists has shed important light on the nature of political differences, one of its shortcomings is that it relies on a relatively simple model of how “elective affinities” connect needs, traits, and motives with political positions. It tends to assume that the symbolic meanings of different political identities and positions are intuitively comprehensible enough to most people to “resonate” with their underlying psychological dispositions and elicit an attraction (e.g., Jost et  al., 2003). In doing so, the bottom-​up approach has little to say about the social and institutional contexts in which the meanings of different political orientations are

22  Christopher M. Federico

constructed, leaving the dominant psychological model of political differences somewhat under-​specified. The perspective my colleagues and I  have developed attempts to remedy this situation by integrating the bottom-​up approach with key elements of the top-​down model of polarized opinion formation mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. This perspective starts from the core premise that “ideologies are not facts of nature” (Federico & Malka, 2018, p. 23). The assorted ideological belief systems—​left versus right, liberal versus conservative—​available to individuals in different political contexts do not exist merely as a function of inherent logical coherence (Converse, 1964). They are discursively assembled. In this regard, the packages of beliefs, values, and stances that comprise different ideologies are constructed disproportionately by a small group of political elites—​namely, party leaders, elected officials, and pundits (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Kinder & Kalmoe, 2017; Zaller, 1992; see also Noel, 2013). In other words, elites play the dominant role in putting together the “menu” of options available to voters (Sniderman & Bullock, 2004). Even more importantly, not all members of the mass public learn what sets of beliefs, values, and attitudes make up different ideologies or what it means to be a “liberal,” a “conservative,” a “socialist,” and so on. This information is most likely to be picked by citizens who are relatively high in political engagement, i.e., political interest and knowledge (Converse, 1964; Federico, 2015; Kalmoe, 2020; Sniderman, Brody, & Tetlock, 1991). Given that a sizable segment of the population is relatively low in political engagement (Converse, 1964; Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Kinder, 1998) and not overly concerned about what their political attitudes and beliefs say about them (Johnston et al., 2017; Kahan, 2015), many individuals may not be immersed enough in politics for different political positions to meaningfully resonate with their basic needs, traits, and motives. These findings imply that citizens in the mass public are more likely to polarize when elites from different parties ideologically diverge from one another and when they are engaged enough to see this divergence (Lelkes, 2016, 2018). With respect to elite differences, research suggests that elites (e.g., members of Congress) have ideologically polarized in recent decades (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2006; see also Layman et al., 2010) and that individuals who believe that leaders of competing parties are more ideologically far apart are more likely to be ideologically “sorted”—​i.e., to hold ideological identities that match their partisan identities (e.g., identifying as liberal if one is Democrat; Abramowitz, 2010; Levendusky, 2009). With respect to engagement, research suggests that engaged citizens are more likely to be “polarized” in various ways. For example, citizens with different partisan and ideological identities are more likely to adopt the divergent issue positions that go along with those identities when they are more engaged (Abramowitz, 2010; Baldassari & Gelman, 2008; Layman & Carsey, 2002; McClosky & Zaller, 1984; Sniderman & Bullock, 2004; Zaller, 1992). Moreover, partisans who are relatively high in engagement are also more likely to adopt ideological labels that match their

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partisan identities (Abramowitz, 2010; Levendusky, 2009). Finally, citizens are more likely to evaluate the out-​party more negatively than the in-​party if they are more engaged (e.g., Lelkes, 2018). The hybrid approach my colleagues and I  have taken argues that political engagement should have similar consequences for whether citizens with different psychological dispositions adopt different political preferences. In addition to knowing and caring more about “what goes with what” in political terms, the highly engaged should also be more aware of how well the content and symbolic meaning of different political identities and positions align with whatever traits, needs, or motives they possess (Federico et al., 2014; Federico & Malka, 2018). For example, while the preservation of traditional, established institutions promised by conservative political parties may potentially be attractive to individuals who are high in authoritarianism or need for closure, only those who are engaged enough to receive elite signals about which party is more conservative or what it means to be “conservative” will sort into the correct ideological and partisan identities. This argument leads to a core hypothesis: individuals who are low and high in needs for security and certainty should polarize in their political preferences to the extent that they are engaged enough to understand and care about the differences between available political options. Put another way, different political positions should resonate more strongly with citizens’ underlying psychological motivations when the meaning and implications of those positions for their motives are clear. In the sections that follow, I review the research my collaborators and I have conducted in an effort to test this hypothesis.

Engagement and the psychological bases of partisan and ideological differences Perhaps the most important political preferences adopted by citizens are partisanship and ideology (Campbell et al., 1960; Goren, 2012; Malka & Lelkes, 2010, Zaller, 1992). These “symbolic predispositions” can be thought of as broad social identifications, either with a party coalition that organizes to seek office or with an abstract ideological grouping (Campbell et al., 1960; Sears, 1993; see also Ellis & Stimson, 2012; Mason, 2018). If the approach outlined above is correct, then the politically engaged should be more aware of how different parties and ideologies thematically differ from one another and how well the priorities of each aligns with basic needs, traits, and motives. But which of the themes associated with various parties and ideologies are needs for security and certainty likely to key in on? Party platforms and ideological frameworks incorporate concerns across a variety of political domains, including social and cultural issues and economic concerns (Carsey & Layman, 2002; Malka et al., 2019). In this regard, recall that needs for security and certainty are more predictive of preferences in the social domain than the economic domain. Debates about whether to preserve or depart from traditional values

24  Christopher M. Federico

and practices or how much diversity in culture and belief is desirable are more likely to divide those with different existential and epistemic needs (Feldman & Johnston, 2014; Johnston et al., 2017). In general, partisan and ideological groupings in the United States and Western Europe are clearly differentiated along this social axis; the right and parties of the right favor tradition and tighter cultural norms, whereas the left and parties of the left are more open to change and normative diversity (Ellis & Stimson, 2012; Hetherington & Weiler, 2009; Kitschelt et al., 2010). To the extent that the engaged are more aware of these distinctions between political-​menu options, then we should find that engaged citizens are more polarized in their partisan and ideological identifications as a function of differences in needs for security and certainty. With respect to partisanship, work by my colleagues and I provides ample evidence for this prediction. For example, Federico and Reifen-​Tagar (2014) examined the relationship between authoritarianism and party identification in the 2004 and 2008 American National Election Studies. We found that respondents low and high in authoritarianism were more likely to diverge in their partisan identifications when they were higher in educational attainment (a variable linked to political awareness; Sniderman et  al., 1991). Among those with greater education, low authoritarians were more Democratic and high authoritarians were more Republican. Similarly, Johnston, Lavine, and Federico (2017) found that the tendency for those low in authoritarianism to identify with the Democratic Party and those high in authoritarianism to identify with the Republican Party was stronger among individuals who scored higher on a composite measure of political engagement (reflecting both knowledge and interest) in the 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012 American National Election Studies. Parallel results emerge for other psychological variables. Johnston, Lavine, and Federico (2017) also examined the moderating effects of engagement on the relationship between other existential and epistemic variables and partisanship in multiple representative samples of American adults. In their data, individuals differing in need for closure, endorsement of conservation values (versus openness values) and binding moral concerns, and the openness to experience and conscientious dimensions of the Big Five were more likely to polarize in their partisan preferences when they were high in engagement. Among the more engaged, those high in need for closure, conservation values, binding morality, and conscientiousness were more likely to gravitate toward the GOP, whereas those low on these dimensions were more likely to identify with the Democratic Party. In contrast, those low in openness were more Republican and those high in openness were more Democratic at the upper end of the engagement spectrum. With respect to ideological self-​ placement, engagement has analogous polarizing effects. For instance, Federico, Fisher, and Deason (2011) and Johnston, Lavine, and Federico (2017) found that the relationship between

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authoritarianism and ideology was stronger among those higher in political knowledge and interest. Among the highly engaged, those high in authoritarianism were more likely to adopt the conservative label and those low in authoritarianism were more likely to state that they were liberal. As before, these patterns extend to other variables related to existential and epistemic needs. In a sample of students, Federico, Ergun, and Hunt (2009) found that individuals who differed on a key existential dimension—​whether they believed the world to be a dangerous place (Duckitt & Sibley, 2010)—​diverged more in their ideological identifications among those who were higher (versus lower) in political knowledge. At high knowledge, those who saw the world as a relatively safe place were more liberal, whereas those who saw the world as more perilous indicated more conservative identifications; these differences were more muted among those low in knowledge. Federico and Goren (2009) found a similar pattern with respect to the relationship between need for closure and ideology among individuals low and high in political engagement (see Johnston et al., 2017, for similar results). Finally, echoing their results for partisanship, Johnston, Lavine, and Federico (2017) found that respondents who differed in their support for conservation (versus openness) values and binding moral concerns and on the openness to experience and conscientiousness trait dimensions were more likely to diverge from one another in ideological self-​placement among those who were higher (versus lower) in knowledge and interest. Importantly, these findings have been replicated by other researchers and in contexts other than the United States. For example, Malka, Soto, Inzlicht, and Lelkes (2014) used data from the 2005–​2008 World Values Survey (including respondents from 51 nations) to examine the relationship between a preference for conservation (over openness) values and identification with the political right. Among those higher in political interest, the relationship between endorsement of conservation values over openness values and identification with the right was stronger; engaged respondents with different value orientations were more likely to be ideologically polarized. Similarly, Osborne and Sibley (2012; see also Osborne & Sibley, 2015) uncovered a similar pattern of polarization with respect to personality traits in representative samples of adults in the United States and New Zealand. In particular, in their American sample, they found that individuals differing in openness to experience and conscientiousness were more likely to differ in partisanship and ideology when they were high (versus low) in political knowledge. In sum, consistent with the hybrid approach to the link between psychology and politics that I describe in this chapter, there is considerable evidence that individuals differing in existential and epistemic needs are more polarized in partisanship and ideology at higher levels of political engagement. The pattern obtains across multiple operationalizations of needs for security and certainty in numerous datasets, and it also replicates across national political contexts and research groups.

26  Christopher M. Federico

Engagement and the psychological bases of issue-​a ttitude formation As central as identities like partisanship and ideology are, political differences do not end there. Citizens also differ in their attitudes toward specific issues. A key finding of research on political belief systems is that engagement leads those with different partisan and ideological identities to adopt different issue positions as well (Zaller, 1992). This is because engaged citizens are more able and willing to take cues from partisan and ideological opinion leaders about what positions “go with” their political identities (Converse, 1964). If the logic outlined previously holds, then engagement may also lead individuals differing in needs for security and certainty to diverge more in their issue positions—​in part because it should lead them to be more effectively sorted into parties and ideologies holding divergent issue positions. In analyses that collapse across a number of specific issue domains, my colleague Pierce Ekstrom and I have found support for this prediction (Federico & Ekstrom, 2018). Specifically, in a large, representative sample of US adults, we found that respondents low and high in need for closure diverged more in the relative liberalism versus conservatism of their issue positions when they were higher in political knowledge. Among the well informed, low-​need-​for-​ closure respondents took more liberal issue positions and high-​need-​for-​closure respondents took more conservative positions. However, there is good reason to believe that this dynamic may not be consistent across issue domains. As noted above, research suggests that needs for security and certainty are more weakly related to opinions in the economic domain (Federico & Malka, 2018). A  likely reason for this is that economic issues are “hard” compared to social issues—​i.e., they involve relatively complex judgments about sometimes-​technical matters (Carmines & Stimson, 1980). To the extent that they acquire a symbolic meaning that is capable of resonating with underlying psychological needs, it comes from how political elites thematically tie economic issues to a broader ideological or partisan agenda (Johnston et al., 2017). This is only likely to occur among individuals who are highly engaged and who have learned from political elites that free-​market positions go with a “conservative,” status-​quo orientation and that support for redistribution and a stronger government hand in economic life is a “liberal” position that challenges the status quo in the name of greater social justice (Federico et al. 2014). But what about those who are not politically engaged? Absent elite signals defining more left-​wing economic positions as a symbolic challenge to the status quo or to “traditional” norms about economic life, government intervention aimed at restraining exploitative economic behavior and providing a safety net may be seen as an instrumental means of reducing insecurity, uncertainty, and risk. Among these individuals, we might expect the relationship between needs for security and certainty to reverse, such that those

Psychological and political differences  27

high in needs for security and certainty are more left-​wing in their economic preferences. Consistent with this “reversal” hypothesis, Johnston, Lavine, and Federico (2017) found that individuals low and high in needs for security and certainty polarize in opposite ideological directions depending on their level of political engagement. They examined this prediction in ten nationally representative datasets of American adults, using a range of existential and epistemic variables (including authoritarianism, need for closure, dispositional risk aversion, conservation versus openness values, and the openness and conscientiousness dimensions of the Big Five). Among engaged individuals, 21 out of 21 tests indicated that those differing in needs for security and certainty polarized in the “traditional” ideological direction: those low in needs for security and certainty preferred a more interventionist government, whereas those high in needs for security and certainty preferred a more market-​oriented approach. In contrast, among those low in engagement, individuals with different existential and epistemic dispositions polarized in the opposite ideological direction: those low in needs for security and certainty preferred free markets and those high in needs for security and certainty preferred that the government step in to provide economic security. Again, this result has been replicated internationally by other researchers. Specifically, using the same 51-​nation World Values Survey dataset referred to earlier,Ariel Malka and his colleagues (2014) found that a preference for conservation (over openness) values predicted right-​wing, market-​oriented economic attitudes among those high in political interest but left-​wing, interventionist economic attitudes among those low in interest. Thus, both our research and that of others broadly suggests that engagement may polarize issue attitudes as a function of psychological needs, but that this effect may be somewhat complex in the realm of economics.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have reviewed work suggesting that psychological perspectives on polarization need to account for the roles of both “bottom-​up” and “top-​ down” processes in the emergence of political differences. Like a growing body of work in personality and social psychology (Jost et al., 2009, 2013), the approach I outline here argues that a variety of individual differences in needs for security and certainty intuitively prepare people to be more attracted to some political identities and preferences than others. At the same time, drawing on a venerable line of research in political science on elite opinion leadership, it also suggests that differences in existential and epistemic needs will not express themselves in terms of polarized political positions unless individuals are politically engaged to learn what positions “match” their underlying needs, traits, and motives. In support of this hybrid model, I  have reviewed

28  Christopher M. Federico

research suggesting that individual variation in needs for security and certainty is more likely to be associated with polarized partisan and ideological affinities among the politically engaged. Moreover, my colleagues and I have also found that the moderating role of engagement extends to the relationship between existential and epistemic needs and issue attitudes, with the nature of pattern being especially complex in the “hard” domain of economics. In the latter case, engagement does not merely amplify the relationship between psychological dispositions and issue preferences. Rather, it actually reverses them, such that needs for security and certainty are associated with right-​wing economic preferences among the engaged and left-​wing economic preferences among the less engaged. Together, the findings reviewed here suggest a number of broader implications. First, though they reinforce the general argument that psychological differences matter for the formation of political preferences, they also suggest that these differences are translated into political differences via multiple mechanisms (Federico & Malka, 2018). Sometimes the connection is direct, such that individuals with strong needs for security and certainty seek the symbolic “safety” of the status quo by gravitating to the right and those who are less sensitive to threat and uncertainty are more open to the change implied by positions on the left. This process appears to be at work in relationship between existential and epistemic needs and social-​issue preferences, as well as the relationship between these needs and political identities (such as partisanship and ideology) that have become discursively linked to social-​issue disagreements. The research reviewed here also suggests that this process is at work in the relationship between strong needs for security and certainty and left-​wing economic preferences found among those low in political engagement. In other cases, the connection is indirect or “menu-​dependent” (Malka & Soto, 2015; see also Johnston et al., 2017), such that individuals with different needs for security and certainty adopt different political positions mainly because they have sorted into different political identities and take cues about issue positions from elites who share those identities. This process is the one at work in the relationship between strong needs for security and certainty and right-​wing economic preferences among the engaged. Of course, the model I develop here (like others) is not without its limitations. In particular, it speaks primarily to the political implications of “subjective,” self-​ report measures of psychological dispositions; none of the studies in question examined whether engagement also moderates the relationship between “objective” behavioral measures of rigidity and threat sensitivity and political preferences. As noted previously, subjective measures are more strongly related than objective measures to political preferences (Van Hiel et al., 2016). Thus, the patterns predicted by the approach outlined in this chapter may or may not generalize to objective psychological measures. On one hand, it may be the case that the relatively implicit cognitive and motivational differences tapped by objective measures are simply more difficult for individuals to connect with

Psychological and political differences  29

politics than the differences measured by self-​reports. In this case, the cognitive “boost” provided by political engagement may be especially impactful with respect to objective measures, leading to even stronger moderating effects of engagement. On the other hand, the asymmetry between subjective and objective psychological dispositions may be more fundamental, leaving objective indices unrelated to political preferences even among the engaged. One crucial difference between the two types of measures potentially points in this direction. Self-​reports of needs for security and certainty—​like survey items inquiring about partisan and ideological identifications or issue attitudes—​ask individuals to consciously agree or disagree with symbol-​laden content that has evaluative implications. In contrast, behavioral measures usually involve tasks that do not ask participants to make subjective semantic judgments (Van Hiel et al., 2010). This suggests that psychological dispositions measured by self-​reports may be more matched with political preferences in terms of compatibility or similarity (in that both ask for evaluative responses; Kraus, 1995). As such, the self-​perceptions and worldviews tapped by self-​report psychological measures may be more easily connected with (and integrated into) different symbolically laden political belief systems. Indeed, for the politically engaged, the perceptions and self-​characterizations that comprise responses to self-​report measures of existential and epistemic needs may be thought of as extended, distal elements of political belief systems. Conversely, the explicitly political aspects of these belief systems may become more important aspects of the self for those who are more politically aware (Federico & Ekstrom, 2018). Another potential boundary condition on the model developed here is that it might not apply equally to all variables indicative of “rigidity” or “sophistication.” As I note above, the present model is intended specifically as an approach to understanding the interplay between “rigidity” in the form of subjective individual-​difference measures of needs for security and certainty and “sophistication” in the form of domain-​specific political knowledge and interest (e.g., Federico & Malka, 2018). But there are other forms of rigidity and sophistication, and they might exhibit dynamics different from those in my model. In particular, rigidity can also be conceptualized as an outcome of investing the self in specific political commitments, as opposed to a general trait prior to politics. In this case, individuals with views that are polarized to the right and the left may display forms of motivated rigidity reflecting a defensive commitment to their political preferences and a tendency to parse the political world in black-​ and-​white terms—​outcomes that are often regarded as signs of low sophistication (see Zmigrod, Rentfrow, & Robbins, 2020) Along these lines, when the scope of inquiry is extended beyond self-​ reported traits, individuals at both extremes may show signs of rigidity, such as higher levels of defensive bias (Ditto et al., 2019; Washburn & Skitka, 2017), greater avoidance of opposing opinions (Frimer, Skitka, & Motyl, 2017), greater intolerance of those in opposing political coalitions (van Prooijen & Krouwel,

30  Christopher M. Federico

2017; van Prooijen, Krouwel, Boiten, & Eedebak, 2015; see also Brandt & Crawford, 2020), a stronger tendency to overclaim knowledge that one does not objectively possess (van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2019), a greater preference for simple solutions to problems (accompanied by greater judgmental certainty; van Prooijen, Krouwel, & Emmer, 2018), and a more-​pronounced tendency to rigidly categorize political stimuli (Lammers, Koch, Conway, & Brandt, 2017). Moreover, even generalized trait-​like measures of rigidity are associated with extremity to both the left and right (rather a right-​wing orientation) when extremity is operationalized as strength of partisan social identification as opposed to simple left–​r ight self-​placement (Luttig, 2018; Zmigrod et al., 2020). These findings—​taken together with the theory and research that are the primary focus of this chapter—​suggest the need for several crucial conceptual distinctions. First, it is important for researchers to distinguish between rigidity in the sense of subjective needs for security and certainty and rigidity in the sense of motivated defensiveness or simplicity of perception. The former may elicit sorting into conservative identities, especially among the politically engaged, whereas the latter may result from committing the self to identities and preferences on either the right or left. Second, it is necessary to distinguish between political engagement as a domain-​specific form of sophistication and generalized indicators of cognitive sophistication. The former may act primarily as a moderator, amplifying the sorting of individuals with different existential and epistemic needs into polarized political camps. In contrast, the latter may reflect the aforementioned rigidity that comes from having political commitments at all, whether they be on the right or the left. With these points in mind, researchers may find it easier to integrate the various strands of an increasingly complex body of inquiry in the link between psychological variables and political preferences.

Acknowledgment The author would like to thank Jan-​Willem van Prooijen for his comments, suggestions, and editorial assistance.

Note 1 There are of course exceptions to this pattern, with some studies showing robust relationships between variables related to needs for security and certainty and attitudes in both the social and economic domains (see Jost et al., 2017b; see also Azevedo et al., 2019; Gerber et al., 2010; Hennes, Nam, Stern, & Jost, 2012). However, as Federico and Malka (2018, p. 14) note in their review of this literature, many of these analyses (1) still show a stronger relationship between needs for security and certainty and social (versus economic) attitudes and (2) use measures of threat or insecurity that include explicit political content, thereby introducing potential artifacts.

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Fleishman, J.  A. (1988). Attitude organization in the general public:  Evidence for a bidimensional structure. Social Forces, 67, 159–​184. Frimer, J. A., Skitka, L. J., & Motyl, M. (2017). Liberals and conservatives are similarly motivated to avoid exposure to one another’s opinions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 1–​12. http://​dx.doi.org/​10.1016/​j.jesp.2017.04.003 Gerber, A. S., Huber, G. A., Doherty, D., Dowling, C. M., & Ha, S. E. (2010). Personality and political attitudes:  Relationships across issue domains and political contexts. American Political Science Review, 104(01), 111–​133. Gerber, A. S., Huber, G. A., Doherty, D., & Dowling, C. M. (2011).The Big Five personality traits in the political arena. Annual Review of Political Science, 14, 265–​287. Gerth, H., & Mills, C. W. (1953). Character and social structure. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, & World. Goren, P. (2012). On voter competence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. (2009). Liberals and conservatives use different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1029–​1046. Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind:  Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York, NY: Random House. Hennes, E. P., Nam, H. H., Stern, C., & Jost, J. T. (2012). Not all ideologies are created equal: Epistemic, existential, and relational needs predict system-​justifying attitudes. Social Cognition, 30(6), 669–​688. Hetherington, M. J., & Weiler, J. D. (2009). Authoritarianism and polarization in American politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Hibbing, J. R., Smith, K. B., & Alford, J. R. (2014). Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 297–​307. Iyengar, S., Sood, G., and Lelkes, Y. (2012). Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76, 405–​431. Johnston, C. D., Lavine, H. G., & Federico, C. M. (2017). Open versus closed: Personality, identity, and the politics of redistribution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Jost, J.  T. (2006). The end of the end of ideology. American Psychologist, 61, 651–​670. https://​doi.org/​10.1037/​0003-​066X.61.7.651 Jost, J.  T. (2017). Ideological asymmetries and the essence of political psychology. Political Psychology, 38, 167–​208. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​pops.12407 Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M., & Napier, J. L. (2009). Political Ideology:  Its structure, functions, and elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 307–​333. Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M., & Napier, J. L. (2013). Political ideologies and their social psychological functions. In M. Freeden, L. T. Sargent, & M. Stears (Eds.), Handbook of political ideologies (pp. 232–​250). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339–​375. Jost, J. T., Sterling, J., & Stern, C. (2017). Getting closure on conservatism, or the politics of epistemic and existential motivation. In C. Kopetz & A. Fishbach (Eds.), The motivation–​cognition interface; From the lab to the real world: A Festschrift in honor of Arie W. Kruglanski. New York, NY: Psychology Press, pp. 56–87. Jost, J. T., Stern, C., Rule, N. O., & Sterling, J. (2017). The politics of fear: Is there an ideological asymmetry in existential motivation? Social Cognition, 35, 324–​353. Kahan, D. M. (2015). What is the ‘science of science communication’? Journal of Science Communication, 14(3),  1–​12.

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Kalmoe, N. P. (2020). Uses and abuses of ideology in political psychology. Political Psychology. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​pops.12650. Kemmelmeier, M. (1997). Need for closure and political orientation among German university students. Journal of Social Psychology, 137(6), 787–​789. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​00224549709595501 Kinder, D. R. (1998). Opinion and action in the realm of politics. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & Lindzey, G. (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 778–​867). Boston, MA: McGraw-​Hill. Kinder, D. R., & Kalmoe, N. P. (2017). Neither liberal nor conservative: Ideological innocence in the American public. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kitschelt, H., Hawkins, K. A., Luna, J. P., Rosas, G., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2010). Latin American party systems. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Knoke, D.  M. (1979). Stratification and the dimensions of American political orientations. American Journal of Political Science, 23, 772–​791. Koleva, S. P., Graham, J., Iyer, R., Ditto, P. H., & Haidt, J. (2012).Tracing the threads: How five moral concerns (especially purity) help explain culture war attitudes. Journal of Research in Personality, 46, 184–​194. Kossowska, M., & Van Hiel, A. (2003). The relationship between need for closure and conservative beliefs in western and eastern Europe. Political Psychology, 24, 501–​508. Kraus, S.  J. (1995). Attitudes and the prediction of behavior:  A meta-​analysis of the empirical literature. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 58–​75. doi:10.1177/​ 0146167295211007 Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). The psychology of closed-​mindedness. New York, NY: Psychology Press. Kruglanski, A. W., Pierro, A., Mannetti, L., & DeGrada, E. (2006). Groups as epistemic providers: Need for closure and the unfolding of group centrism. Psychological Review, 113, 84–​100. Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103, 263–​283. Lammers, J., Koch, A., Conway, P., & Brandt, M. J. (2017). The political domain appears simpler to the politically extreme than to political moderates. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 8, 612–​622. http://​dx.doi.org/​10.1177/​1948550616678456 Lasswell, H. D. (1948). Power and personality. New York, NY: Norton. Layman, G. C., & Carsey,T. M. (2002). Party polarization and “conflict extension” in the American electorate. American Journal of Political Science, 46, 786–​802. Layman, G., Carsey, T. M., Green, J. C., Herrera, R., & Cooperman, R. (2010). Activists and conflict extension in American party politics. American Journal of Political Science, 104, 324–​346. Lelkes, Y. (2016). Mass polarization: Manifestations and measurements. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80, 392–​410. Lelkes, Y. (2018). Affective polarization and ideological sorting:  A reciprocal, albeit weak, relationship. The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, 16,  23–​45. Levendusky, M. (2009). The partisan sort: How liberals became Democrats and conservatives became Republicans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lipset, S. M. (1960). Political man. New York, NY: Doubleday.

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Luttig, M. D. (2018). The ‘prejudiced personality’ and the origins of partisan strength, affective polarization, and partisan sorting. Advances in Political Psychology, 39(S1), 239–​256. Malka, A., & Lelkes, Y. (2010). More than ideology: Conservative-​liberal identity and receptivity to political cues. Social Justice Research, 23, 156–​188. Malka, A., Lelkes,Y., & Soto, C.J. (2019). Are cultural and economic conservatism positively correlated? A large-​scale cross-​national test. British Journal of Political Science, 49, 1045–​1069. doi:10.1017/​S0007123417000072,  1–​25. Malka, A., & Soto, C. J. (2015). Rigidity of the economic right? Menu-​independent and menu-​dependent influences of psychological dispositions on political attitudes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 137–​142. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ 0963721414556340 Malka, A., Soto, C. J., Inzlicht, M., & Lelkes, Y. (2014). Do needs for security and certainty predict cultural and economic conservatism? A cross-​national analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(6), 1031–​1051. Mason, L. (2018). Uncivil agreement: How politics became our identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McCarty, N., Poole, K. T., & Rosenthal, H. (2006). Polarized America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McClosky, H. (1958). Conservatism and personality. American Political Science Review, 52,  27–​45. McClosky, H., & Zaller, J. (1984). The American ethos. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press. McCrae, R.  R. (1996). Social consequences of experiential openness. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 323–​337. Mondak, J.  J. (2010). Personality and the foundations of political behavior. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, G. S., & Wisneski, D. C. (2017). The structure of political ideology varies within and between people: Implications for theories about ideology’s causes. Social Cognition, 35, 395–​414. Noel, H. (2013). Political ideologies and political parties in America. New  York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Osborne, D., & Sibley, C. G. (2012). Does personality matter? Openness correlates with vote choice, but particularly for politically sophisticated voters. Journal of Research in Personality, 46(6), 743–​751. Osborne, D., & Sibley, C. G. (2015). Within the limits of civic training:  Education moderates the relationship between openness and political attitudes. Political Psychology, 36(3), 295–​313. Osmundsen, M., Hendry, D. J., Laustsen, S., Smith, K. N., & Petersen, M. B. (2020). The ­psychophysiology of political ideology: Replications, reanalysis, and recommenda­ tions. Journal of Politics. Oxley, D. R., Smith, K. B., Alford, J. R., Hibbing, M.V., Miller, M. S., Scalora, M., et al. (2008). Political attitudes vary with physiological traits. Science, 321, 1667–​1670. Rokeach, M. (1960). The open and closed mind. New York, NY: Basic Books. Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25,  1–​65.

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Chapter 3

The political mindset of supporters of radical and populist parties Alain Van Hiel, Jasper Van Assche, and Tessa Haesevoets

Polarization and populism have become key words to explain recent political developments (e.g., Abramowitz & Saunders, 2008; Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Mudde, 2004; Simas, Clifford, & Kirkland, 2020). At first sight, both phenomena seem to imply each other. Indeed, on the one hand, polarization seems to be an important precursor of populism, and it is almost self-​evident that, in times of polarization, populism is on the rise. On the other hand, the mere presence of populism seems to imply that it has been based on ever-​increasing polarization. However, such connections are not obvious at all. Specifically, polarization means that the pivotal political dimensions are stretched in such a way that the contradictions they entail become ever greater. This is something gradual, which evolves over time. Conversely, populism implies the separation of two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus the ‘corrupt elite’ (Mudde, 2007). This means disruption, a break between the radical voter and the existing political establishment.We argue that the idea of a rupture best captures the distinction between moderates and radicals. In fact, we argue that polarization is a process that only has relevance for explaining differences among moderate citizens, not for differences between moderates and radicals. We thus disclaim that polarization is at the basis of the increasing support for populist and radical parties. We, however, further argue that the term ‘populism’ as a psychological and individual-​level variable does not add much to our understanding of such ideology and the radical-​populist Weltanschauung. Instead, we propose that political cynicism offers a better explanation of the radical mindset. Note that we use the terms radicalism and populism as synonyms, as both terms usually refer to the same political parties, which are invariably extreme on either the left-​wing or the right-​wing side of the political spectrum.1 In the remainder of this chapter, we will first explain how psychological polarization operates, and how it has been used in political psychology to explain political polarization and extremism. Next, we present evidence that radicalism is not so much about being extreme right-​wing or left-​wing, but instead is characterized on both sides of the political spectrum by political

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cynicism. Radical parties thus primarily attract politically cynical citizens, and we will show that the ‘old concept’ of political cynicism and the ‘new’ individual differences variable of populism coincide and are indistinguishable.We will further argue that political cynicism offers a better explanation of the mental state of adherents of so-​called populist parties than the concept of populism itself.

Polarization in psychological literature Political polarization has a long history in group dynamics literature. The concept is used to denote the tendency of group discussions to boost the initial sentiment among its members so that their consensual opinion becomes more extreme (Moscovici & Zavalloni, 1969; Myers, 1982; Myers & Lamm, 1976). This tendency manifests itself in increased risk taking in risk-​prone decision settings, as well as in increased caution in risk-​averse settings, and in all kinds of attitudinal judgments (Isenberg, 1986). Polarization has been explained in classic literature in two ways. First, according to Pervasive Arguments Theory (Vinokur & Burnstein, 1974), during group discussion, individual group members’ opinions become more extreme because of the exposure to information, which can consist of arguments they already knew beforehand and thus are merely repeated by other group members, as well as new arguments which were unknown to them. Especially new arguments that are validated as good and solid by the other group members are considered to be effective in shaping group members’ attitudes. Secondly, according to the Social Comparison account (Brown, 1965; Sanders & Baron, 1977), attitudes become more extreme because of group members’ tendency to compare themselves with each other (Festinger, 1954). Specifically, if there is a majority faction with a particular opinion, then the minority group members change their opinion in the direction of the majority. Notwithstanding the fierce debate between proponents of Pervasive Arguments Theory and Social Comparison Theory (see, Isenberg, 1986), a middle-​of-​the-​road compromise has been developed. According to Abrams, Wheterell, Cochrane, Hogg, and Turner (1990), individuals are receptive to good arguments (i.e., information) of people from the social groups with which they identify themselves (i.e., people of their own group with whom they want to socially compare themselves), and thus allow themselves to be influenced by other group members. This ‘new’ compromise position allows the straightforward application of the concept of psychological polarization to political topics. Like-​minded people are likely to convince each other, and the rise of social media and the self-​created echo rooms resulting from this evolution indeed fits in perfectly within the polarization framework. People interact with others who have similar opinions, and they thus become increasingly persuaded by their (own) cherished ideas (Grover, Kar, Dwivedi, & Janssen, 2018; Iyengar & Westwood, 2015).

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The Catastrophe Model of radicalism and extremism It stands to reason that the theory of psychological polarization can also be applied to political attitudes, and to radicalism and extremism in particular. If group members share extreme opinions and they meet each other a lot, then their opinions will become ever more extreme. Such a model of political polarization has been developed before. The Catastrophe Model of Political Attitudes (Harton & Latané, 1997; Latané & Nowak, 1994; Liu & Latané, 1998) holds that, because of attitude polarization, extreme attitudes indeed may occur in political groups, even to the point that the consensual ideological beliefs and the worldviews held by such groups deviate from how the general public perceives the world. Thus, radical people are assumed to drift further and further away from the moderate position, and at a given point the differences become so large and they even constitute a qualitative difference.This results in a bimodal distribution in which the curves hardly overlap, with a broad distribution of attitudes of moderate people in the center, and a narrow distribution of attitudes among radicals at the extreme position. What is interesting about the Catastrophe Model is that it assumes that other processes are at work as well. One such process is the tendency of radicals and extremists to push themselves away from other political movements. They perceive themselves as most correct, knowledgeable, and morally superior, and the supporters of other political movements as ill-​informed and morally inferior, especially those who support the Establishment. The creation of a stark opposition between the own movement and the ideological opponents is a well-​ known strategy to mobilize group members and to neutralize possible external influences (Gamson, 1975). This process bears high similarity with the concept of negative partisanship, as members of other political groups are perceived extremely negatively (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015; Mason, 2015). However, there is also a difference because political radicals are most negatively inclined towards the existing political system, which they even want to reverse.

Radicalization and issue position polarization Do political disparities further increase? And, can this process be held accountable for the radicalization of positions on the left–​r ight dimension? These are interesting questions for which we need empirical examinations, even though political radicals and extremists are not studied very often. We think, however, based on the findings that we do have at our disposal, that the psychological polarization hypothesis cannot be maintained to explain populism and radicalism. There are at least two reasons for this. First, polarization should lead not only to more extreme attitudes, but also to more similar attitudes. Indeed, polarization is a mechanism that creates (an extreme) consensus among group members. However, even though this might sound somewhat counterintuitive, members of radical groups have been found not to be ‘all alike’, at least with

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respect to the personal values they cherish. Specifically,Van Hiel (2012) found that, especially on the extreme sides of the political spectrum, there is more variability in personal values such as openness, conformity and safety than on the moderate positions. Exactly these values have been hypothesized to be at the basis of left–​r ight ideology. Second, also incompatible with the polarization hypothesis, is the finding that it is not their sheer position on the left–​r ight dimension that distinguishes moderates and radical right-​wing adherents the most, but other factors come into play as well. Political party preferences often coincide with each other and form clusters. For instance, in the typical Western European situation, those who like the Social Democrats also often are positively inclined toward green parties as well, but they tend to dislike right-​wing parties (e.g., Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2002). Analysis of party preferences in Belgian (Flemish) and Dutch samples reveals four distinct party types: libertarian, traditional left, traditional right and radical right.2 Well, what makes adherents of the radical right different from the other voters? Van Assche,Van Hiel, Dhont, and Roets (2019) reported that the radical right-​wing parties mainly attract voters who are highly politically cynical and who have negative attitudes towards minorities and immigration. The left–​right dimension  –​operationalized in terms of right-​wing authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1981) and social dominance orientation (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994) –​was less important to characterize the radical-​right position, but was particularly relevant to distinguish among the adherents of the various moderate parties. Should polarization in terms of an expanding left–​r ight position be the real cause of radicalism and populism, then supporters of a right-​radical party would have to distinguish themselves from the advocates of the other parties, especially on this dimension, that is, in terms of left–​r ight attitudes. But, such a supreme effect of left–​r ight attitudes is not what the data showed. The data we just discussed pertained to the ideological attitudes of supporters of radical and populist parties. Also note that we can make a similar case against polarization solely based on the political level, that is, on the level of ideology itself. Indeed, Mudde (2004) already stated that populist parties are ‘ideologically poor’. For example, they select left and right recipes that they embed in their own story as they see fit. The Italian Five-​Star movement, for example, combines both typical left and right recipes, and thus cannot be called left or right, which the party officials consider to be an outdated dichotomy (Mosca & Tronconi, 2019). During the last elections of the Belgian parliament, the Flemish radical right-​wing party Vlaams Belang positioned itself on the left for socio-​economic themes. The radical right-​wing PVV in the Netherlands had also been in favor of policies that can be called progressive, especially in the domain of welfare. For all these reasons, both located at the individual-​attitudinal level as well as on the level of populist-​radical ideology itself, polarization in terms of ever-​ expanding differences between the left and the right does not offer the best

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explanation. We, of course, wholeheartedly agree that radical right-​wing-​side voters are indeed right-​wingers, but it should be emphasized that the level of right-​wing attitudes is somewhat curbed, and therefore not very distinctive.

Populist ideology does not equal populist ideological attitude Empirical findings thus seem to imply that the supporters of populist and radical right-​wing parties are not characterized by especially high right-​wing attitudes, but by other characteristics, that is, political cynicism and anti-​immigration sentiment. Contemporary attempts to define the radical position –​both at the left and the right –​often depart from the concept of ‘populism’ (Akkerman, Mudde, & Zaslove, 2014; Mudde, 2007). The term ‘populism’ is attached to both the political parties, thus called ‘populist parties’, as well as to the electorate which supports these parties, who are called ‘populists’. According to this rationale, populism has a supply side in the form of radical-​populist political parties, and a demand side in the form of a populist electorate. In other words, populist parties ‘serve’ populist people, and provide them directly with a political translation of their ideas and worldviews. It is exactly this fit of ideas and views that connects the party and the individual. In political psychology, however, the relationship between the characteristics of an ideology on the one hand, and the characteristics and attitudes of the individual on the other, are often less direct and ‘tautological’ than has been suggested in the context of populism. The idea of ideological attitudes assumes that such attitudes are at the basis of ideology, and that such attitudes are not a part of ideology itself. Rather, ideological attitudes make an individual receptive to an ideology (see Duckitt, 2001; Duckitt, Wagner, de Plessis, & Birum, 2002). For example, Adorno, Frenkel-​Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950) considered authoritarianism as the readiness of the individual to adhere to extreme right-​ wing parties, and the authoritarianism scale does not contain items about the particular ideology (i.e., fascism) itself. The pull towards authoritarianism is thus located at a ‘deeper’ level; it does not start from the phenomenon on the surface –​namely the ideology itself. Ideological attitudes are therefore ‘psychologized’ and there is no such thing as a one-​to-​one relationship with ideology. The direct translation of political populism into a personal ideological attitude should thus not be considered as the most habitual way of investigating such questions. There is nothing wrong with taking an ‘unusual’ approach, of course, but there is still another theoretical problem. What exactly is ‘psychological’ populism? Akkerman et al. (2014) introduced a scale that measures ‘the demand side’ of radicalism-​populism, and more specifically the populism facet scale of this measure has been developed in this respect. This scale is the most widely used populism scale in literature (Roccato, Corbetta, Cavazza, & Colloca, 2019). Akkerman et al. (2014) use the definition of populism which has been advanced

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by Mudde (2007, p. 23): “A thin-​centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus the ‘corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde, 2007, p. 23). A closer look at Akkerman et  al.’s (2014) scale reveals that all eight items reflect a very negative attitude towards politics and politicians. Four of these items contrast the perverse politicians with the pure people. What is remarkable, however, is that not a single item exclusively gauges the purity of the common people. It is therefore no exaggeration to state that the backbone of this scale is the grotesque negative conception of traditional politics and politicians. However, and this is an important point, we do not think that this is a coincidence. We believe that items probing into ‘the good and pure people’ would never work. The idea of the good people is just rhetoric; it serves populist politicians well, to legitimize themselves and their views.We seriously doubt whether adherents of populist parties have an ‘in-​depth’ positive image of their fellow citizens and people in general. Ever since the work of Adorno et  al. (1950) on authoritarianism, we know that cynicism is alive and kicking among (right-​wing) radical people. It is thus very unlikely that populist voters have a humane attitude towards common people. Hence, because the populism scale targets surface characteristics of populist ideology, it does not succeed in penetrating into deep-​rooted personality and, more specifically, into the antagonistic views on others held by populist voters.

Populism as an ideological attitude: old wine in a new bottle The negative orientation toward politics and politicians, which constitutes the core of the populism scale, is, in fact, nothing but sheer political cynicism. The ‘new’ populism scale thus does not seem to add much to the ‘old’ political cynicism concept. In order to advance the literature, a new concept must be distinctive vis-​à-​vis already-​known variables. This does not seem the case with the ‘new’ populism scale as compared to the ‘old’ political cynicism scale. As a case in point, a further analysis of the Akkerman et al. (2014) populism scale by Van Hauwaert, Schimpf, and Azevedo (2020) identified the following item as the most discriminating between populists and non-​populists: “What people call ‘compromise’ in politics is really just selling out on one’s principles”. This item lacks any reference to common ‘pure’ people, and it would not be out of place in a scale that measures (political) cynicism. To empirically show that populism and political cynicism are essentially measuring the same mindset, we have administered the populism items of Akkerman et al. (2014) together with the political cynicism items of Pattyn, Van Hiel, Dhont, and Onraet (2012). Towards this end, we recruited a sample of 202 adults living in the United States through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

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(MTurk; www.mturk.com). Participants completed our study in exchange for payment ($0.70). To safeguard data quality, we implemented two attention checks (Paolacci & Chandler, 2014). Four participants (2%) were excluded from further analyses because they failed on these check questions. The final sample (N = 198) consisted of 90 males and 118 females and had a mean age of 41.96 years (SD = 13.67, range = 20–​74). They rated all items on five-​point Likert scales ranging from (1)  totally disagree to (5)  totally agree. The items of Akkerman et al. (2014) yielded an acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.70, M = 3.67, SD = 0.58), and the political cynicism scale showed an even greater internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.83, M = 3.56, SD = 0.69). The correlation between both scales was highly significant and strong: r = 0.69, p