The Psychology of Populism: The Tribal Challenge to Liberal Democracy 9780367523909, 9780367523817, 9781003057680

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
Preface
1 The Psychology of Populism: The Tribal Challenge to Liberal Democracy
Part I What Populists Want: Motivational and Emotional Factors in Populism
2 Populism and the Social Psychology of Grievance
3 Socio-Psychological Analysis of the Deterioration of Democracy and the Rise of Authoritarianism: The Role of Needs, Values, and Context
4 Beyond Populism: The Psychology of Status-Seeking and Extreme Political Discontent
5 The Rise of Populism: The Politics of Justice, Anger, and Grievance
6 Collective Narcissism and the Motivational Underpinnings of the Populist Backlash
Part II The Populist Mind: Cognitive Aspects of Populism
7 Psychological Perversities and Populism
8 Overconfidence in Radical Politics
9 Why Populism Attracts: On the Allure of Certainty and Dignity
10 A Non-Populist Perspective on Populism in Psychological Science
Part III The Tribal Call: Social Identity and Populism
11 Self-Uncertainty and Populism: Why We Endorse Populist Ideologies, Identify With Populist Groups, and Support Populist Leaders
12 When Populism Triumphs: From Democracy to Autocracy
13 Populism in Power: The Tribal Challenge
14 The Rise of Populism in the USA: Nationalism, Race, and American Party Politics
15 Threat, Tightness, and the Evolutionary Appeal of Populist Leaders
Part IV Populist Narratives and Propaganda
16 Social Psychological Contributions to the Study of Populism: Minority Influence and Leadership Processes in the Rise and Fall of Populist Movements
17 Value Framing and Support for Populist Propaganda
18 Rapid Social Change and the Emergence of Populism
19 Authoritarianism, Education, and Support for Right-Wing Populism
Index

Citation preview

“What more timely task for psychological science than to expose the roots and fruits of today’s growing tribalism (of both left and right) and the support for autocratic leaders. Kudos to this global team of scholars for revealing the emotions, the thinking, and the collectivist energy that fuel populism. A much-needed resource for interested students of psychology, sociology, and political science—and for political pundits and leaders.” —David G. Myers, Professor of Psychology, Hope College “This outstanding and very timely book explores the psychological factors behind the recent rise of radical populist movements. Leading international scholars analyze the effects of motivational, emotional and cognitive factors in populist appeals both on the left and on the right, with often surprising results. Issues of identity, grievance, insecurity, nationalism, xenophobia, tribalism and uncertainty avoidance receive special consideration. This is must reading for anyone who cares about the world today, and especially for students, researchers and practitioners in the social and behavioral sciences.” —Roy Baumeister, Co-author of the ‘Power of Bad’, Professor of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia “Forgas, Crano and Fiedler have pulled together an amazing set of chapters from an international cast of interdisciplinary scholars to address a topic that could not be more timely and important to the survival of liberal democracies world-wide. The chapters yield thought-provoking analyses of what populists want, what its origins are, how it produces tribalism, and why it appeals to both the political right and left. Readers will achieve a comprehensive and essential understanding of a global movement that is affecting everyone’s lives.” —Richard E. Petty, Distinguished University Professor, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POPULISM The recent rise of populist politics represents a major challenge for liberal democracies. This important book explores the psychological reasons for the rise of populism, featuring contributions from leading international researchers in the fields of psychology and political science. Unlike liberal democracy based on the Enlightenment values of individual freedom, autonomy, and rationality, both right-wing and left-wing populism offer collectivist, autocratic formulations reminiscent of the evolutionary history and tribal instincts of our species. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the psychology of populism, covering such phenomena as identity seeking, anger and fear, collective narcissism, grievance, norms, perceptions of powerlessness and deprivation, authoritarianism, nationalism, radicalism, propaganda and persuasion, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and the effects of globalization. The book is divided into four parts. Part I deals with the motivational and emotional factors that attract voters to populist causes, and the human needs and values that populist movements satisfy. Part II analyzes the cognitive features of populist appeals, especially their emphasis on simplicity, epistemic certainty, and moral absolutism. Part III turns to one of the defining features of populism: its offer of a powerful tribal identity and collectivist ideology that provide meaning and personal significance to its followers. Finally, in Part IV, the propaganda tactics used by populist movements are analyzed, including the roles of charismatic leadership, authoritarianism, and nationalism and the use of conspiracy narratives and persuasive strategies. This is fascinating reading on a highly topical issue. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and applied professionals in all areas of psychology and the social sciences as a textbook or reference book, and to anyone interested in the global rise of populism. Joseph P. Forgas is Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales. His research focuses on affective influences on social cognition and behavior. For his work, he received the Order of Australia and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, and he has been elected Fellow of the Australian and Hungarian Academies of Science. William D. Crano is Oskamp Professor of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University. He was Liaison Scientist for the US Office of Naval Research, NATO Senior Scientist, and Fulbright Senior Scholar. His research focuses on attitude development and attitude change and their applications. Klaus Fiedler is Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg and Fellow of the German Academies of Science, the Association for Psychological Sciences, and Society for Personality and Social Psychology. His research focuses on social cognition, language, judgments, and decision making. He has received several awards, including the Leibniz Award, and is on the editorial boards of leading journals.

The Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology series This book is Volume 20 in the Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology series. The aim of the Sydney Symposia of Social Psychology is to provide new, integrative insights into key areas of contemporary research. Held every year at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, each symposium deals with an important integrative theme in social psychology, and the invited participants are leading researchers in the field from around the world. Each contribution is extensively discussed during the symposium and is subsequently thoroughly revised into book chapters that are published in the volumes in this series. For further details see the website at www.sydneysymposium.unsw.edu.au Previous Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology volumes: SSSP 1. FEELING AND THINKING: THE ROLE OF AFFECT IN SOCIAL COGNITION** ISBN 0-521-64223-X (Edited by J.P. Forgas). ­Contributors: Robert Zajonc, Jim Blascovich, Wendy Berry Mendes, Craig Smith, Leslie Kirby, Eric Eich, Dawn Macauley, Len Berkowitz, Sara Jaffee, EunKyung Jo, Bartholomeu Troccoli, Leonard Martin, Daniel Gilbert, Timothy Wilson, Herbert Bless, Klaus Fiedler, Joseph Forgas, Carolin Showers, Anthony Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji, Laurie Rudman, Shelly Farnham, Brian Nosek, Marshall Rosier, Mark Leary, Paula Niedenthal & Jamin Halberstadt. SSSP 2. THE SOCIAL MIND: COGNITIVE AND MOTIVATIONAL ASPECTS OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOR** ISBN 0-521-77092-0 (Edited by J.P. Forgas, K.D. Williams & L. Wheeler). Contributors: William & Claire McGuire, Susan Andersen, Roy Baumeister, Joel Cooper, Bill Crano, Garth Fletcher, Joseph Forgas, Pascal Huguet, Mike Hogg, Martin Kaplan, Norb Kerr, John Nezlek, Fred Rhodewalt, Astrid Schuetz, Constantine Sedikides, Jeffry Simpson, Richard Sorrentino, Dianne Tice, Kip Williams, and Ladd Wheeler. SSSP 3. SOCIAL INFLUENCE: DIRECT AND INDIRECT PROCESSES* ISBN 1-84169-038-4 (Edited by J.P. Forgas & K.D. Williams). ­Contributors: Robert Cialdini, Eric Knowles, Shannon Butler, Jay Linn, Bibb Latane, Martin Bourgeois, Mark Schaller, Ap Dijksterhuis, James Tedeschi, Richard Petty, Joseph Forgas, Herbert Bless, Fritz Strack, Eva Walther, Sik ­ Hung Ng, Thomas Mussweiler, Kipling Williams, Lara Dolnik, Charles Stangor, Gretchen Sechrist, John Jost, Deborah Terry, Michael Hogg, Stephen Harkins, Barbara David, John Turner, Robin Martin, Miles Hewstone, Russell Spears, Tom Postmes, Martin Lea, Susan Watt. SSSP 4. THE SOCIAL SELF: COGNITIVE, INTERPERSONAL, AND INTERGROUP PERSPECTIVES** ISBN 1-84169-062-7 (Edited by J.P. Forgas & K.D. Williams). Contributors: Eliot R. Smith, Thomas Gilovich, Monica Biernat, Joseph P. Forgas, Stephanie J. Moylan, Edward R. Hirt, Sean M. McCrea, Frederick Rhodewalt, Michael Tragakis, Mark Leary, Roy F. Baumeister, Jean M. Twenge, Natalie Ciarocco, Dianne M. Tice, Jean M. Twenge, Brandon J. Schmeichel, Bertram F. Malle, William Ickes, Marianne LaFrance, Yoshihisa

Kashima, Emiko Kashima, Anna Clark, Marilynn B. Brewer, Cynthia L. Pickett, Sabine Otten, Christian S. Crandall, Diane M. Mackie, Joel Cooper, Michael Hogg, Stephen C. Wright, Art Aron, Linda R. Tropp, and Constantine Sedikides. SSSP 5. SOCIAL JUDGMENTS: IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT PROCESSES** ISBN 0-521-82248-3. (Edited by J.P. Forgas, K.D. Williams & W. Von Hippel). Contributors: Herbert Bless, Marilynn Brewer, David Buss, Tanya Chartrand, Klaus Fiedler, Joseph Forgas, David Funder, Adam Galinsky, Martie Haselton, Denis Hilton, Lucy Johnston, Arie Kruglanski, Matthew Lieberman, John McClure, Mario Mikulincer, Norbert Schwarz, Philip Shaver, Diederik Stapel, Jerry Suls, William von Hippel, Michaela Waenke, Ladd Wheeler, Kipling Williams, Michael Zarate. SSSP 6. SOCIAL MOTIVATION: CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES** ISBN 0-521-83254-3 (Edited by J.P. Forgas, K.D. Williams & S.M. Laham). Contributors: Henk Aarts, Ran Hassin,Trish Devine, Joseph Forgas, Jens Forster, Nira Liberman, Judy Harackiewicz, Leanne Hing, Mark Zanna, Michael Kernis, Paul Lewicki, Steve Neuberg, Doug Kenrick, Mark Schaller, Tom Pyszczynski, Fred Rhodewalt, Jonathan Schooler, Steve Spencer, Fritz Strack, Roland Deutsch, Howard Weiss, Neal Ashkanasy, Kip Williams, Trevor Case, Wayne Warburton, Wendy Wood, Jeffrey Quinn, Rex Wright and Guido Gendolla. SSSP 7. THE SOCIAL OUTCAST: OSTRACISM, SOCIAL EXCLUSION, REJECTION, AND BULLYING* ISBN 1-84169-424-X (Edited by K.D. Williams, J.P Forgas & W. Von Hippel). Contributors: Kipling D. Williams, Joseph P. Forgas, William von Hippel, Lisa Zadro, Mark R. Leary, Roy F. Baumeister, and C. Nathan DeWall, Geoff MacDonald, Rachell Kingsbury, Stephanie Shaw, John T. Cacioppo, Louise C. Hawkley, Naomi I. Eisenberger Matthew D. Lieberman, Rainer Romero-Canyas, Geraldine Downey, Jaana Juvonen, Elisheva F. Gross, Kristin L. Sommer, Yonata Rubin, Susan T. Fiske, Mariko Yamamoto, Jean M. Twenge, Cynthia L. Pickett, Wendi L. Gardner, Megan Knowles, Michael A. Hogg, Julie Fitness, Jessica L. Lakin, Tanya L. Chartrand, Kathleen R. Catanese and Dianne M. Tice, Lowell Gaertner, Jonathan Iuzzini, Jaap W. Ouwerkerk, Norbert L. Kerr, Marcello Gallucci, Paul A. M. Van Lange, and Marilynn B. Brewer. SSSP 8. AFFECT IN SOCIAL THINKING AND BEHAVIOR* ISBN 1-84169-454-2 (Edited by J.P. Forgas). Contributors: Joseph P. Forgas, Carrie Wyland, Simon M. Laham, Martie G. Haselton Timothy Ketelaar, Piotr Winkielman, John T. Cacioppo, Herbert Bless, Klaus Fiedler, Craig A. Smith, Bieke David, Leslie D. Kirby, Eric Eich, Dawn Macaulay, Gerald L. Clore, Justin Storbeck, Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Dianne M. Tice, Dacher Keltner, E.J. Horberg, Christopher Oveis, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Simon M. Laham, Constantine Sedikides, Tim Wildschut, Jamie Arndt, Clay Routledge, Yaacov Trope, Eric R. Igou, Chris Burke, Felicia A. Huppert, Ralph Erber, Susan Markunas, Joseph P. Forgas, Joseph Ciarrochi, John T. Blackledge, Janice R. Kelly, Jennifer R.Spoor, John G. Holmes, Danu B. Anthony. SSSP 9. EVOLUTION AND THE SOCIAL MIND* ISBN 1-84169458-0 (Edited by J.P. Forgas, M.G. Haselton & W. Von Hippel). Contributors: ­William von Hippel, Martie Haselton, Joseph P. Forgas, R.I.M. Dunbar, Steven W. Gangestad, Randy Thornhill, Douglas T. Kenrick, Andrew W. Delton, Theresa E. Robertson, D. Vaughn Becker, Steven L. Neuberg, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Ross Buck, Joseph P. Forgas, Paul B.T. Badcock, Nicholas B. Allen, Peter M. Todd, Jeffry A. Simpson, Jonathon LaPaglia, Debra Lieberman, Garth J. O. Fletcher,

Nickola C. Overall, Abraham P. Buunk, Karlijn Massar, Pieternel Dijkstra, Mark Van Vugt, Rob Kurzban, Jamin Halberstadt, Oscar Ybarra, Matthew C. Keller, Emily Chan, Andrew S. Baron, Jeffrey Hutsler, Stephen Garcia, Jeffrey SanchezBurks, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Jennifer R. Spoor, Kipling D. Williams, Mark Schaller, Lesley A. Duncan. SSSP 10. SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS: COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE, AND MOTIVATIONAL PROCESSES* ISBN 978-1-84169-715-4 (Edited by J.P. Forgas & J. Fitness). Contributors: Joseph P. Forgas, Julie Fitness, Elaine Hatfield, Richard L. Rapson, Gian C. Gonzaga, Martie G. Haselton, Phillip R. Shaver, Mario Mikulincer, David P. Schmitt, Garth J.O. Fletcher, Alice D. Boyes, Linda K. Acitelli, Margaret S. Clark, Steven M. Graham, Erin Williams, Edward P. Lemay, Christopher R. Agnew, Ximena B. Arriaga, Juan E. Wilson, Marilynn B. Brewer, Jeffry A. Simpson, W. Andrew Collins, SiSi Tran, Katherine C. Haydon, Shelly L. Gable, Patricia Noller, Susan Conway, Anita Blakeley-Smith, Julie Peterson, Eli J. Finkel, Sandra L. Murray, Lisa Zadro, Kipling D. Williams, Rowland S. Miller. SSSP 11. PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-REGULATION: COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE, AND MOTIVATIONAL PROCESSES* ISBN 978-1-84872842-4 (Edited by J.P. Forgas, R. Baumeister & D.M. Tice). Contributors: Joseph P. Forgas, Roy F. Baumeister, Dianne M. Tice, Jessica L. Alquist, Carol Sansone, Malte Friese, Michaela Wänke, Wilhelm Hofmann, Constantine Sedikides, Christian Unkelbach, Henning Plessner, Daniel Memmert, Charles S. Carver, Michael F. Scheier, Gabriele Oettingen, Peter M. Gollwitzer, Jens Förster, Nira Liberman, Ayelet Fishbach, Gráinne M. Fitzsimons, Justin Friesen, Edward ­Orehek, Arie W. Kruglanski, Sander L. Koole, Thomas F. Denson, Klaus Fiedler, Matthias Bluemke, Christian Unkelbach, Hart Blanton, Deborah L. Hall, Kathleen D. Vohs, Jannine D. Lasaleta, Bob Fennis, William von Hippel, Richard Ronay, Eli J. Finkel, Daniel C. Molden, Sarah E. Johnson, Paul W. Eastwick. SSSP 12. PSYCHOLOGY OF ATTITUDES AND ATTITUDE CHANGE* ISBN 978-1-84872-908-7 (Edited by J.P. Forgas, J. Cooper & W.D. Crano). Contributors: William D. Crano, Joel Cooper, Joseph P. Forgas, Blair T. Johnson, Marcella H. Boynton, Alison Ledgerwood, Yaacov Trope, Eva Walther, Tina Langer, Klaus Fiedler, Steven J. Spencer, Jennifer Peach, Emiko Yoshida, Mark P. Zanna, Allyson L. Holbrook, Jon A. Krosnick, Eddie Harmon-Jones, David M. Amodio, Cindy Harmon-Jones, Michaela Wänke, Leonie Reutner, Kipling D. Williams, Zhansheng Chen, Duane Wegener, Radmila Prislin, Brenda Major, Sarah S. M. Townsend, Frederick Rhodewalt, Benjamin Peterson, Jim Blascovich, Cade McCall. SSSP 13. PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIAL CONFLICT AND AGGRESSION* ISBN 978-1-84872-932-2 (Edited by J.P. Forgas, A.W. Kruglanski & K.D Williams). Contributors: Daniel Ames, Craig A. Anderson, Joanna E. Anderson, Paul Boxer, Tanya L. Chartrand, John Christner, Matt DeLisi, Thomas F. Denson, Ed Donnerstein, Eric F. Dubow, Chris Eckhardt, Emma C. Fabiansson, Eli J. Finkel, Gráinne M. Fitzsimons, Joseph P. Forgas, Adam D. Galinsky, Debra Gilin, Georgina S. Hammock, L. Rowell Huesmann, Arie W. Kruglanski, Robert Kurzban, N. Pontus Leander, Laura B. Luchies, William W. Maddux, Mario Mikulincer, Edward Orehek, Deborah South Richardson, Phillip R. Shaver, Hui Bing Tan, Mark Van Vugt, Eric D. Wesselmann, Kipling D. Williams, Lisa Zadro. SSSP 14. SOCIAL THINKING AND INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOR* ISBN 978-1-84872-990-2 (Edited by J.P. Forgas, K. Fiedler & C. Sekidikes). Contributors: Andrea E. Abele, Eusebio M. Alvaro, Mauro Bertolotti,

Camiel J. Beukeboom, Susanne Bruckmüller, Patrizia Catellani, Cindy K. Chung, Joel Cooper, William D. Crano, István Csertő, John F. Dovidio, Bea Ehmann, Klaus Fiedler, Joseph P. Forgas, Éva Fülöp, Jessica Gasiorek, Howard Giles, Liz Goldenberg, Barbara Ilg, Yoshihisa Kashima, Mikhail Kissine, Olivier Klein, Alex Koch, János László, Anne Maass, Andre Mata, Elisa M. Merkel, Alessio Nencini, Andrew A. Pearson, James W. Pennebaker, Kim Peters, Tibor Pólya, Ben Slugoski, Caterina Suitner, Zsolt Szabó, Matthew D. Trujillo, Orsolya Vincze. SSSP 15. SOCIAL COGNITION AND COMMUNICATION* ISBN 978-1-84872-663-5 (Edited by J.P. Forgas, O. Vincze & J. László). Contributors: Andrea E. Abele, Eusebio M. Alvaro, Maro Bertolotti, Camiel J. Beukeboom, Susanne Bruckmüller, Patrizia Catellani, István Cserto , Cindy K. Chung, Joel Coooper, William D. Crano, John F. Dovidio, Bea Ehmann, Klaus Fiedler, J. P. Forgas, Éva Fülöp, Jessica Gasiorek, Howard Giles, Liz Goldenberg, Barbara Ilg, Yoshihisa Kahima, Mikhail Kissine, Alex S. Koch, János László, Olivier Klein, Anne Maass, André Mata, Elisa M. Merkel, Alessio Nencini, Adam R. Pearson, James W. Pennebaker, Kim Peters, Tibor Pólya, Ben Slugoski, Caterina Suitner, Zsolt Szabó, Matthew D. Trujillo, Orsolya Vincze. SSSP 16. MOTIVATION AND ITS REGULATION: THE CONTROL ­ armon-Jones). WITHIN* ISBN 978-1-84872-562-1 (Edited by J.P. Forgas & E. H Contributors: Emily Balcetis, John A. Bargh, Jarik Bouw, Charles S. Carver, Brittany M. Christian, Hannah Faye Chua, Shana Cole, Carsten K. W. De Dreu, Thomas F. Denson, Andrew J. Elliot, Joseph P. Forgas, Alexandra Godwin, Karen Gonsalkorale, Jamin Halberstadt, Cindy Harmon-Jones, Eddie Harmon-Jones, E. Tory Higgins, Julie Y. Huang, Michael Inzlicht, Sheri L. Johnson, Jonathan Jong, Jutta Joormann, Nils B. Jostmann, Shinobu Kitayama, Sander L. Koole, Lisa Legault, Jennifer Leo, C. Neil Macrae, Jon K. Maner, Lynden K. Mile, Steven B. Most, Jaime L. Napier, Tom F. Price, Marieke Roskes, Brandon J. Schmeichel, Iris K. Schneider, Abigail A. Scholer, Julia Schüler, Sarah Strübin, David Tang, Steve Tompson, Mattie Tops, Lisa Zadro. SSSP 17. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND POLITICS* ISBN 978-113882-968-8 (Edited by Joseph P. Forgas, Klaus Fiedler, William D. Crano). ­Contributors: Stephanie M. Anglin, Luisa Batalha, Mauro Bertolotti, Patrizia Catellani, William D. Crano, Jarret T. Crawford, John F. Dovidio, Klaus Fiedler, Joseph P. Forgas, Mark G. Frank, Samuel L. Gaertner, Jeremy Ginges, Joscha Hofferbert, Michael A. Hogg, Hyisung C. Hwang, Yoel Inbar, Lee Jussim, Lucas A. Keefer, Laszlo Kelemen, Alex Koch, Tobias Krüger, Mark J. Landau, Janos Laszlo, Elena Lyrintzis, David Matsumoto, G. Scott Morgan, David A. Pizarro, Felicia Pratto, Katherine J. Reynolds, Tamar Saguy, Daan Scheepers, David O. Sears, Linda J. Skitka, Sean T. Stevens, Emina Subasic, Elze G. Ufkes, Robin R. Vallacher, Paul A. M. Van Lange, Daniel C. Wisneski, Michaela Wänke, Franz Woellert, Fouad Bou Zeineddine. SSSP 18. The Social Psychology of Morality* ISBN 978-1-138-92907-4 (Edited by Joseph P. Forgas, Lee Jussim, and Paul A. M. Van Lange). Contributors: Stephanie M. Anglin, Joel B. Armstrong, Mark J. Brandt, Brock Bastian, Paul Conway, Joel Cooper, Chelsea Corless, Jarret T. Crawford, Daniel Crimston, Molly J. Crockett, Jose L. Duarte, Allison K. Farrell, Klaus Fiedler, Rebecca Friesdorf, Jeremy A. Frimer, Adam D. Galinsky, Bertram Gawronski, William G. Graziano, Nick Haslam, Mandy Hütter, Lee Jussim, Alice Lee, William W. Maddux, Emma Marshall, Dale T. Miller, Benoît Monin, Tom Pyszczynski, Richard Ronay, David A. Schroeder, Simon M. Laham, Jeffry A. Simpson, Sean T. Stevens, William Von Hippel, Geoffrey Wetherell.

SSP 19. The Social Psychology of Living Well* ISBN 978-0-81536924-0 (Edited by Joseph P. Forgas and Roy F. Baumeister). Contributors: Yair Amichai- Hamburger, Peter Arslan, Roy F. Baumeister, William D. Crano, Candice D. Donaldson, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Ryan J. Dwyer, Shir Etgar, Allison K. Farrell, Klaus Fiedler, Joseph P. Forgas, Barbara L. Fredrickson, Megan M. Fritz, Shelly L. Gable, Karen Gonsalkorale, Alexa Hubbard, Chloe O. Huelsnitz, Felicia A. Huppert, David Kalkstein, Sonja Lyubomirsky, David G. Myers, Constantine Sedikides, James Shah, Kennon M. Sheldon, Jeffry A. Simpson, Elena Stephan, Yaacov Trope, William Von Hippel, Tom Wildschut. SSP 20. The Social Psychology of Gullibility* ISBN 978-0-3671-8793-4 (Edited by Joseph P. Forgas and Roy F. Baumeister). Contributors: Stephanie M. Anglin, Joseph J. Avery, Roy F. Baumeister, Aleksandra Chicoka, Joel Cooper, Karen Douglas, David Dunning, Anthony M. Evans, Johanna K. Falbén, Klaus Fiedler, Joseph P. Forgas, Nicholas Fox, Marius Golubickis, Nathan Honeycutt, Lee Jussim, Alex Koch, Joachim I. Krueger, Spike W. S. Lee, C. Neil Macrae, Jessica A. Maxwell, Ruth Mayo, David Myers, Juliana L. Olivier, Daphna Oyserman, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Norbert Schwarz, Sean T. Stevens, Fritz Strack, Robbie M. Sutton, Geoffrey P. Thomas, Christian Unkelbach, Kathleen D. Vohs, Claudia Vogrincic-Haselbacher. SSP 21. Applications of Social Psychology* ISBN 978-0-367-41833-5 (Edited by Joseph P. Forgas, William D. Crano and Klaus Fidler). Contributors: Dana Atzil-Slomin, Hilary B. Bergsieker, H. Blanton, Shannon T. Brady, Pablo Brinol, Christopher N. Burrows, Emily Butler, Akeela Careem, Susannah Chandhook, William D. Crano, Lianne De Vries, Suzanne Dikker, Klaus Fiedler, Joseph P. Forgas, William M. Hall, Nathan Honeycutt, Lee Jussim, Sander L. Koole, Margaret Bull Kovera, Dorottya Lantos, Norman P. Li, Mario Mikulincer, Esther Papies, Richard E. Petty, Timothy Regan, Andrea L. Ruybal, Toni Schmader, Philip R. Shaver, Anna Stefaniak, Sean T. Stevens, Wolfgang Tschacher, Mark Van Vugt, Gregory M. Walton, Tom Wilderjans, Michael J. A. Wohl. * Published by Routledge ** Published by Cambridge University Press SSP 22. The Psychology of Populism ISBN 978-0-367-52381-7 (Edited by Joseph P. Forgas, William D. Crano, and Klaus Fidler). Contributors: Peter H. Ditto, Cristian G. Rodriguez, Daniel Bar-Tal, Tamir Magal, Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen, Alexander Bor, George E. Marcus, Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, Dorottya Lantos and Oliver Keenan Goldsmiths, Joachim I. Krueger, David J. Grüning, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Arie W. Kruglanski, Erica Molinario, Gilda Sensales, Klaus Fiedler, Michael A. Hogg, Oluf Gøtzsche-Astrup, Joseph P. Forgas, Dorottya Lantos, Péter Krekó, Eotvos Lorand, Leonie Huddy, Alessandro Del Ponte, Michele J. Gelfand, Rebecca Lorente, Amber M. Gaffney, Joel Cooper and Joseph Avery, Robin R. Vallacher and Eli Fennell, Stanley Feldman, William D. Crano and Klaus Fidler.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POPULISM The Tribal Challenge to Liberal Democracy

Edited by Joseph P. Forgas, William D. Crano, and Klaus Fiedler

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Joseph P. Forgas, William D. Crano, and Klaus Fiedler to be identified as the authors 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 utilised 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. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-52390-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-52381-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-05768-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of Contributors xiv Prefacexvi   1 The Psychology of Populism: The Tribal Challenge to Liberal Democracy Joseph P. Forgas and William D. Crano

1

PART I

What Populists Want: Motivational and Emotional Factors in Populism   2 Populism and the Social Psychology of Grievance Peter H. Ditto and Cristian G. Rodriguez   3 Socio-Psychological Analysis of the Deterioration of Democracy and the Rise of Authoritarianism: The Role of Needs, Values, and Context Daniel Bar-Tal and Tamir Magal   4 Beyond Populism: The Psychology of Status-Seeking and Extreme Political Discontent Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen and Alexander Bor

21 23

42

62

xii Contents

  5 The Rise of Populism: The Politics of Justice, Anger, and Grievance George E. Marcus   6 Collective Narcissism and the Motivational Underpinnings of the Populist Backlash Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, Dorottya Lantos and Oliver Keenan PART II

81

105

The Populist Mind: Cognitive Aspects of Populism

123

  7 Psychological Perversities and Populism Joachim I. Krueger and David J. Grüning

125

  8 Overconfidence in Radical Politics Jan-Willem van Prooijen

143

  9 Why Populism Attracts: On the Allure of Certainty and Dignity Arie W. Kruglanski, Erica Molinario, and Gilda Sensales

158

10 A Non-Populist Perspective on Populism in Psychological Science Klaus Fiedler

174

PART III

The Tribal Call: Social Identity and Populism 11 Self-Uncertainty and Populism: Why We Endorse Populist Ideologies, Identify With Populist Groups, and Support Populist Leaders Michael A. Hogg and Oluf Gøtzsche-Astrup

195

197

12 When Populism Triumphs: From Democracy to Autocracy Joseph P. Forgas and Dorottya Lantos

219

13 Populism in Power: The Tribal Challenge Péter Krekó

240

Contents  xiii

14 The Rise of Populism in the USA: Nationalism, Race, and American Party Politics Leonie Huddy and Alessandro Del Ponte

258

15 Threat, Tightness, and the Evolutionary Appeal of Populist Leaders Michele J. Gelfand and Rebecca Lorente

276

PART IV

Populist Narratives and Propaganda 16 Social Psychological Contributions to the Study of Populism: Minority Influence and Leadership Processes in the Rise and Fall of Populist Movements William D. Crano and Amber M. Gaffney

295

297

17 Value Framing and Support for Populist Propaganda Joel Cooper and Joseph Avery

319

18 Rapid Social Change and the Emergence of Populism Robin R. Vallacher and Eli Fennell

332

19 Authoritarianism, Education, and Support for Right-Wing Populism Stanley Feldman

348

Index365

CONTRIBUTORS

Avery, Joseph, Princeton University, USA Bar-Tal, Daniel, Tel-Aviv University, Israel Bor, Alexander, Aarhus University, Denmark Cooper, Joel, Princeton University, USA Crano, William D., Claremont Graduate University, USA Del Ponte, Alessandro, Stoney Brook University, USA Ditto, Peter H., University of California, Irvine, USA Feldman, Stanley, Stony Brook University, USA Fennell, Eli, Florida Atlantic University, USA Fiedler, Klaus, University of Heidelberg, Germany Forgas, Joseph P., University of New South Wales, Australia Gaffney, Amber M., Humboldt State University, USA Gelfand, Michele J., University of Maryland, USA

Contributors  xv

Golec de Zavala, Agnieszka, Goldsmiths, University of London, England Gøtzsche-Astrup, Oluf, Aarhus University, Denmark. Grüning, David J., University of Mannheim, Germany Hogg, Michael A., Claremont Graduate University, USA Huddy, Leonie, Stoney Brook University, USA Keenan, Oliver, Goldsmiths, University of London, England Krekó, Péter, Eotvos Lorand University of Budapest, Krueger, Joachim I., Brown University, USA Kruglanski, Arie W., University of Maryland, USA Lantos, Dorottya, Goldsmiths, University of London, England Lorente, Rebecca, University of Maryland, USA Magal, Tamir, Tel Aviv University, Israel Marcus, George E., Williams College, USA Molinario, Erica, University of Maryland, USA Osmundsen, Mathias, Aarhus University, Denmark Petersen, Michael Bang, Aarhus University, Denmark Rodriguez, Cristian G., University of California, Irvine, USA Sensales, Gilda, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Vallacher, Robin R., Florida Atlantic University, USA Van Prooijen, Jan-Willem, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands

PREFACE

We do live in interesting times. When, a few decades ago, Francis Fukuyama famously declared the end of history and the inevitable triumph of Western liberal democracy and market capitalism, few of us would have predicted the current rise of authoritarian, populist political movements all over the world. Even within the EU, leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán now declare that liberalism is the enemy, and following Eastern autocracies, he now wants to establish an ‘illiberal democracy’ (an oxymoron, if ever there was one). How did this dramatic change come about? This book is an attempt to bring together leading international researchers from the fields of psychology and political science to help explain the strange psychological allure of populist politics. What led to the unexpected rejection of the classical liberal values of enlightenment humanism, individualism, and rationalism and the return to age-old habits of collectivist and populist tribalism and ideological polarization? Ultimately, as Plato and also John Stuart Mill suggested, political systems are expressions of human nature and psychology. Accordingly, we believe that an explanation of the recent rise of populism requires a psychological understanding of the mental representations of its followers. Unlike liberalism, which emphasizes the primacy of individual freedom, autonomy, and choice as the foundation of political systems, populism offers a collectivist, autocratic formulation that harks back to the ancient evolutionary history and tribal instincts of our species. Populism ideas and practices now show a growing influence on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The collection of chapters in this book offers a comprehensive overview of what we now know about the psychology of populism, and the reasons for its recent rise, analyzed from a variety of theoretical and methodological orientations.

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The book is divided into four parts. Part I deals with the motivational and emotional factors that attract voters to populist causes, and the human needs and values that populist movements satisfy. Part II analyzes the cognitive features of populist appeals, especially their emphasis on simplicity, epistemic certainty, and moral absolutism. Part III turns to one of the defining features of populism: its offer of a powerful tribal identity and collectivist ideology that provide meaning and personal significance to its followers. Finally, in Part IV the tactics used by populist movements are analyzed, including the roles of charismatic leadership, authoritarianism, and nationalism, and the use of conspiracy narratives and propaganda strategies. In selecting and inviting our contributors, we aimed to achieve a broad and varied coverage that is nevertheless representative of the major new developments in psychological research on populism. The chapters included represent some of the best recent examples of clear theorizing and careful research in this critically important area by leading international researchers.

The Origins of This Book: The Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology Series This book is part of the Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology series, now in its 23rd year. Since 1998, this annual Series has covered a variety of important topics in social psychology, with leading researchers invited from all over the world. These are not simply edited books in the usual sense. The objective of the Sydney Symposia is to provide new, integrative understanding in important areas of social psychology by inviting leading researchers in a particular field to a threeday residential Symposium. Unfortunately, this is the first time that, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our face-to-face meeting had to be cancelled. In order to compensate for this loss, as editors we made every effort to integrate the various chapters and to establish links between them where appropriate by inserting cross-references. The volume is intended as a collaborative effort by a leading group of international researchers to review what we now know about the psychological underpinnings of populist political movements. The Symposium has received financial support from a variety of sources over the years, including the University of New South Wales and the Australian Research Council, allowing the careful selection and funding of a small group of leading researchers as contributors. For more information on the Sydney Symposium series and details of our past and future projects (as well as photos that show our contributors in more or less flattering situations, and other background information), please see our website at www.sydneysymposium.unsw.edu.au. Books of the Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology Series are published by Psychology Press, New York,

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an imprint of Taylor & Francis Publishers. All previous volumes of the Sydney Symposium series can be inspected and ordered at their website, at www.crc press.com/Sydney-Symposium-of-Social-Psychology/book-series/TFSE00262. Detailed information about our earlier volumes can also be found on the series page in this book, and also on our website. The present book should be of considerable interest to the general public wishing to better understand the basic psychological dynamics of recent populist political movements. The book should also appeal to students, researchers, and practitioners in wide areas of social psychology and political science as a basic reference book, and as an informative textbook to be used in courses dealing with social and political psychology. The book is written in a readable yet scholarly style, and students at both the undergraduate and the graduate level as well as readers from all backgrounds should find it an engaging overview of the field. We want to express our thanks to people and organizations who helped to make the Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology series, and this volume in particular, a reality. Producing a complex multi-authored book such as this is a lengthy and sometimes challenging task. We have been very fortunate to work with such an excellent and cooperative group of contributors. Our first thanks must go to them. Because of their help and professionalism, we were able to finish this project in record time and ahead of schedule. Past friendships have not been frayed, and we are all still on speaking terms; indeed, we hope that working together on this book has been a positive an experience for all of us, that new friendships have been formed, and that all our contributors take happy memories with them about our time together. We are especially grateful to Suellen Crano, who helped in more ways than we could list here. We also wish to acknowledge financial support from the Australian Research Council and the University of New South Wales. Most of all, we are grateful for the love and support of our families who have put up with us during the many months of work that went into producing this book. Joseph P. Forgas, William D. Crano, and Klaus Fiedler Sydney, October 2020.

1 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POPULISM The Tribal Challenge to Liberal Democracy Joseph P. Forgas and William D. Crano

The first two decades of the 21st century were marked by a remarkable phenomenon: the largely unexpected rise of radical populist political ideologies in both well-established Western democracies and less-developed nations (Fournier, 2016). This book represents an integrated attempt to understand the psychological mechanisms underlying recent populist movements. Contributors include leading international researchers from the fields of social and cognitive psychology as well as political science, who seek to shed light on the psychological processes and dynamics of political populism. Understanding the mental precursors of populist ideation is especially timely today, when populist movements increasingly represent a credible threat to what has been arguably the most successful civilization in human history, liberal democracy combined with market capitalism (Pinker, 2018; Shuster, 2016). Understanding populist movements requires a systematic exploration of how people think, feel, and mentally represent political reality. The idea that political systems are fundamentally constrained by human nature and are expressions of human psychology was first mooted two thousand years ago by Plato in his classic Republic. The same core idea was reaffirmed by John Stuart Mill’s famous dictum that ‘all phenomena of society are also phenomena of human nature’ (Mill, 1947). Our book is predicated on the assumption that understanding political movements like populism above all requires a psychological explanation of the mental representations of its followers.

The Populist Challenge Liberal democratic parties are currently under sustained attack by new populist formations, from both the left and the right. The specter of becoming ungovernable

2  Joseph P. Forgas and William D. Crano

haunts several major democracies. In Germany, new populist parties decimated voter support for both the SPD and the CDU/CSU. In France, the traditional center parties have been replaced by Macron’s new movement, closely followed by Le Pen’s populist party. In Italy, fragile governments alternate, and in Britain following Brexit, populism has become mainstream. Spain saw repeated inconclusive elections in recent years. And, of course, Trump’s 2016 victory turned the US political establishment upside down. Everywhere, the old certainties of traditionally centrist parties and the values of civility, tolerance, and open debate are challenged. There are several reasons for these developments. In many liberal democracies, there is a growing sense of resentment against the ‘elites’, a defining feature of populism. The rise of emotional, identity-based politics is replacing the old norms of rational, analytical, and pragmatic decision making. Consensus and compromise are supplanted by implacable animosity and tribal hatreds. On many issues, the established parties are no longer able to channel voter preferences, so the rise of various populist parties is inevitable.

Towards a Definition Populism is a rather nebulous and hard-to-define term. Its current juxtaposition with democracy can be confusing, since both democracy and populism actually mean the same thing, rule by the people (demos in Greek, and populus in Latin). Then again, populist leaders are identified as demagogues, using the Greek vocabulary. Whereas democracy as an ideology is supported by over two thousand years of cultural evolution and refinement, populism remains a rough and superficial or ‘thin’ ideology (Mudde, 2004), focusing on the perceived conflict between the romanticized concept of the people, who are good, virtuous, and kind, and an opposing elite seen as corrupt, immoral, and exploitative. Democratic systems throughout history evolved increasingly precise and refined mechanisms to translate popular will into executive power. In contrast, populism mostly remains a simplistic and emotional tribal credo emphasizing the moral superiority of the people betrayed by those ruling over them (Rooduijn, 2015; Krekó, this volume). Populist ideologies typically offer cognitive certainty and simplicity, a positive identity, moral superiority, and the promise of collective redemption (Kruglanski, 2004; see also Krueger & Gruening; Kruglanski et al.; van Prooijen, this volume). Rather than offering realistic and rational explanations, populist leaders like Trump, Putin, Orbán, or Kaczyński describe their opponents as enemies of the people or evil. The kind of tribal animosity exploited by populists is also deeply rooted in human needs and values, especially the universal desire to identify with meaningful and positive valued groups or collectives (Tajfel  & Forgas, 2000; Hogg  & GøetscheAstrup, this volume).

The Psychology of Populism  3

Anti-Individualism and Collectivism Several chapters here argue that a key feature of populism is its fundamentally collectivist and anti-individualist character. This presents a major challenge to the individualistic and humanist philosophy of the Enlightenment that informs liberal democracies. Democracy assumes that the basic units of society are free and autonomous individuals who can determine their fate. In contrast, populism is a collectivist tribal ideology proposing a return to the romanticized pre-Enlightenment communal paradigm where the collective rather than independent individuals reign supreme. Populism assigns no inherent autonomy to the person, seen as a subordinate unit of the group they belong to (nation, race, religion, etc.). Classic and well-articulated populist ideologies such as Marxism offer a clear illustration of such a thoroughly collectivist and deterministic system, where a person’s status and even consciousness are externally determined by their economic circumstances and class membership (Koestler, 1952). Those who lack the required class consciousness are seen as suffering from a dysfunctional ‘false consciousness’, or in Jost and Banaji’s (1994) more recent neo-Marxist terminology, a system justification bias. Contemporary identitarian ‘social justice’ movements also emphasize a strict collectivist and anti-individualist ideology, where group membership is the primary source of a person’s values and preferences. Individual deviations from the assigned norms of the identity groups are not recognized as valid. Examples abound: a black person who happens to be conservative (e.g. the economist Thomas Sowell) is not really ‘black’, a gay person who deviates from LGBT ideology is not really gay (e.g. Douglas Murray), and a feminist who challenges current orthodoxy is not really a feminist (e.g. Germaine Greer; Murray, 2019). Unlike sophisticated systems of democracy, populist ideology is often simple and indeed simple-minded, showing lack of subtlety and emphasizing moral absolutism, certainty, collectivism, leadership, and authoritarianism (Krueger & Gruening; Kruglanski et al., this volume). One of the core messages of this book is that populism has a tribal character and presents a collectivist challenge to the ideals of the Enlightenment, such as individualism, humanism, pluralism, and rationality (Krekó, this volume).

Antecedents of Populism Typically, in a democracy populist movements flourish when significant portions of the population feel that the political elite no longer properly represents their values and needs (Bar-Tal and Magal; Huddy & Del Ponte; Marcus, this volume). This often occurs when economic crises, social changes, racial or ethnic rivalries or pandemics destroy existing social conditions, and create frustration, uncertainty, anger, fear, and resentment. In fact, all of these conditions have occurred

4  Joseph P. Forgas and William D. Crano

in the first two decades of the 21st century, so the current rise of populism is not all that surprising (Fukuyama, 2018; Spruyt, Keppens,  & Van Droogenbroeck, 2016; Hogg & Gøetsche-Astrup; Ditto & Rodriguez, this volume). A less tangible trigger of populist revolt is the perceived threat to a group’s cultural identity, when traditions, values, and way of life are undermined by cultural changes and immigration (Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Murray, 2018; Zakaria, 2016; Golec de Zavala et al., this volume). However, these challenges are not in themselves sufficient for populist movements to arise. What is also critical is a persuasive narrative that can turn dissatisfaction into a political force (Part IV; Cooper & Avery; Crano & Gaffney; Vallacher & Fennell, this volume). There is good evidence that support for populist politics is stronger among people with a well-articulated sense of perceived relative deprivation, grievance, and resentment (Fukuyama, 2018). Thus, the potential for populism is triggered by aversive economic, social, and cultural conditions, yet populism does not reliably arise in response to such social stressors. Historically, humans mostly lived in abominable conditions, yet populist revolts were rare (Harari, 2014; Mudde, 2004; Pinker, 2018). Over time, people can accept extremely adverse conditions without triggering revolt as long as they had enough time and latitude to adapt (Vallacher & Fennell, this volume). Despite mostly abject conditions throughout history, humans were generally able to symbolically justify their existence as long as the conditions were stable, reliable, and offered a coherent explanation for one’s life (Harari, 2014; Ditto & Rodriguez, this volume). It is only when a previously stable context is disrupted by rapid changes undermining one’s sense of stability and certainty that people become receptive to populist narratives, exploiting the psychological states of uncertainty, frustration, fear, anger, envy, and resentment (Crano & Gaffney; Gelfand & Lorente; Kruglanski et al., this volume). The main purpose of our book is to offer a social psychological analysis of the circumstances that promote populist political movements. One fruitful approach to understand how deprivation turns into populism is by analyzing the various human needs, goals, and values that have been challenged (see Part I). There are many taxonomies of such needs, goals, and values, and when they are frustrated a populist narrative may be adopted (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Fiske, 2010; Higgins, 2012; Maslow, 1943; Crano & Gaffney, this volume). The need for certainty, dignity, status, and identity are especially important, and the higher a person’s need for certainty and closure, the higher is their support for populism (see Part II). From the perspective of the individual, populism offers a collectivist response and a solution to perceived deprivation.

Populism on the Left and on the Right While for historical reasons populism is most often identified with right-wing, nationalistic, and nativist political ideologies, many of its psychological features

The Psychology of Populism  5

are equally characteristic of left-wing radicalism (Cooper & Avery, this volume). The contemporary concern about the rise of political populism was largely elicited by events such as the election of Trump, Brexit, and the rise of right-wing populist parties with illiberal, nationalist, and fascist ideologies in countries like Germany, Austria, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland. However, these movements did not emerge in a vacuum, at least in Western democracies. Similarly close-minded, absolutist, and authoritarian left-wing populist movements have long been a feature of the political landscape in many Western countries. It just so happens that the appearance of right-wing populism is more likely to trigger alarm in many observers. Left-wing populism in contrast is often not accurately recognized, and is frequently disguised by misleading, utopistic, and idealistic rhetoric. We are more likely to give the benefit of doubt to extremist radical left-wing movements, and assume that although possibly misguided, they are nevertheless committed to improving the human condition. For obvious historical reasons, right-wing populism is much less likely to escape adverse attention. Yet, as several chapters here show, there is a close similarity in beliefs and strategies between radical left-wing populism as manifested in the intolerant excesses of political correctness and identity politics, and right-wing populism leading eventually to the success of Trump, Brexit, and the AfD (Inglehart  & Norris, 2016). The worrying rise of right-wing populism is partly explicable as a reaction to the intolerant and autocratic ideologies of the radical left such as identity politics and political correctness (Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Murray, 2019). In our age, playing with identity as a political strategy is a very dangerous game (see Part III). In the late 1960s, left-wing movements were among the first to invoke identitarian ideologies in the alleged pursuit of social justice and equality, and to use strategies that violated the classical values of liberalism, individualism, and tolerance in pursuing these goals. It was perhaps inevitable that weaponizing group identity based on gender, sex, race, or ethnicity eventually produced a populist backlash by those groups singled out for attacks (Inglehart & Norris, 2016). What may differ between left-wing and right-wing populism is the kinds of narratives and value framing strategies employed to justify intolerant and absolutist practices (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Cooper & Avery, this volume). Right-wing populism historically embraced a nativist ideology where threats to the in-group and narcissistic beliefs in the group’s greatness were employed to justify authoritarian practices and leadership. As Albright (2018) suggested, strategies first invented by Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and Salazar are now routinely employed by dictators like Erdogan, Putin, Orbán, and others (see Part IV). Left-wing populism has slightly different roots. Perhaps the most enduring populist ideology on the left is Marxism, featuring the same degree of authoritarianism, dogmatism, and intolerance also found in right-wing totalitarian movements (Koestler, 1952; Popper, 1945). According to Marxist ideology, social progress is the outcome of necessary and inevitable group conflict. Assignment to

6  Joseph P. Forgas and William D. Crano

antagonistic groups (classes) is objectively determined by economic factors with no place for individual choice. Unrelenting group conflict is considered as the necessary engine of progress and social justice, a political strategy that has changed little since Lenin’s days. Contemporary identity politics, perhaps the most influential recent reincarnation of Marxist ideology, instead of ‘classes’ defines antagonistic identity group membership in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, or minority status. The theory of intersectionality further refines these group categories and assigns individuals to privileged (e.g. White, male, heterosexual) vs. oppressed (non-White, female, homosexual) identity groups. As in Marxist theory, conflict between these antagonistic groups is expected to drive the next phase of history. Populists at both ends of the political spectrum also differ in the kinds of grievances they focus on and the kinds of moral justifications they employ, while displaying a similarity in terms of their tactics, strategies, and modus operandi (Part IV; Cooper & Avery; Crano & Gaffney, this volume). Left-wing populists are typically concerned with economic, ethnic, and racial injustice, while rightwing populists tend to emphasize the importance of order, structure, predictability, and the values of nationalism, authoritarianism, and conservatism (Feldman; and Huddy  & Del Ponte, this volume). Left-wing populist programs advocate state power and redistribution (e.g. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Chavez’ Bolivarian revolution, etc.), while right-wing populism emphasizes ‘tribal’ and nativist values, promoting xenophobia, nationalism, religion, and conservatism (e.g. Trump, Berlusconi, Salvini, the Tea Party movement, Erdogan, Orbán and Kaczyński, etc.; Kruglanski et al., this volume). Marx’ traditionally populist class struggle ideology lost its attraction by the late 1960s as the horrors of the soviet communist system finally became recognized. Many of its Western adherents turned to either postmodernism or ‘social justice’ movements as their new preferred system critical ideology (Murray, 2019). It is paradoxical that Marxists who originally believed in the absolute truth and determinism of their system, once it became unsustainable, went to the opposite extreme and now believe equally fervently that there can be no truth at all. What Marxism and postmodernism do still share is a strongly critical attitude to Western liberal values, a romantic attachment to anti-Enlightenment communalism, and a cold-eyed focus on power as the major social issue of interest.

Features of Populism Although by its very nature populism is an elusive construct with rather fuzzy boundaries, there are several key features that theorists commonly identify, such as anti-elitism, moral absolutism, tribalism, and utopistic ideation. We shall briefly consider these features next.

The Psychology of Populism  7

Anti-Elitism Anti-elitism is often suggested as one of the key features of populism. However, this theoretical notion is challenged by some research that shows that after populists acquire power and become the new ‘elite’, the movement may continue unabated, driven mostly by the tribal allegiances and moral fervor of its followers rather than anti-elitism (Forgas & Lantos; Krekó, this volume). Nevertheless, there are many instances when ascendant populist movements can capitalize on the notion that the ‘elites’ have betrayed the people by pursuing policies and values that are not fully representative of the population at large. There may even be some truth in this claim. Part of the reason for the growing cleavage between ‘elites’ and many voters may be that the political agenda has become increasingly dominated by various activist minority intellectual movements that carried far more weight than their numerical support would justify (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018). When such a gap between the elites and mainstream voters becomes too wide, new populist movements inevitably arise to channel resentment, as was the case in countries like Germany (AfD), Austria (FPO), France, Britain (Brexit), and the US (Trump). Migration is a good case in point. Many voters in liberal democracies have growing reservations about uncontrolled migration that might change their familiar local culture too much and too fast. Yet, political elites in most European countries have been unable to articulate this voter sentiment (Murray, 2018). There now exists a conflict between the concerns of voters that conflict with the dominant values of political elites informed by moral and ideological rather than pragmatic considerations (Cooper & Avery, this volume). Virtue signaling, political correctness, and the influence of identity politics constrain the elite’s ability to respond to popular concerns. The long-lasting inability of the EU to develop a coherent migration policy has been directly responsible for the rise of populist movements in Europe. As philosophers like Roger Scruton and public intellectuals like Douglas Murray (2018) argue, the political class in most Western democracies has become captive to the ideological left and inclined to promote more left-wing policies than the beliefs of the electorate at large.

Moral Absolutism One of the defining hallmarks of populist movements is moral absolutism and intolerance of open debate and different views. This Manichean stance is based on the notion that representing ‘the people’ is unquestionably virtuous, and any opposition is evil (Krekó, this volume). Populist intolerance stands in stark contrast to the Enlightenment values of open, rational debate, and acceptance of divergent opinions as the best way deal with reality. Even when in power, populists question the legitimacy of any opposition (Forgas & Lantos; Krekó, this volume).

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On the right, the moral imperatives are usually rooted in religious, nationalistic, or ethnic value systems. We do know from social psychology how easy it is to fire up such tribal sentiments in the service of political objectives (Tajfel & Forgas, 2000). This pattern of moral absolutism is a recognizable feature of earlier populist movements led by Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and several latter-day autocrats, like Putin, Orbán, Erdogan, and others. Orbán, for example, after losing a democratic election in Hungary in 2002, declared that the motherland (i.e. him and his party) cannot be in opposition (Forgas & Lantos, this volume). In a similar manner, when Democrat politicians in the US label Trump’s voters ‘deplorables’, they also display moral absolutism, introducing a degree of ad hominem irrationality and intolerance into political discourse that precludes reasonable compromise. But tribalism is not the exclusive property of right-wing populist movements. Left-wing ideologies, such as Marxism, are also replete with claims about absolute moral superiority. An interesting historical example of this majoritarian and fundamentally anti-democratic ideology can be traced to the classic conflict between the Bolsheviks (actually meaning majority in Russian) and the Mensheviks (actually meaning minority) during the Russian revolution. Bolshevik strategy, shaped in no small measure by Lenin, asserted that anyone disagreeing with the Bolshevik cause is an enemy of the people and must be vanquished (and many indeed were). Some of the strident social justice movements that increasingly dominate the political ideologies of the West also share the populist hallmarks of moral absolutism, unquestioning belief in the righteousness of their cause, and the conviction borrowed from Foucault that the struggle for power and dominance is morally justified. The growing pattern of ‘wokeness’, detecting and taking offence at opinions one disagrees with, and ‘cancelling’, or silencing and persecuting people who express contrary opinions, are examples of absolutist populist intolerance incompatible with liberal values (Murray, 2019). In essence, populism represents a fundamental threat to democracy because it denies the legitimacy of any view other than its own. The cause is absolute, and those who fail to join the pre-ordained collective struggle are cast out. Fascists and Marxists had no difficulty morally justifying mass executions of people classified as traitors and enemies. Today, populist leaders like Trump, Putin, Orbán, or Erdogan habitually deprecate, humiliate, and sometimes poison perceived enemies, just as social justice warriors have no compunction about silencing and harassing individuals who dare to question their ideology (Murray, 2019). In the current increasingly polarized clash between morally absolutist leftwing and right-wing zealots, reasonable, rational, Enlightenment liberalism has little chance to reassert itself. Populism is dangerous because it appeals to the baser, emotional dimension of the human mind (Koestler, 1967). Those caught in the middle between these warring camps, hoping to engage in rational discourse, are either attacked from both sides or ignored. The liberal preference for open debate and compromise is fundamentally incompatible with populist ideology that denies the legitimacy of differing opinions. Given the aggressive,

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authoritarian, and irrational political culture of both left-wing and right-wing populists, we are in danger of losing the ability to communicate with each other as public life becomes increasingly polarized. It is in this sense that populism represents a tribal challenge to liberal democracy, as the next section will discuss.

Tribalism Populists at both ends of the political spectrum also share a propensity for tribal hatreds. In addition to reducing self-uncertainty, the powerful urge for group identification has deep adaptive and evolutionary origins and offered important survival benefits to our ancestors (Tajfel & Forgas, 2000). The ability of humans to identify with many fictional and often absurd belief systems throughout history served to reduce uncertainty and helped to integrate social groups (von Hippel, 2018). It is the uniquely human capacity for symbolic thought that allows almost any belief system, however bizarre, to serve as a powerful anchor for a tribal group identity (Harari, 2014). The subordination of the individual to the interests of a group, real or fictional, thus appears to be a human evolutionary universal. It was only very recently during the Enlightenment that that the universal pattern of communal bondage was broken in Western civilization as a result of the revolutionary rise of individualism and humanism, with spectacular results for human flourishing, well-being, health, wealth, and tolerance. However, the long established evolutionary human needs for status, identity, and meaning that can be derived from immersion in a primary group continue to have a visceral attraction that populism exploits. Many anti-Enlightenment political and romantic philosophical movements hark back to this primeval need for idealized communal engagement. Both fascist and Marxist ideologies are fundamentally collectivist in idealizing the group (‘folk’ or ‘class’) and questioning the primacy of individual freedom and choice. It is surprising that whereas fascism as a credible ideology has few remaining adherents, Marxism still retains an attraction for many Western intellectuals.

Utopian Thinking Populist political movements often adopt a millennial ideology, invoking the prospect of some final decisive battle or revolution which will usher in a golden age for the ‘people’. Hitler’s thousand-year empire, or Mussolini’s claims to recreate the greatness of the Roman empire, share the same utopian mindset. In a similar manner, the Marxist prediction that the coming and inevitable proletarian revolution will usher in a utopian communist society had very strong appeal for many people, including many Western intellectuals. The prediction of utopian bliss and the restoration of the true greatness and autonomy of ‘the people’ appear irresistible siren calls for adherents of populist movements. White supremacist movements in the US, ultra-nationalists in Russia, Turkey, or Hungary, or leftwing radicals share in this utopistic vision of their glorious imagined future.

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In addition to the partly overlapping features of populism we considered earlier—and the list is by no means exhaustive—there are also several recurring narratives and propaganda strategies that populist leaders and movements regularly employ. We turn to this issue next (see also Part IV).

Strategies of Populist Leadership and Propaganda Leadership As many of the chapters here argue, leaders play a critical role in populist movements, and leaderless movements rarely persist irrespective of the legitimacy of their cause (Crano & Gaffney; Hogg & Gøetsche-Astrup, this volume). Successful populist leaders are often charismatic, exude self-confidence and certainty, and are unwilling to allow disagreement. The more extreme the group, the more likely that the leader exhibits these qualities (Petersen at al., this volume). Populist leaders typically function as both the symbolic embodiment of their cause and the ultimate arbiter of the group. Groups led by more than one leader rarely succeed, because all communications central to group identity and entitativity need to be articulated consistently (Albright, 2018). To be effective, populist communication must be persistent and unwilling to backslide or compromise, as message consistency is a necessary feature of almost all successful persuasive communication (Crano & Gaffney, this volume). Populism succeeds because it offers epistemic certainty and simplicity in response to complex challenges (Kruglanski et al.; van Prooijen, this volume). Inconsistencies are typically explained as unavoidable in response to unforeseen outside threats, conspiracies, fake news, and attacks by out-groups. Another common populist leadership feature is an endemic disrespect for the truth. Appealing to lies and innuendo, conspiracy theories, and other propagandistic tactics work well with the faithful, and are a key feature of the armamentarium of populist leaders. As many populist movements have illustrated, convenient half-truths and outright lies remain unchallenged if consistent with long-term positions. Trump has told thousands of untruths with no serious consequences. Perhaps because of their close-minded allegiance to absolute and superordinate moral values, populist leaders are less constrained by the normal standards of honesty and suffer no shame or censure when dishonest behavior is uncovered (Cooper & Avery, this volume), unlike mainstream leaders who often pay a large price when caught.

Populist Narratives and Propaganda Populist movements share a key feature—the ability to identify and mobilize the causes of popular dissatisfaction and articulate ‘injustices’ and sense of deprivation

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(Ditto & Rodriguez, this volume). Narratives of grievance, feelings of anger and fear, and assigning blame is a winning formula of many populist leaders (­Marcus, this volume). The Nazis identified Jews as the cause of economic hardship, Trump blames the Washington ‘swamp’, Orbán blames Jewish financiers and the EU— playing to emotions and popular fears and resentment is more important than truth. The emphasis is on unfairness and deprivation and identifying a common enemy, drawing together an amorphous mass of complainants into a cohesive, entitative group. The dissemination of such propaganda messages today is powerfully facilitated by the widespread availability of the internet. Populist group narratives often display a narcissistic sense of unrecognized greatness and oppression by hostile adversaries (Golec de Zavala et al., this volume). To sustain a viable and entitative movement, there should be ‘others’, an opposing out-group (Hogg  & Gøetsche-Astrup, this volume). Inter-group conflict is typically presented in absolutist, Manichean terms, as a life-and-death struggle for justice and survival (Krekó, this volume). Populist groups typically see themselves as unquestionably virtuous (vs. the ‘moral majority’, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the Tea Party movement), fighting against a corrupt and evil power structure. Rectifying real or imagined past injustices and grievances and nostalgia for returning to an idealized past are also common narrative features, especially for right-wing populists. A danger of this ‘us-vs.-them’ narrative is that it almost guarantees resistance from the adversarial out-group that often leads to costly group conflict (Golec de Zavala et al., this volume). Inter-group conflict necessarily involves pain and suffering, often justified by the promise of a brighter future. Marxism is again a good example of just this kind of ‘the end justifies the means’ populist ideology. The promise of a perfect communist utopia just around the corner justifies almost any sacrifice for its achievement (such as tens of millions of dead in Stalin’s or Mao’s mindless campaigns). The manner in which populist groups achieve ascendancy is understood reasonably well, but we know much less about why, once in power, regression to the status quo ante frequently occurs (Crano, 2012; Forgas & Lantos; Krekó, this volume). History indicates that populist success is more likely to be long-lived if the leader is capable of persistently narrating the group’s sense of moral superiority. Populist narratives often employ simple, forceful, and controlling language choices. Whereas low-controlling language uses phrases like ‘perhaps’, or ‘possibly’, highly controlling language is definitive. Successful populist leaders often use controlling and even militaristic language, and use messages that are ‘explicit, clear, and efficient; however, it can be perceived as threatening, thus risking rejection’ (Staunton, Alvaro, Rosenberg, & Crano, 2020, p. 369). The language of irony and deprecation is also frequently employed. Irony seems to diminish reactance on the part of recipients, and in the case of controlling language makes a command seem ‘softer’, and hence more easily accepted (Crano & Gaffney, this volume).

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Repetition is another key tactic of populist leaders. The message must be repeated continually, with conviction and no retraction, as advised by the master propagandist Goebbels (Albright, 2018). Social psychology experiments suggest that the credibility of a message is increased almost as much by simple repetition as by hearing the same message from several independent sources.

The ‘Big Lie’ A particularly perverse populist tactic is the ‘big lie’ strategy, as exemplified by Adolf Hitler: the more implausible a lie, the less likely people believe that it could have been invented. The big lie of blaming the Jews in justifying the Holocaust is one of the most powerful historical examples (Herf, 2005, 2006). In Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because . . . / people/ themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.1 Truth in this case becomes irrelevant. Big lies abound in human history; indeed, many successful religions also appear to benefit from the ‘big lie’ strategy, creating myths and describing events that are so extraordinary that their very implausibility inhibits skepticism (e.g. virgin birth, resurrection, hell, heaven, etc.). Combatting the big lie is made more difficult by the fact that nobody likes to see themselves as stupid and gullible. Changing one belief has implications for many other, cherished beliefs that may even threaten the definition of the self. Leaving the tribe of ‘true believers’ also produces epistemic uncertainty (Krueger and Grüning, this volume). Faithful Nazis still believed in the final victory even when Russian troops were closing in on Berlin, and communist ideologues continue to believe in Marxist dogma even when its failures are uncontestable. Not coincidentally, ‘big lies’ and conspiracy theories abound in human history, suggesting that there may be a human propensity to believe in tall tales, and that such stories may even have some adaptive value. Belief in the divine right of kings, the creation myths of many cultures, revealed religious doctrines, and many spiritual teachings fundamentally contradict our sense of reality yet survive for centuries. The more outrageous the story and the more contrary to everyday experience, the more likely that it will be effective in defining and bonding together an identity group. In a paradoxical way, human gullibility appears to be a universal feature of our species, perhaps because the survival value of a shared belief in outrageous symbolic myths is greater than is the cost of falsifying reality (Forgas & Baumeister, 2019; Harari, 2014; von Hippel, 2018).

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Fear Arousing fear is also a common populist strategy, often combined with the big lie. To be effective, the threat presented may be linked to a solution only the leader can provide. One recent example was provided by Trump in his acceptance speech at the Republican presidential nomination convention: ‘No one knows the system better than me’, stopping to pause, smiling, then, ‘which is why I alone can fix it’ (Peyronyn, 2016). Propaganda campaigns by Hungarian populist leader Viktor Orbán have also played on this theme for years, casting the EU and liberals everywhere as mortal enemies of Hungary. In a similar way, Hitler not only blamed the Jews for economic privations and Germany’s defeat in World War I, but also for their plans to take over the country, amplifying the populace’s strong sense of relative deprivation (Petersen et al., this volume). However, fear-arousing communication needs to be handled carefully as it can easily elicit resistance and skepticism (Crano & Gaffney, this volume).

Conspiracy Theories In order to bolster and maintain the narrative of unquestionable moral certainty and superiority, populist movements are particularly prone to invoke conspiracy theories to explain why their ‘truth’ is not yet universally recognized (van Prooijen, this volume). Conspiracy theories can be very effective in questioning the credibility of any idea or empirical fact that does not agree with one’s preferred view of the world. Nationalist politicians are prone to blame any failure on hostile conspirators (Forgas & Lantos; Krekó, this volume). Combatting conspiracy theories is made more difficult by the fact that by their very nature, the alleged conspirators work in secrecy, so no reliable facts about their activities are publicly available. A good example is the durability of fake news about Jewish conspiracies that continue to circulate. Another example touching on our discipline is the way right-wing populist autocrats like Orbán are on record for seeing social science in general and psychology in particular as a hotbed of liberal conspiracy to undermine the traditional values of religion, family, and nation. Paradoxically, on the left, some radical scholars also cast social psychology as a conspiratorial and reactionary enterprise privileging White men, designed to disempower other voices and ‘knowledges’. As Fiedler (this volume) points out, populist thinking and conspiracy theories are also present in science. Some psychologists see a conspiracy and question the validity of any evolutionary evidence for the inheritance of human qualities when such evidence is incompatible with their social engineering strategies (von Hippel, 2018). As this by no means exhaustive list illustrates, there is a wide range of pragmatic strategies and narratives exploiting human psychological vulnerabilities that

14  Joseph P. Forgas and William D. Crano

are used by populist politicians to propagate their cause (see also Part IV). Our book was designed to offer an overview of both the theoretical underpinnings, and practical operation of populist movements, as the brief overview of the volume presented next will illustrate.

Overview of the Volume Beyond this introductory chapter, our book is organized into four complementary sections. The five chapters in Part I explore what populists want: the role of motivational and emotional factors in the spread of populism. Four chapters in Part II examine the complementary domain of the populist mind: cognitive aspects of populism. The five chapters in Part III turn to the one of the central psychological variables that drive populism: its tribal character and the key role of social identity processes in populist ideation. Finally, four chapters in Part IV address the pragmatic question of the social psychology of leadership, propaganda, and different narratives in promoting populist political movements.

Part I. What Populists Want: Motivational and Emotional Factors in Populism In Chapter  2, Ditto and Rodriguez propose that populist political movements gain power by leveraging feelings of grievance. Evoking past grievances produces political mobilization, moral judgment, and inter-group conflict as aggrieved groups come to interpret past injustice as morally relevant and justifying ‘payback’. Grievance-based political strategies escalate conflict and provoke a self-reinforcing cycle of animosity. Bar-Tal and Magal (Chapter 3) seek to understand the motivational and emotional pull of populism from a Lewinian perspective. They suggest that social events in recent decades led to a deprivation of primary needs and values, producing feelings of frustration, dissonance, and mistrust of the political system. The human search for a meaningful worldview increases the appeal of populist and authoritarian leaders who offer anti-democratic strategies in their quest for power. Petersen, Osmundsen, and Bor (Chapter 4) argue that one of the main drivers of extreme political discontent is motivations to achieve status via dominance. Social status as an adaptive resource can be achieved either through service producing privilege, or through aggression producing dominance. Populist discontent often triggers aggression to achieve dominance. Research confirms that extreme forms of political discontent correlate well with indices of dominance through aggression. Marcus (Chapter  5) suggests that support for far-right populist parties is driven more by anger and a sense of injustice than fear. He presents empirical data

The Psychology of Populism  15

showing that threat and fear produce very different cognitive reactions than do anger and grievance. Whereas fear promotes more open and deliberative thinking, anger increases motivated reasoning and partisan certitude. Misinterpreting the emotional foundations of populist appeal as fear-driven may compromise effective responses. Golec de Zavala, Dorottya Lantos, and Oliver Keenan (Chapter  6) argue that feelings of collective narcissism, the belief that one’s own group is exceptional but not sufficiently recognized, is a key feature in the current wave of populism, promoting prejudice and group conflict. Collective narcissism driven by a frustrated sense of self-importance is exploited by populist leaders to justify the maintenance of group-based hierarchies, promoting homophobia, racism, and sexism. Despite its overt claims, populism does not intrinsically value social justice; rather, it is driven by a desire to feel better than others based on one’s in-group’s status.

Part II. The Populist Mind: Cognitive Aspects of Populism Krueger and Grüning (Chapter 7) argue that populist ideologies exploit common failures of inductive reasoning, essentially offering certainties where none can be had. The aversion to uncertainty may contribute to social projection, selfstereotyping, attributions of essence, and moralizing. Fighting populism requires the cultivation of a skeptical and tolerant mindset, and the realization that much of social perception, for better or worse, is biased. In Chapter  8, van Prooijen shows that the epistemic certainty and overconfidence of populist ideologies is based on the simplistic construal of complex social problems. He presents evidence that simple radical political attitudes held with high confidence are more resistant to change. As the internet provides enhanced opportunities to collectively validate simplistic populist beliefs, a reduction in epistemic certainty is necessary before belief change can occur. Kruglanski, Molinario, and Sensales (Chapter 9) identify common cognitive mechanisms that underlie populist politics and identify the need for closure and the need for personal significance and mattering as critical. The authors present empirical support for this prediction, reporting the results of two studies of populism in the US and Italy. Fiedler (Chapter 10) argues that populism represents a fundamentally antiscientific cognitive stance characterized by the simplification, emotionalized discussion style, and irrational rejection of analytical, logical, and evidence-based arguments. In that sense, some prevailing scientific practices also have a populist character, including emphasis on significance-testing, the ongoing debates about questionable research practices, and the persistence of some scientific myths. Fiedler points out that populism is not just a feature of public life, but may also be discovered closer to home in our own ranks.

16  Joseph P. Forgas and William D. Crano

Part III. The Tribal Call: Social Identity and Populism Hogg and Gøetsche-Astrup (Chapter  11) apply uncertainty-identity theory to predict that self-uncertainty makes people more vulnerable to radicalization and joining extremist groups with autocratic leaders. Populist tribalism involves beliefs that the sovereignty of the people is actively subverted by outsiders (an elite). Conspiracy theories, collective narcissism, and narratives of victimhood are also important in populist tribalism. Empirical evidence confirms that self-uncertainty attracts people to populist groups and leaders who offer clear and often extremist identity narratives. Forgas and Lantos (Chapter 12) explore the psychological strategies used by populists, once in power, to install despotism and destroy democracy, using Hungary as an example. The chapter traces the process of dismantling of democratic institutions and the establishment of a one-party state, and offers a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of damaged national identity, feelings of helplessness, collective narcissism, and populist propaganda in Hungary’s rejection of democracy. Krekó (Chapter 13) suggests that populist attitudes can lose their anti-elitist character and become more tribal once populists come to power. He analyzes the attitudes of voters of ruling populist parties in Hungary and Poland, showing that once in power, populist voters are less anti-elitist than the liberal opposition. Instead of anti-elitism, ‘political tribalism’ and a Manichean worldview now define ruling populist politics, focusing on divisive social identities and promoting antagonisms. Huddy and Del Ponte (Chapter 14) discuss the role of nationalistic countryfirst propaganda in populist politics in the US. Based on data from the General Social Survey, they show that in the US nationalism and patriotism are positively correlated, stable, and equally prevalent among Blacks and Whites. However, the link between nationalism and Republican identification has increased over time among Whites but not among Blacks. The chapter suggests that although nationalism is stable, its political relevance has increased over time but only among White Americans. Gelfand and Lorente (Chapter  15) propose that populist trends can be partially explained by a cultural and evolutionary analysis of the strength (tightness) or weakness of prevailing social norms. Ecological and social threats call for stronger norms and leaders, and autocratic leaders harness the power of threat to gain voter support to instill tighter cultural norms. Data from the US and France confirms that people who feel threatened welcome tighter norms, explaining their support for autocratic candidates.

Part IV. Populist Narratives and Propaganda Crano and Gaffney (Chapter 16) suggest that effective populist propaganda builds on perceptions of relative deprivation and insecurity to promote the struggle against oppressive elites. The chapter discusses the role of social identity

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appeals in populist narratives and analyzes how minority influence and different persuasion strategies shape partisan identities by creating cohesive groups whose power often exceeds their numbers. Cooper and Avery (Chapter 17) suggest that populist support depends on how core values are framed. When framed in universal moral terms, populism receives support from both the political left and right in the US. When framed as a nativist issue instead, support from the left diminishes. Research confirms that populist support for specific issues varied depending on framing them in moral (e.g. fairness) or nativist (my group first) terms. Liberals support for the same policies declined when presented in a nativist rather than a moral framework. Vallacher and Fennell (Chapter  18) argue that populist discontent may remain unexpressed unless dynamic changes occur in the narratives producing a collective movement. Populism thus is not inherently linked to rational selfinterest nor to specific ideologies; rather, its spread is attributable to dynamic processes that arise when salient equilibria of a social system are destabilized. This dynamic process model has implications for understanding, predicting, and perhaps managing the ascendance of populist movements. Feldman (Chapter  19) examines the joint role of education and authoritarianism on public support for right-wing populist leaders. He argues that authoritarianism captures many of the core elements of right-wing populism: opposition to immigration, social/moral conservatism, nationalism, sexism, and ethnocentrism. Accordingly, people high in authoritarianism are especially sensitive to threats to group norms and status. Interestingly, a national survey of Americans finds that greater education does not reduce the effects of authoritarianism on right-wing attitudes. In summary, our aim with this book is to contribute to a better understanding of the nature and psychological characteristics of populist movements. We hope to highlight the fundamental threat that collectivist populist beliefs and strategies, both on the left and the right of the political spectrum, present for the core values and the very survival of liberal democratic systems. We are confident that a psychological approach can contribute to a better understanding of this complex and intractable social problem. In this introductory chapter in particular, we tried to survey some of the most important psychological features of populism, to be elaborated in the chapters that follow. Contributions to this volume were selected to offer a broad and representative overview of recent research on populism. As editors, we are deeply grateful to all our contributors for accepting our invitation to contribute to this, the 22nd volume of the Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology, and sharing their valuable ideas with our readers. We sincerely hope that the insights contained in these chapters will contribute to a better understanding of the role of psychological processes in populist movements.

Note 1. Project Gutenberg of Australia—Mein Kampf tr. James Murphy. Archived  from the original on 19 July 2020.

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References Albright, M. (2018). Fascism: A Warning. New York: Harper Collins Press. Crano, W. D. (2012). The rules of influence. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. Fiske, S. T. (2010). Social beings: Core motives in social psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. Forgas, J. P., & Baumeister, R. F. (Eds.). (2019). The social psychology of gullibility: Fake news, conspiracy theories and irrational beliefs. New York: Psychology Press. Fournier, R. (February  10, 2016). The populist Revolt. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/enduring-populism-will-endestablishment-politics/462189/ Fukuyama, F. (2018). Identity: The demand for dignity and the politics of resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029– 1046. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141 Harari, Y. N. (2014). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. London: Random House. Herf, J. (2005). Goebbels and the antisemitic campaigns of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 19(1), 51–80. Herf, J. (2006). The Jewish Enemy: Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Higgins, E. T. (2012). Regulatory focus theory. In P. A. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 483–504). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2016). Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism: Economic have-nots and cultural backlash. Cambridge: Harvard Kennedy School RWP16–026. Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33(1), 1–27. Koestler, A. (1952). Arrow in the blue. London: Collins. Koestler, A. (1967). The Ghost in the Machine. London: Hutchinson. Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). The psychology of closed mindedness. New York: Psychology Press. Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2018). The coddling of the American mind. New York: Allen Lane. Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. Mill, J. S. (1947). The collected works of John Stuart Mill, XXV – Newspaper writings, part IV, December 1847–July 1873 (eds. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. Murray, D. (2018). The strange death of Europe. London: Bloomsbury. Murray, D. (2019). The madness of crowds. London: Bloomsbury. Peyronyn, J. (2016, July 22). Trump: ‘I alone can fix it’. Huffington Post. Retrieved July 19, 2020, from www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-i-alone-can-fix-it_b_111283664 Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. New York: Penguin Books. Popper, K. (1945). The open society and its enemies. London: Routledge. Rooduijn, M. (2015). The rise of the populist radical right in Western Europe. European View, 14(1), 3–11. Shuster, S. (2016, December 6). Populism: The rise of this political trend in Europe. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-populism/

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Spruyt, B., Keppens, G., & Van Droogenbroeck, F. (2016). Who supports populism and what attracts people to it? Political Research Quarterly, 69(2), 335–346. Staunton, T. V., Alvaro, E. M., Rosenberg, B. D., & Crano, W. D. (2020). Controlling language and irony: Reducing threat and increasing positive message evaluations. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 42(5), 369–386. doi:10.1080/01973533.2020.1789464 Tajfel, H., & Forgas, J. P. (2000). Social categorization: Cognitions, values and groups. In C. Stangor (Ed.), Key readings in social psychology. Stereotypes and prejudice: Essential readings (pp. 49–63). New York: Psychology Press. Von Hippel, W. (2018). The social leap. New York: Harper. Zakaria, F. (2016). Populism on the march: Why the west is in trouble.  Foreign Affairs, 95(6), 9–16.

PART I

What Populists Want Motivational and Emotional Factors in Populism

2 POPULISM AND THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF GRIEVANCE1 Peter H. Ditto and Cristian G. Rodriguez

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. A grievance can almost serve as a substitute for hope: and it not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance. Eric Hoffer (1955) The Passionate State of Mind: And Other Aphorisms

The redress of citizen grievances is a core task facing any governmental system. It is so central to participatory democracy that the right to it is enshrined in its canonical founding documents, including the Magna Carta and the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Governments develop elaborate systems of laws and courts to allow ordinary people to seek redress of their grievances, against both their government and their fellow citizens, and the time, effort, and sometimes even blood involved in developing, nurturing, and defending these systems is testament to the importance people attach to the promotion and maintenance of justice in their everyday lives (see also Bar-Tal & Magal; Kruglanski et al.; Marcus; and Petersen et al., this volume). Populist movements see the people and the elite in an antagonistic struggle, with ordinary citizens portrayed as exploited for the benefit of a privileged few (Mudde  & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Rather than simply offering policies to improve the lot of everyday people, populist politics infuses its messaging with an explicitly moral tone (see also Krekó, this volume). The people are portrayed as inherently good, a force of purity and wisdom, whose voice is ignored or repressed by a corrupt elite that wields its political, economic, and cultural power in service of its own self-preservation and enrichment. The power of populism as a political strategy comes from elevating feelings of grievance to the raison d’être

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of the movement, harnessing the desire for justice deprived into a clarion call for political and, quite often, extra-political action. But why are appeals to grievance an attractive political strategy? Why do populist leaders so often choose messages of blame and retribution over messages of hope, and what are the effects of feelings of grievance on political thinking and action? The key to understanding grievance politics generally, and populist political movements more specifically, is understanding the psychology that underlies them. Accordingly, the focus of this chapter is to lay out a social psychological analysis of the concept of grievance, our preoccupation with it, how feelings of past injustice affect people’s moral calculus, and how these effects in turn toxify intergroup relationships (see also Hogg  & Gøetsche-Astrup, this volume). We suggest that political actors who adopt a populist strategy seek to capitalize on the psychology of grievance to mobilize and galvanize political support, but that this strategy has the important political sequalae of legitimizing extra-political action and escalating political conflict.

Mobilization and Moralization A central goal of politics is mobilization. To gain power, through election or any other means, politicians need people to do more than just agree with them. People have to be motivated to support you, and to act in ways that support you, such as voting, volunteering, organizing, or protesting. One way to motivate political action is to moralize it. Bauman and Skitka (2009) define moral conviction as the subjective assessment that one’s attitude about a specific issue or situation is associated with one’s core moral beliefs and fundamental sense of right and wrong. Although associated with the perceived importance of the attitude (Skitka, Bauman,  & Sargis, 2005), feeling morally convicted about an issue has unique and important psychological and behavioral effects beyond those of just feeling an issue is important. Compared to nonmoral attitudes, moral attitudes are likely to be experienced as universal truths that should apply to everyone, regardless of circumstance or cultural differences (Goodwin  & Darley, 2008, 2010; Skitka et  al., 2005). Moral attitudes are also strongly associated with intense emotions, such as disgust or anger, more so than even strong non-moral attitudes (Skitka et al., 2005). Perhaps most importantly, merely construing an attitude as moral increases its strength, leading to greater attitude-behavior correspondence and greater resistance to persuasion (Luttrell, Petty, Briñol, & Wagner, 2016; Van Bavel, Packer Haas, & Cunningham, 2012). For example, analyses of the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections indicate that strong moral convictions about the candidates and the issues of the day uniquely predicted self-reported voting behavior (for both Democrats and Republicans), controlling for a host of other factors (e.g., attitude strength and

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strength of party identification; Skitka & Bauman, 2008; see also Feldman; and Huddy & Del Ponte, this volume). Because moral conviction fuels political engagement, many politicians encourage citizens to moralize political issues to mobilize collective action. Marietta (2008) contends that politicians often use “sacred rhetoric” to frame issues in terms of nonnegotiable moral values rather than pragmatic assessments of costs and benefits. Morally framed messages tend to contain strong emotional language, which appeals to audiences that are likely to share the same emotional response to a given issue (Brady, Wills, Jost, Tucker, & Van Bavel, 2017; Kreps & Monin, 2011). In the context of populist politics, using the simple, intuitive language of moral right and wrong, rather than technical policy-centric cost–benefit analyses, may also appeal to the populist’s desire to align themselves with the values and vernacular of the everyday people they claim to champion. Given these benefits of moral framing, it is no wonder that politicians often try to use it to their advantage (see also Cooper & Avery, this volume). It is important to note, however, that the benefits of moral framing do not come without costs. Individuals who hold attitudes with moral conviction show greater intolerance of people with opposing viewpoints, report less desire to interact with them (Skitka et al., 2005), and hold more positive feelings about their political ingroup and greater animosity toward, and even dehumanization of, political outgroup members (Pacilli, Roccato, Pagliaro, & Russo, 2016; Ryan, 2014). Thus, moralization as a political tool has the dual effects of mobilizing collective action by binding political subgroups together in celebration and defense of a shared moral vision, and driving a wedge between subgroups by highlighting the value differences that separate them, degrading political discourse and hampering attempts by the subgroups to negotiate and compromise (Haidt, 2012; Skitka, Hanson, Morgan, & Wisneski, in press). The collateral costs of moralization as a political strategy will be a major focus of our of grievance politics moving forward.

What Is Grievance? In the lecture hall, this video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg, TED Blog Video, 2013) always provokes a huge laugh. Part of an early TED talk, the clip begins with Frans de Waal, the famous primatologist and moral psychologist, introducing his seminal series of experiments with Sarah Brosnan (Brosnan  & de Waal, 2003), in which two capuchin monkeys, side by side in adjoining cages, are in turn offered a reward for performing a simple task. In the crucial condition shown in the video clip, the first monkey performs the task happily for a piece of cucumber. She (female capuchins most clearly show the effect; Brosnan & de Waal, 2014) then watches a second monkey perform the same task, but be rewarded with a grape (a more desirable food item for capuchin monkeys). The fun comes when the task is rerun and the first monkey is again offered a

26  Peter H. Ditto and Cristian G. Rodriguez

cucumber rather than a grape as reward. In contrast to her calm acceptance of the watery gourd the first time around, this time the response is visible anger to the proffered cucumber, immediately throwing it back at the experimenter and violently shaking the cage in protest. In a closing quip, de Waal notes the similarity between the capuchin monkeys’ behavior and the Occupy Wall Street protests that were at that time ongoing in New York City. We describe this video because it captures poignantly the phenomenon of grievance and the kind of response it typically generates. The dictionary definition of grievance is “a real or imagined wrong or other cause for complaint or protest, especially unfair treatment” (Dictionary.com, n.d.). Grievance, in other words, is the sense that one has been wronged somehow, that outcomes are not being distributed in a fair and equitable way, that oneself or one’s group has been discriminated against or taken advantage of. One can feel aggrieved personally or as a function of one’s membership in a group that has received unfair treatment, and the sense of grievance can refer to a specific unfair act, like watching another receive more reward for the same act than you yourself did, or it can refer to a more diffuse sense of generalized injustice, a feeling that oneself or one’s group has historically been subjected to unfair treatment in the past. The idea that people have a fundamental concern with issues of fairness and justice in everyday life is by no means new. Research on equity theory (e.g., DeScioli, Massenkoff, Shaw, Petersen,  & Kurzban, 2014), procedural justice (Clay-Warner, 2001), and belief in a just world (Callan, Ellard, & Nicol, 2006) are all based on the notion that justice concerns are a central feature of social thought and behavior. Justice concerns are also a central dynamic of the Kohlbergian view of moral development (e.g., Kohlberg, 1975) and remain an important aspect of lay morality in more pluralistic models of moral judgment (Gilligan, 1982; Graham et al., 2013; Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller, 1987). Cross-cultural research suggests that concerns about fairness and justice are effectively universal in human populations (Henrich et al., 2001), and while advantaged inequity aversion (i.e., discomfort that one is getting more than one deserves relative to others) seems largely restricted to humans (Brosnan & de Waal, 2014; and perhaps chimpanzees, Brosnan, Talbot, Ahlgren, Lambeth, & Shapiro, 2010), the disadvantaged inequity aversion demonstrated by Brosnan and de Waal’s capuchin monkeys has been found in numerous species (Brosnan & de Waal, 2014), and thus the propensity to experience feelings of grievance seems deeply embedded in human evolutionary history. Important for our purposes here, grievance is a distinctly moral phenomenon. Theoretically, feelings of grievance should not be experienced in response to just any negative outcome, particularly a negative outcome that is perceived as just and deserved. People should only feel aggrieved when the negative outcome is perceived as unjust and undeserved, that is, when the outcome is perceived as not just disappointing but morally wrong. Grievance involves a moral evaluation of one’s state as fair (morally good) or unfair (morally bad), and evokes a

Populism & Social Psychology of Grievance  27

prototypically moral response (anger and outrage rather than the disappointment or self-criticism one feels after poor achievement in an ability context). Although feelings of grievance should be expected to be most intense when the unfair treatment happens to the self (more on this soon), humans also show many examples of grievance experienced in response to the unfair treatment of others—e.g., an unaffected member of a stigmatized group feeling aggrieved for the mistreatment of other members of the group—and even in response to the mistreatment of outgroup members. The substantial participation of White Americans in the recent series of Black Lives Matter protests would seem a good example of otherfocused grievance. Finally, the Brosnan and de Waal (2003) experiment is also important as an elegant illustration of how feelings of grievance can be harnessed to moralize and thus energize responses to a given situation. Initially, Brosnan and de Waal’s capuchin subjects responded with equanimity to the cucumber reward. They might have hoped for more than a tasteless vegetable as recompense for performance, but they ultimately accepted the cucumber without complaint. It is when the experimental procedure encouraged a moral interpretation of the cucumber reward as unfair treatment (in comparison to the grape received for performing the identical task by the second monkey), that an emotional and behavioral response was provoked. Therein lies the power of grievance as a political tool. Promoting feelings of grievance is a form of moralization that triggers emotions and mobilizes action. When populist political leaders encourage their followers to blame poor economic or political conditions on the corrupt and selfish behavior of an uncaring elite, they are transforming those conditions from undesirable to unjust, and thus harnessing the power of grievance for political gain (see also Vallacher & Fennell, this volume).

A Temporal Analysis of Moral Judgment Our analysis of grievance differs most from past treatments of similar phenomena in its focus on how feelings of past injustice affect moral evaluations of current acts and events. In fact, we see grievance as a neglected factor conspicuously missing from past treatments of every day moral judgment. To illustrate this, let us begin by briefly characterizing what we refer to as a temporal analysis of moral judgment. Psychological work on moral judgment has directed substantial attention to the distinction between deontological and consequentialist approaches to moral evaluation. The distinction is generally framed as a clash between moral evaluations based on principles, rules, and the “means” of a given action (a deontological moral standard) versus evaluations based on the effects, consequences, or “ends” of the action (a consequentialist or utilitarian moral standard). In philosophy, this clash is often a normative one (which is the most appropriate approach to moral evaluation?), but in psychology the distinction is treated descriptively, as

28  Peter H. Ditto and Cristian G. Rodriguez

two different psychological intuitions underlying moral judgment. For example, classic moral dilemmas such as the Heinz dilemma, made famous by the seminal work of moral developmentalist Lawrence Kohlberg (1975), ask people to choose between a deontological or consequentialist standard for moral judgment. In the scenario, Heinz is forced to decide whether to steal an overpriced drug that he cannot afford but will save his seriously ill wife’s life. A deontological standard posits that it is morally wrong for Heinz to steal the drug because the act of stealing itself is morally wrong (and the ends of a moral act cannot justify the means). A consequentialist standard, in contrast, argues that it is morally acceptable (and potentially even morally required) for Heinz to steal the life-saving drug because acts should be judged by the morality of their consequences, not the morality of the act itself (thus the ends of an act can justify the means). Although other standards of moral judgment have also been discussed (e.g., person-centered approaches inspired by virtue ethics; Pizarro & Tannenbaum, 2012), psychological research on moral judgment has been dominated by work placing the clash between deontological and consequentialist intuitions at the center of human moral dynamics (e.g., Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001). But considering moral judgment from a temporal perspective suggests another moral intuition active in moral judgment and moral conflict. Deontological judgment can be said to have a present-focus in that its central concern is the inherent morality of the act itself. Is the act the individual committed morally wrong (e.g., harmful, unfair, disloyal, disrespectful, or disgusting)? Does the act itself violate a moral principle? From a deontological perspective, the morality of a given act is determined in the present by the inherent moral qualities of the commission of the act itself. Consequentialist moral judgment, in comparison, has a future-focus. As the name belies, the essential concern of a consequentialist morality is the future consequences of the act. Will the future consequences of the act be positive or negative? Can the morality of the act be justified by the positivity of its future consequences? From a consequentialist perspective, then, the morality of a given act is not solely a function of the moral quality of the act itself, but instead by an analysis of whether the act, even if it is itself morally problematic (e.g., pushing a large man to his death to stop a trolley), is likely to produce morally good consequences in the future (e.g., lowering the death toll of a trolley accident from five to one). What is missing, of course, is the past. Is there a moral standard that adopts a past-focus on moral judgment? We suggest that grievance is just this sort of pastbased moral analysis. Following Lakoff (2002), we call this the moral accounting approach and suggest that when evaluating the morality of a given act, in addition to considering the moral qualities of the act itself and its potential to produce good or bad consequences in the future, we also consider the moral history of the act. In Lakoff’s analysis, the guiding metaphor for moral judgment is a balance sheet, a tally of past moral debts, deposits, and repayments through which the

Populism & Social Psychology of Grievance  29

acceptability of the current act is evaluated. People keep track of when someone owes them a moral debt (e.g., they have wronged you or others in the past) or alternatively has built up a moral surplus (e.g., they have treated you or others more generously than necessary in the past) as it helps them decide how to behave and who to trust. From a moral accounting perspective, then, the morality of a given act is determined, not just by its present moral qualities or its future moral consequences, but also by the legacy left by moral transactions of the past. Most important for the current purposes, just as a consequentialist view suggests that the morality of an act in the present can be justified by its consequences in the future, a moral accounting view posits that the morality of an act in the present can be justified as a redress of grievances experienced in the past. When populist leaders encourage the framing of unfavorable conditions as the result of past injustice, they seek to use grievance as a way to not just motivate political retribution, but also to justify it.

The Collateral Costs of Grievance To summarize our argument so far, evoking morality is an effective way to mobilize action, and framing issues to highlight feelings of grievance is a form of moralization used in populist movements. Feeling aggrieved is a natural and common outcome of social exchanges, yet it can be encouraged by framing the morality of current decisions in the light of past moral transactions. Just as we have the intuition that morally questionable behavior can in some circumstances be justified by future beneficial consequences, we have a similar intuition that it can also be justified as a legitimate response to past injustice or inequity. It is the power of grievance to evoke emotion and mobilize and justify action that makes it attractive to politicians, but evoking grievance as a political strategy has two clear collateral costs: it can be used to justify undemocratic means to gain political power, and its evocation risks initiating a self-escalating cycle of interfactional political conflict (see also Forgas & Lantos; and Krekó, this volume). We will discuss each of these in turn.

Grievance Defines Immorality Down If in 2015 you had asked political liberals in the U.S. whether they thought it was morally appropriate for a Democratic Senate to prevent a Republican president from appointing the Supreme Court nominee of his or her choosing, the huge majority would probably have said no. If you asked them today, the majority would very well say yes. The difference, of course, is that in the meantime, a Republican Senate refused to hold hearings to consider Democratic president Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, ultimately preventing Garland’s appointment to that august judicial body and leading liberal Americans to feel deeply aggrieved.

30  Peter H. Ditto and Cristian G. Rodriguez

This anecdote illustrates a key way that grievance affects moral evaluation. Just as a morally questionable act can be justified by its future positive consequences according to a consequentialist moral view, it can also be justified by past grievances according to a moral accounting perspective. Thus, when considered alone, the thwarting of a president’s legitimate right to appoint Supreme Court Justices seems to cross an obvious moral line. But when that line has previously been crossed by the other side, then crossing it again only seems fair, as moral restitution, a way to balance the moral checkbook. Grievance in this sense can be said to “define immorality down” (see Moynihan, 1993; Haslam, 2016); an act that in the absence of grievance would have been seen as morally unacceptable becomes more acceptable when it can be construed as payback for a previous injustice. To illustrate this effect, we conducted a proof of concept study on 201 participants using short vignettes in which a target individual commits a minor moral transgression, either after being victimized or with no mention of prior victimization. For example, one of the vignettes read: Riley and Jordan have been dating for six months and have recently moved in together. [Riley discovers that Jordan was unfaithful on a recent weekend trip. In response,] Riley posts intimate and embarrassing pictures of Jordan on a social media site. How morally wrong was Riley’s behavior? Half of the participants received this full version mentioning Jordan’s infidelity, while the other half read a version in which mention of it was deleted (the bracketed portion above was not included). Across four vignettes of this kind, we found a clear effect such that the identical moral transgression (e.g., keeping the change from a cashier, violating a “no compete” contractual clause) was seen as significantly less morally condemnable when the perpetrator of the act had previously been victimized (see Figure 2.1). The idea here is that when it is made salient that an actor has a prior grievance, untoward behavior by that actor is evaluated less harshly, as if prior injustice provides some degree of “license” to behave badly (Effron & Conway, 2015), that the world has a moral debt that has to be made right again. It should be noted that there is nothing particularly irrational about this effect, especially if our participants were doing it through conscious (karmic) calculation (e.g., “this guy got a bad break, so it is understandable that he cut a moral corner”). It makes good sense that people would maintain some form of moral balance sheet—a tab of their moral expenditures and debts, of inputs and outputs, of what they owe others and, especially, what others owes them (Fiske, 1992). This point is even clearer in an explicitly financial context. It is wrong to steal $500 from another person, but if that person steals $500 dollars from you, it seems perfectly fair (i.e., moral) for you to steal $500 back from them. There are also many real-world examples of grievance-based phenomenon that, while sometimes controversial, are generally seen as reasonable policy proposals. The

Populism & Social Psychology of Grievance  31

Moral Condemnation

6

5

4

3

FIGURE 2.1 

Victim

Moral Transgressor

No Victim

The effect of prior victimization on evaluation of moral transgressions.

best example perhaps is affirmative action, in which a prior grievance (a history of government-sponsored discriminatory behavior toward African-Americans) is used to argue that procedures typically viewed as fair (college admission based solely on demonstrated merit) should be justly abandoned in favor of a process that is clearly seen an unjust in other contexts (preferential treatment based on race). Just as populist leaders evoke real or imagined past adversity to justify radical engagement (see also Golec de Zavala et al.; van Prooijen, this volume), past injustice is often seen as justification for extraordinary measures that in other situations would not be tolerated. But therein lies the problem. Feelings of grievance can lead people to feel licensed to abandon previous moral and procedural constraints. Although sometimes these constraints feel arguably bendable (e.g., adding race to a list of other factors considered for college admission), abandoning other moral rules, such as adherence to democratic political tactics or prohibitions against violence, can be substantially more problematic. Research on highly contentious and moralized political environments has found them to foster an increased willingness to condone undemocratic means to achieve desired political ends (Ryan, 2017; Skitka et al., in press), up to and including violence (Fiske & Rai, 2015; Zaal, Laar, Ståhl, Ellemers, & Derks, 2011; Kalmoe & Mason, 2020). In the U.S., partisan anger is associated with tolerance of cheating, lying, and voter suppression as acceptable political tactics (Miller & Conover, 2015). Grievance-driven moralization seems particularly likely to produce a similar moral licensing effect. Empirically, statelevel increases in abortion rates and female participation in the labor force have been found to precipitate right-wing terrorist attacks (Piazza, 2017). Anecdotally, the violence and looting that often occur as an early response to highly publicized incidents of racial injustice seem a good example of how feelings of grievance,

32  Peter H. Ditto and Cristian G. Rodriguez

once inflamed, can fuel and justify behavior that would otherwise be eschewed as unacceptable.

Grievance Escalates Conflict “He hit me first!” “But he hit me harder!” Many parents have heard some variant of these explanations emanating from the back seat of the car on a long family drive. In important ways they represent the prototype of human intergroup conflict: two sides locked in combat, each feeling their aggressive stance toward the other is justified by legitimate grievance (one because they were attacked first and the other because the response to their initial attack was disproportionate). And whether it is a backseat skirmish between two children or the decades long Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the fight seems unlikely to end spontaneously, and instead seems likely to intensify with time. If you want the conflict to end, someone is going to have to go back there and stop it (see also Bar-Tal & Magal, this volume). As described above, one important effect of grievance is a willingness to endorse behavior that would otherwise be seen as morally unacceptable. This effect is bad enough, given that it can lead to abandonment of democratic principles or even the endorsement of violence as a legitimate political strategy, but its negative effects can be compounded if it sets off a self-escalating cycle of increasingly immoral call and response from the two interacting parties. Given the ubiquity of self and group favoring biases in human judgment (e.g., Sedikides, Gaertner,  & Vevea, 2005; Stanovich, West, &Toplak, 2013; Tajfel, 1970; see also Hogg & Gøetsche-Astrup, this volume), people should be expected to be more likely to notice and account for situations when they themselves or their ingroup has been aggrieved than to notice and account for situations that are likely to aggrieve other individuals or outgroups. If people are more sensitive to their own grievances than to the felt grievances of others, then attempts by an aggrieved side to compensate for that grievance affirmatively are likely to be seen by the non-aggrieved side as an inappropriate overreach. Now suppose that the aggrieved side is successful in enacting the extraordinary measures they feel are necessary to re-establish justice. These measures, while perceived as fair, just, and appropriate by people who feel the grievance most strongly, are likely to be seen as unjustified escalation by others. And thus the cycle begins. Because each side feels its own grievance more intensely than the grievances of the other, each side endorses remedies that they feel fairly redress the grievance but that the other side sees as unfair and extreme (Stillwell, Baumeister, & Del Priore, 2008). This cycle should not only be selfreinforcing but also self-escalating because of differences in what each side sees as a “proportionate response”. As the cycle continues, each side’s sense of victimhood should increase, and with each exchange the standards for what counts as a morally acceptable response becomes more lax. More and more extreme

Populism & Social Psychology of Grievance  33

responses occur as each side pays back the other side “with interest” and a state where both sides feel equity has been achieved becomes more and more elusive. The point here is that while stoking feelings of grievance can be an effective motivator of political action, it is also a strategy that is potentially corrosive to political civility, compromise, and negotiation—and in the extreme even to the adherence to the rule of law and the rejection of violence as a political tactic—by lowering standards for what counts as morally appropriate behavior and initiating a self-escalating cycle of conflict, payback, and competitive victimhood (e.g., Young & Sullivan, 2016).

Grievance and Populist Politics Now that we have presented the outlines of a general psychology of grievance, let us return briefly to trace some additional connections between our analysis and populist politics. Among the multiple approaches to the study of populism existing in political science, the ideational approach is particularly fit to engage in a dialogue with moral psychology (Hawkins  & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Unlike theories that emphasize social and material conditions to explain social movements, the ideational approach conceives of populism as a set of ideas, that is, political attitudes and beliefs (Kriesi, 2020). Analyses inspired by this perspective focus on the way populists and their followers construe their social situation, how populist leaders develop a specific discourse to reflect and encourage this construal, and how political decisions must be understood through that prism (Mudde  & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). According to this view, populism does not have unique ideological content. Instead, populism is seen as a “thin-centered ideology” that adapts to each cultural and historical situation and becomes blended with “thick” ideological contents like socialism, fascism, or nationalism. What examples of populism of every ideological bent have in common, however, is the presence of a highly moralized discourse, characterized by all-or-nothing thinking structured around the dichotomy of a “pure people” versus the “corrupt elite” (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Whether they come from the political right or left, populist leaders typically present themselves as the incarnation of the will of the people, while elites are construed as the absolute other, the enemy, corrupt and self-interested groups who are responsible for keeping power and resources away from the people. Democratic processes, such as dialogue, dissent and compromise, are morally regarded as a betrayal of the people and as an obstacle to the restoration of their rightful dominance (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2018). In addition to this moralized view of politics, including a tendency to disregard the formal niceties of democratic process in pursuit of moral ends, at least three other connections can be seen between our analysis of grievance psychology and the literature on populist politics.

34  Peter H. Ditto and Cristian G. Rodriguez

First, one of the core elements of populist rhetoric is the articulation of grievances in order to mobilize followers and voters (Aslanidis, 2017). Grievance, of course, is a common theme in politics generally. For example, analyses of Twitter activity during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in response to the police killing of a young African-American man named Michael Brown, yielded that roughly 40% of the tweets explicitly mentioned grievances against the police, the justice system, and race relations (LeFebvre  & Armstrong, 2018). Successful populist leaders are able to politicize—and moralize—issues beyond traditional left–right axes, in order to frame the entire political establishment as the dangerous group for the people (Roberts, 2018). The term “grievance” in political science is usually used to describe material conditions of deprivation that might explain political processes. But grievance is more than just objective deprivation. Siroky and colleagues (Siroky, Warner, Filip-Crawford, Berlin, & Neuberg, 2020) analyzed different types of intergroup conflict in 100 countries. Analyses showed that levels of violent conflict in a country were better explained by the perceived unfairness of the between-group inequality rather than the actual differences in material resources across groups. And material and subjective grievances can sometimes interact. Three crosscountry experimental studies showed a significant effect of anti-elitist messages on “pocketbook anger” (i.e., anger related to one’s own financial situation) that interacts with socioeconomic status: pocketbook anger is more easily triggered by populist prompts for individuals in the lower and middle classes than in the upper classes (Marx, 2020). Populist leaders often craft elaborate narratives in which grievances have a clear source, the elite, who are responsible for the suffering of the people (Hawkins, 2018; Rivero, 2018), and a clear remedy, electing the populist leader. This blaming narrative is especially visible in those discourses that hold salvific, redemptive, or heroic characteristics, where the leader is offered as the only effective means to redress historic injustices (da Silva & Vieira, 2018; P. Diehl, 2018; Montiel & Uyheng, 2020; Schneiker, 2020). A second theme connecting grievance psychology and populist politics is the role of emotions. Moral grievances are related to feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment, as they involve the appraisal of goals as being unfairly hindered while others enjoy undeserved positive outcomes (Feather & McKee, 2009; Feather & Sherman, 2002). An analysis of Facebook posts by German Bundestag candidates in 2017 showed that messages including typically populist themes—i.e., antielitism, exclusion of outgroups, and negative views on political actors—were significantly more likely to receive “angry” user reactions than “like” or “love” user reactions ( Jost, Maurer, & Hassler, 2020). A comparative analysis of the first inauguration speeches of Obama and Trump yielded more expressions of anger for the latter, with Trump almost doubling the number of targets of anger mentioned by Obama (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2018). Similarly, experimental manipulations

Populism & Social Psychology of Grievance  35

of populist rhetoric have found that enhanced feelings of anger increase the persuasiveness of political messaging, over other feelings such as pride, hope, or fear (Wirz, 2018). Anger and resentment are essential components of the collective emotional dynamics of both left- and right-wing populist movements (Salmela & von Scheve, 2018). Finally, our analysis of grievance psychology argues that moral judgments based on grievances are temporally anchored in the past, rather than in the present or the future. A past-oriented mindset also seems to be a feature of populist attitudes and discourse. To illustrate this point, we retrieved data from the Global Populism Dataset 1.0 (Hawkins et  al., 2019), which compiles hundreds of speeches from leaders worldwide that have been rated on their level of populism. We collected original speeches from leaders of Spanish-speaking countries, since it was the language that offered a wider variance in levels of populism. In some cases, the speeches were not available for analysis or there was not sufficient information to be matched with its actual populism scores. Ultimately, we were able to successfully match 185 speeches by 57 different presidents from 16 Latin American countries and Spain. Using the Spanish dictionary of LIWC 2015 (Pennebaker, Boyd, Jordan, & Blackburn, 2015), we extracted the proportion of words related to present tense, past tense and future tense. As can be seen in Figure  2.2, there is a tendency for populist speeches to have more past-oriented language in comparison to less populist speeches. The proportion of past-oriented language over both present and future-oriented language also increases as a function of the degree of populism of the speech. The past-focused temporal orientation might also tap other psychological processes connected to populist attitudes. Research shows that inducing collective nostalgia—i.e., feelings of longing and wistful affection about a socially shared past—increases ingroup preference in the form of domestic country bias (Dimitriadou, Maciejovsky, Wildschut, & Sedikides, 2019) and outgroup-directed anger (Cheung, Sedikides, Wildschut, Tausch,  & Ayanian, 2017). Past-focused temporal orientation is also at the core of some processes of political radicalization and populism. For instance, a study on Greek citizens in 2015 showed that willingness to be involved in protest and non-normative collective action was driven by past-oriented values, such as respect for tradition and conformity, rather than more future-oriented values, such as stimulation, desire for new experiences, or self-direction (Capelos, Katsanidou,  & Demertzis, 2017). Historical grievances also play an important role in contemporary populist movements in countries such as Hungary and Poland (see also Forgas & Lantos; Golec de Zavala et al.; and Krekó, this volume). Similar results were replicated analyzing the European Social Survey over the years 2004–2014 (Capelos & Katsanidou, 2018). Interestingly, this effect was not restricted to political conservatives.

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

FIGURE 2.2 

Proportions of past-tense words

Middle Populism

High

Proportions of past-tense over present words 0.0

0.5

0.10

0.15

0.20

Low

Middle Populism

Past in relation to Present

Use of past-tense words in populist discourse.

Low

Use of Past words

High

Difference between % of past and future-tense words 0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

Middle Populism

High Populism speeches ratings source: Populism Global Dataset 1.0

Low

Past and Future

Text analysis of 185 speeches from 17 Spanish-speaking countries

Populism in Speeches and Past Tense

36  Peter H. Ditto and Cristian G. Rodriguez

Populism & Social Psychology of Grievance  37

Conclusion In this chapter, we presented a novel social psychological analysis of the concept of grievance, and argued that feelings of grievance play an important role in populist politics. Our treatment of grievance was largely theoretical, and many of the contentions we offered here await more data to support them. A number of fascinating questions remain, such as those surrounding the rationality of grievance perceptions (e.g., might people overextend grievance, feeling aggrieved even in response to non-moral situations like failure on a test of competence?), individual differences in grievance sensitivity, and how grievance relates to other political psychology phenomena like collective narcissism (Golec de Zavala  & Keenan, 2020) and competitive victimhood (Young & Sullivan, 2016). Additional work exploring the role of specific grievance-related themes in populist rhetoric is also clearly needed. A central message of this chapter was that evoking feelings of grievance moralizes politics, for both good and ill. Morality stirs emotion and action, and moral language may be particularly effective with people who are unmoved by ideology or the specifics of laws and legislation. For many voters, righting wrongs may be a more compelling message than writing policy. This is the attraction of a populist message. The downsides of moralization are equally clear, however, and grievance-based appeals have the potential to cause substantial collateral damage to political institutions and political civility. A fuller understanding of both the social psychology of grievance and populist politics is clearly needed in a world where democratic government is in decline, populist leaders with an authoritarian bent are on the rise, and grist for grievance is all around. It is our hope that this chapter makes some contribution to this fuller understanding.

Note 1. Chapter for 22nd Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology, The psychology of populism. Correspondence should be sent to Peter Ditto, Department of Psychological Science, 4201 Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697–7085. Email: [email protected].

References Aslanidis, P. (2017). Populism and social movements. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. O. Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of populism (pp. 305–325). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198803560.013.23 Bauman, C. W., & Skitka, L. J. (2009). In the mind of the perceiver: Psychological implications of moral conviction. In D. M. Bartels, C. W. Bauman, L. J. Skitka, & D. L. Medin (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 50, pp. 339–362). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00411-8 Brady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(28), 7313–7318. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618923114

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Brosnan, S. F.,  & de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature, 425, 297–299. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01963 Brosnan, S. F., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2014). Evolution of responses to (un)fairness. Science, 346(6207), 1251776. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1251776 Brosnan, S. F., Talbot, C., Ahlgren, M., Lambeth, S. P., & Shapiro, S. J. (2010). Mechanisms underlying responses to inequitable outcomes in chimpanzees. Pan Troglodytes. Animal Behavior, 79, 1229–1237. Callan, M. J., Ellard, J. H., & Nicol, J. E. (2006). The belief in a just world and immanent justice reasoning in adults. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(12), 1646–1658. Capelos, T., & Katsanidou, A. (2018). Reactionary politics: Explaining the psychological roots of anti preferences in European integration and immigration debates. Political Psychology, 39(6), 1271–1288. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12540 Capelos, T., Katsanidou, A.,  & Demertzis, N. (2017). Back to black: Values, ideology and the black box of political radicalization. Επιστήμη Και Κοινωνία: Επιθεώρηση Πολιτικής Και Ηθικής Θεωρίας, 35, 35–68. Cheung, W. Y., Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., Tausch, N., & Ayanian, A. H. (2017). Collective nostalgia is associated with stronger outgroup-directed anger and participation in ingroup-favoring collective action. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 5(2), 301– 319. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v5i2.697 Clay-Warner, J. (2001). Perceiving procedural injustice: The effects of group membership and Status. Social Psychology Quarterly, 64(3), 224–238. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/ stable/3090113 da Silva, F. C., & Vieira, M. B. (2018). Populism and the politics of redemption. Thesis Eleven, 149(1), 10–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513618813374 DeScioli, P., Massenkoff, M., Shaw, A., Petersen, M. B., & Kurzban, R. (2014). Equity or equality? Moral judgments follow the money. Proceedings of The Royal Society, 281(1797), 20142112. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.2112 Diehl, P. (2018). Twisting representation. In C. D. L. Torres (Ed.), Routledge handbook of global populism (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315226446 Dimitriadou, M., Maciejovsky, B., Wildschut, T.,  & Sedikides, C. (2019). Collective nostalgia and domestic country bias. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 25(3), 445–457. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000209 Effron, D. A., & Conway, P. (2015). When virtue leads to villainy: Advances in research on moral self-licensing. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 32–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. copsyc.2015.03.017 Feather, N. T., & McKee, I. R. (2009). Differentiating emotions in relation to deserved or undeserved outcomes: A retrospective study of real-life events. Cognition & Emotion, 23(5), 955–977. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930802243378 Feather, N. T.,  & Sherman, R. (2002). Envy, resentment, schadenfreude, and sympathy: Reactions to deserved and undeserved achievement and subsequent failure. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(7), 953–961. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/014616720202800708 Fiske, A. P. (1992). The four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review, 99(4), 689–723. https://doi.org/10.103 7/0033295X.99.4.689 Fiske, A. P., & Rai, T. S. (2015). Virtuous violence: Hurting and killing to create, sustain, end, and honor social relationships. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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LeFebvre, R. K., & Armstrong, C. (2018). Grievance-based social movement mobilization in the #Ferguson Twitter storm. New Media and Society, 20(1), 8–28. https://doi. org/10.1177/1461444816644697 Luttrell, A., Petty, R. E., Briñol, P., & Wagner, B. C. (2016). Making it moral: Merely labeling an attitude as moral increases its strength. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 65, 82–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.04.003 Marietta, M. (2008). From my cold, dead hands: Democratic consequences of sacred rhetoric. The Journal of Politics, 70(3), 767–779. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0022381608080742 Marx, P. (2020). Anti-elite politics and emotional reactions to socio-economic problems: Experimental evidence on “pocketbook anger” from France, Germany, and the United States. British Journal of Sociology (May 2019), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/ 1468-4446.12750 Miller, P. R., & Conover, P. J. (2015). Red and blue states of mind: Partisan hostility and voting in the United States. Political Research Quarterly, 68(2), 225–239. Montiel, C. J., & Uyheng, J. (2020). Mapping contentious collective emotions in a populist democracy: Duterte’s push for Philippine federalism. Political Psychology, 41(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12648 Mudde, C.,  & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017). Populism: A  very short introduction. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780190234874.001.0001 Mudde, C., & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2018). Studying populism in comparative perspective: Reflections on the contemporary and future research agenda. Comparative Political Studies, 51(13), 1667–1693. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414018789490 Pacilli, M. G., Roccato, M., Pagliaro, S., & Russo, S. (2016). From political opponents to enemies? The role of perceived moral distance in the animalistic dehumanization of the political outgroup. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 19(3), 360–373. https://doi. org/10.1177/1368430215590490 Pennebaker, J. W., Boyd, R. L., Jordan, K., & Blackburn, K. (2015). The development and psychometric properties of LIWC2015. Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin. https:// doi.org/10.2165/00044011-199815050-00006 Piazza, J. A. (2017). The determinants of domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: Economic grievance, societal change and political resentment. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 34(1), 52–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0738894215570429 Pizarro, D. A., & Tannenbaum, D. (2012). Bringing character back: How the motivation to evaluate character influences judgments of moral blame. In M. Mikulincer & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil (pp. 91–108). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/13091-005 Rivero, Á. (2018). Populism and democracy in Europe. In C. D. L. Torres (Ed.), Routledge handbook of global populism (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315226446 Roberts, K. M. (2018). Left, right, and the populist structuring of political competition. In C. D. L. Torres (Ed.), Routledge handbook of global populism (1st ed.). Routledge. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9781315226446 Ryan, T. J. (2014). Reconsidering moral issues in politics. The Journal of Politics, 76(2), 380–397. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381613001357 Ryan, T. J. (2017). No compromise: Political consequences of moralized attitudes. American Journal of Political Science, 61(2), 409–423. Salmela, M., & von Scheve, C. (2018). Emotional dynamics of right-and left-wing political populism. Humanity & Society, 42(4), 434–454.

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Schneiker, A. (2020). Populist leadership: The superhero Donald Trump as savior in times of crisis. Political Studies, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720916604 Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Vevea, J. L. (2005). Pancultural self-enhancement reloaded: A  meta-analytic reply to Heine (2005). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(94), 539–551. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.4.539 Shweder, R. A., Mahapatra, M., & Miller, J. (1987). Culture and moral development. In J. Kagan & S. Lamb (Eds.), The emergence of morality in young children (pp. 1–83). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Siroky, D., Warner, C. M., Filip-Crawford, G., Berlin, A., & Neuberg, S. L. (2020). Grievances and rebellion: Comparing relative deprivation and horizontal inequality. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0738894220906372 Skitka, L. J., & Bauman, C. W. (2008). Moral conviction and political engagement. Political Psychology, 29(1), 29–54. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2007.00611.x Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., & Sargis, E. G. (2005). Moral conviction: Another contributor to attitude strength or something more? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(6), 895–917. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.895 Skitka, L. J., Hanson, B. E., Morgan, G. S., & Wisneski, D. C. (in press). The psychology of moral conviction. Annual Review of Psychology, 72. Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F.,  & Toplak, M. E. (2013). Myside bias, rational thinking, and intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(4), 259–264. https://doi. org/10.1177/0963721413480174 Stillwell, A. M., Baumeister, R. F., & Del Priore, R. E. (2008). We’re all victims here: Toward a psychology of revenge. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 30(3), 253–263. Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American, 223(5), 96–103. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/24927662 TED Blog Video. (2013, April 4). Two monkeys were paid unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal’s TED talk. YouTube. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg Van Bavel, J. J., Packer, D. J., Haas, I. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2012). The importance of moral construal: Moral versus non-moral construal elicits faster, more extreme, universal evaluations of the same actions. PLoS One, 7(11): Article e48693. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048693 Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2018). Media coverage of shifting emotional regimes: Donald Trump’s angry populism. Media, Culture and Society, 40(5), 766–778. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0163443718772190 Wirz, D. S. (2018). Persuasion through emotion? An experimental test of the emotioneliciting nature of populist communication. International Journal of Communication, 12. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-149959 Young, I. F., & Sullivan, D. (2016). Competitive victimhood: A review of the theoretical and empirical literature. Current Directions in Psychology, 11, 30–34. Zaal, M. P., Laar, C. V., Ståhl, T., Ellemers, N., & Derks, B. (2011). By any means necessary: The effects of regulatory focus and moral conviction on hostile and benevolent forms of collective action. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50(4), 670–689.

3 SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DETERIORATION OF DEMOCRACY AND THE RISE OF AUTHORITARIANISM The Role of Needs, Values, and Context Daniel Bar-Tal and Tamir Magal Introduction The last few decades have witnessed a rise of authoritarianism in different countries that has signaled a dramatic change in the present era. Specifically, the trend can be observed in Turkey, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, India, Poland, Israel, and, more recently, in the Philippines and Brazil (Bochsler & Juon, 2020; Lima, 2020; Reykowski, 2020; Wodak, 2019). The election of Donald Trump with his authoritarian tendencies in the US clearly signaled a new world zeitgeist. These authoritarian regimes came to power in mostly free and fair elections (Burston, 2017; Knuckey & Hassan, 2020). Other European countries (such as France Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, and Denmark) also have popular political parties which advocate at least some of the principles of authoritarianism. The leaders of these new authoritarian parties openly express views which correspond with some or all of the following themes characteristically identified with authoritarianism, and challenge the principles of liberal democracy. Antidemocratic structural theme: interfering with the rule of law and democratic norms; disrespecting rules and regulations; impairing and weakening the legal system and law enforcement agencies; disempowering institutions that serve as guardians of democracy; harming the checks-and-balance system. Anti-democratic values theme: limiting freedom of expression and organization; violating human rights; favoring use of force. Anti-pluralistic theme: inciting and delegitimizing opposition; monopolizing patriotism; obliterating criticism, trying to control free media. Discriminatory theme: instigating racism, prejudice, and discrimination of minorities; encouraging ethnocentrism, sexism, and chauvinism; opposing immigration. Threatening themes: spreading a discourse of fear; using xenophobic messages; focusing on external threats and enemies. Anti-structural societal themes: blaming

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the so-called old elites for deterioration of society and adherence to power; blaming past governments for corruption; blaming economic tycoons for exploiting the wealth of the nation. Self-interest themes: appointing functionaries predominantly on the basis of loyalty to the leader; encouraging adoration of strong leader with omnipotent rights; cultivating personal adoration. These themes have been expressed by authoritarian leaders with the intention of implementing them as directives and policies and enacting laws. Moreover, those who were elected to highest office used them as guidance in their practice (Bonikowski, 2017; Katsambekis, 2017; Rummens, 2017; Rupnik, 2007; see also Feldman: Forgas  & Lantos; Kruglanski; and Marcus, this volume). Many reasons can be identified for these developments now reshaping the political, societal, economic, and cultural nature of societies and the world in general. In the attempt to understand this trend, we need explanations from a variety of complementary approaches (Kriesi et al., 2006; Mudde, 2000; Reykowski, 2020; Učeň, 2007). In the present chapter, we take a particular socio-psychological perspective, trying to illuminate the psychological forces that play a significant role in the unfolding of authoritarian forces in originally democratic countries, where the elections are fair and free. We focus especially on cases in the Western world, as well as Central and Eastern European countries which built democratic regimes following the fall of the communist bloc in the late 1980s. After this fall, all of them held democratic and more or less free and fair elections, but with time authoritarian parties emerged and, in some cases, even won the elections (see Forgas & Lantos, on Hungary’s slide to authoritarianism). However, the present conceptual framework can also be used in the analysis of societies in other parts of the world that hold free and fair democratic elections. In the present chapter, we distinguish between authoritarianism and populism. Authoritarianism implies limited reliance on democratic values, disregard of democratic formal mechanisms and principles, and personalized forms of leadership (see for example, Linz, 2000), while populism denotes offering ideas and activities, regardless of their feasibility, costs, and utility, with the goal of garnering the support of ordinary people (see for example Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). We are well aware that each of these two key concepts has a variety of definitions and conceptual frameworks.

Theoretical Basis The basic foundation of the conceptual explanation lies within the seminal theory of Kurt Lewin (1951), who proposed that human behavior is a function of a perceived environment in which a person(s) operates with its physical and social factors and his/her tendencies, including ideas, thoughts, intentions, and fantasies. This theory means that, according to Lewin, what really matters in social life is not what happens in reality, but what is perceived and interpreted by human beings. Of special importance is Lewin’s application of the theory to the group situation. He suggested that the behavior of a group, as that of an

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individual, is affected greatly by the collective perception of the situation and the group’s characteristics (Lewin, 1947; see also Golec de Zavala: Kruglanski; and Hogg and Gøetsche-Astrup, this volume). Of relevance to our conception is also his proposal suggesting that the human system enters into a tension state when a psychological need or intention appears. Tension is released when the need or intention is fulfilled. On the basis of this classical theoretical framework, we suggest that understanding collective political behaviors requires an analysis of the psychological conditions in which the collective lives and the collective psychological state of societies. This includes the key psychological repertoire of the collective, as well as their immediate psychological response tendencies.

Context We propose to differentiate between two types of context: lasting context and transitional context (Bar-Tal, 2013). The former consists of relatively stable features that include socio-political–economic systems and structures, institutions, systems of beliefs and values, symbols, rules of behaviors, and cultural products. By contrast, transitional context by definition is limited to sudden major events, processes, and/or specific major information, which exerts influence on the views of society’s members. They are experienced directly or indirectly, have relevance to the well-being of society’s members and of society as a whole, occupy a central position in public discussion and the public agenda, and contain information that forces society’s members to reconsider, and often change, their long-held socio-psychological repertoire (Bar-Tal, 2013). Major information provided by authoritative sources (for example, leaders or journalists) often complements major events and processes, because they are not clearly observed and understood, and often require explanation and clarification through their framing (see the concepts in Halperin & Bar-Tal, 2007; and also in Gitlin, 1980; Kinder, 2003; Mutz, 1998).

A Collective Psychological State Individuals carry a psychological repertoire. Different psychologists emphasized many distinct elements of the psychological repertoire (see also Ditto; Krekó; and Marcus, this volume). We would like to focus on only two elements, which in our view play a major role in guiding individual and collective behavior: needs and values. Needs refer to the fundamental necessities that direct individuals, while values signify an abstract compass which directs their behaviors. Needs and values produce a strong drive to satisfy them, and when they are not satisfied, individuals feel strong deprivation, frustration, and dissonance. Their functioning is intimately involved in understanding the psychological roots of populism in rhetoric, as we will show.

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Human needs are internal psychological forces that direct to action for their satisfaction. Deci and Ryan (2000) defined needs as “nutriments that are essential for ongoing psychological growth, integrity, and well-being” (p.  229). Needs are very important for human functioning, both as individuals and as a part of a collective. Social scientists proposed different lists of needs that are based on different conceptions (Etzioni, 1968; Goldstein, 1985). We have drawn our own list on the basis of known grand theories to include: Needs for understanding, for predictability, for mastery, for meaningfulness, for positive esteem, for safety, for justice, for belonging, and for identity (hence forth “basic human needs”). Satisfaction of all these needs is a prerequisite for human beings to function well in their societal system. The notion of values appeared already in the writing of Durkheim (1897) and then later of Vernon and Allport (1931). We use in our conceptual framework the well-developed and widely accepted theory of Schwartz, who defined values as trans-situational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in the life of a person or groups (Schwartz, 1992). Values point to the desirable goals that motivate action, as well as guide the selection or evaluation of actions, policies, people, and events. People decide what is good or bad, justified or illegitimate, worth doing or avoiding, based on possible consequences for their cherished values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994, 2006). According to Schwartz, values have the following functions: (1) They focus on attaining personal or social outcomes, (2) express openness to change or conservation of the status quo or (3) serve self-interests or transcendence of self-interests in the service of others, and (4) promote growth and self-expansion, or protect against anxiety and threat to self. Schwartz first identified 10 basic values, later increased to include 19 values. We focus on the major ten values: Self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, and universalism (Schwartz, 1992, 2017; Schwartz et  al., 2012). Utilizing Schwartz’s distinctions, we would like to congregate the ten to two general types of values: Particular and universal (Evanoff, 2004; Nussbaum, [1994, 2010]; Sznaider, 2007; Turner, 2002). Particular values have an in-group/collective direction with the emphasis on maintaining security, tradition, order, authority, well-being, collective identity, benefits, resources, and power of the in-group by strengthening loyalty to the collective, its continuity, and its stability. These values are based on the primary evolutionary needs that directed human beings to care about their kinship for survival through the ages. Universal values, in contrast, focus on the care and concern for human beings in general, based on the universal principles of equality, freedom, fairness, justice, and human rights (see also the work of Haidt, 2012; Haidt, Graham, & Joseph, 2009 on moral foundations). This distinction is very relevant to our conception and enables us to better comprehend the sense of “violation of values” experienced by part of the population.

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When the context prevents satisfaction of needs, unfulfilled needs give rise to feelings of deprivation and dissonance, which produce negative attitudes and emotions, such as frustration and distress (see also Ditto; Gelfand; Kruglanski; Marcus; and Vallacher, this volume), triggering a search for new ways to satisfy them. Need satisfaction can be achieved through real or symbolic means (narratives), or a combination of both. It is at this point that the search can lead members of a society to extremism—relying on authoritarian voices to satisfy their frustrated needs and values. This portrayal also corresponds to Maslow’s theory locating needs in a hierarchical order. Maslow also acknowledged the role of the environment in the process of need satisfaction and recognized the relationship between needs and values (Maslow, 1971). Similar processes take place when contextual conditions violate dominant values of a society (Festinger, 1957), producing dissonance and distress, as well as a motivation to change the situation.

Requirements of the Democratic System After introducing the conceptual framework, it is possible now to return to the subject of the chapter: the deterioration of democracy and the ascendance of authoritarianism. The basic assumption is that a democratic system, in contrast to other political systems (Gilbert & Mohseni, 2011; Wejnert, 2014; Wigell, 2008), has a number of critical psychological requirements that are necessary conditions for the proper functioning of the system. Democratic systems require knowledge of the democratic principles and values, internalization of the democratic values, motivation to maintain them, and involvement in their protection (Dahl, 1989; Oppenheim, 1971; Shin, 2017; Sullivan & Transue, 1999). Democratic systems require voluntary acceptance, understanding, and cooperation, and cannot be taken for granted or imposed by force: It requires constant and continuous watchfulness by its citizens, organizations, institutions, and media, which will point out violation of its principles and values, caused by steps taken by its functionaries that harm democratic functioning. Many leaders, by their human nature, are often inclined to violate democratic principles and values that often stand in their way and limit their wants. Democracy involves progress on a narrow path where state power and the competence of society finely balance each other (Acemoglu  & Robinson, 2020). However, these requirements are rather demanding and can be considered as idealistic. The alternative assumption claims that in reality, most of society members do not possess comprehensive knowledge about the democratic system, do not internalize the values, do not respect its principles, and in general do not have an investment in its maintenance. Only a small layer of society is deeply personally involved and cares greatly about the functioning of the democratic system. Some of them are also concerned with its maintenance and protection. But, in most cases, large segments of a society support the democratic system only as long as it

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satisfies their basic needs, corresponds to their values, is trusted, and is managed efficiently and reliably in their view (Chu, Bratton, Lagos, Shastri,  & Tessler, 2008; Kluegel & Mason, 2004; Kotzian, 2010). When these conditions are broken, voluntary support for the democratic system is reduced or even vanishes, and members of a society search for other leaders and systems that can meet their needs, correspond to their values, and be trustworthy (Bochsler & Juon, 2020; Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Ivarsflaten, 2008; Rupnik, 2007).

Democracies in the Western World Between War World II and 2000 We would like to postulate that since the end of World War II (WW-II), the context of the democratic systems satisfied the basic needs of society members most of the time, in most of the countries of the Western world where there were free and fair elections. There was a balance most of the time between the needs and values of society members and the democratic system (see Evans & Whitefield, 1995; Lühiste, 2013; Sullivan & Transue, 1999). The satisfaction of these needs was achieved through policies and actions and through persuasive messages that were accepted as truthful and provided meaning to society (see Shiller, 2019). During this time, the United States, Western Europe, and other countries experienced unusually high and sustained growth, together with  full employment. The recessions of the 1970s and the subsequent of recession of the early 1980s were relatively short-lived, and the Western world continued its prosperity and expansion until the 2000s (Barro, 1999; Boix & Stokes, 2011; Dahl, 1971; Reykowski, 2020). Of special note are Central and Eastern European countries, which became separated from Western Europe following WW-II, with the creation of the “iron curtain” and communist totalitarian regimes (see also Forgas & Lantos, this volume). These countries longed for democracy and, when the communist regimes collapsed, almost all of them moved to establish democracy in the early 1990s. However, in the last 20 years many of these countries have also begun moving towards authoritarian rule, led by populist political parties and leaders (for example, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) (Bochsler & Juon, 2020; Karp & Milazzo, 2015; Rupnik, 2007; Učeň, 2007).

Contextual Changes Since 2000 and Consequences The next step in our analysis suggests that a series of dramatically negative major events, processes, and information significantly changed the context of Western democratic societies, disrupted the satisfaction of basic human needs (such as loss of security, predictability, stability, certainty, belonging (affiliation), social identity, collective positive esteem, justice, and mastery), and violated widely held particular values. These major events, processes and major information changed the collective psychological state of society members.

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Western liberal democracies experienced threats of terrorism, economic crisis, globalization, fundamental challenges to the traditional news media, intra-societal conflict and polarization, and threats of waves of immigrants and ethnic minorities, and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic that caused powerful shocks in every domain of human life, including immense detrimental economic crisis. In other words, these events, processes and provided information greatly undermined the needs and values of certain segments of society members, and thus subsequently disrupted their confidence in the shared narratives which allowed the maintenance of the democratic system. Our central point suggests that, in line with the Lewinian theorizing, what is of determinative importance in the reaction of society’s members is the way they view and understand the events, processes and the information. Experiences are comprehended on the basis of their interpretation. The key experiences were perceptions of realistic and symbolic threats (Stephan & Renfro, 2002; Stephan, Renfro, & Davis, 2008; see also Ditto; Gelfand; Kruglanski; Marcus; Vallacher & Fennell;, this volume). Realistic threats refer to the perception of possible loss of human lives, territory, resources, economy, power, status, or general welfare. Symbolic threat deals with threats to cultural purity, to national uniqueness, to religious homogeneity and especially to exclusiveness of the collective identity (see also Golec de Zavala, this volume). The experiences of threats have been the key experiences which ignited a chain reaction that led to a loss of meaning, predictability, and meaningfulness; loss of sense of security and justice; loss of belongingness, esteem, and social identity; as well as loss of sense of control and mastery. On the general level, these threats changed the collective psychological state of large parts of society members. In sum, the experience of negative consequences led to disappointment and loss of trust in the political system of democracy, and instigated a search for alternatives that will satisfy the experienced deprivations and dissonance. Trust in the system is a pre-requirement for its successful and efficient functioning, legitimization and acceptance by society’s members (Grimes, 2006; Kaase, 1999; Marien & Hooghe, 2011; Reykowski, 2020). In this part of the chapter we describe some of the major events, processes and major information that shook the world since 2000, led to major changes in the collective psychological state in different countries, and brought about the ascendance of authoritarian leaders and parties. However, we should note that: (1) The contextual effects of the same major events, processes, and information have differed in various societies in their intensity, and frequency, (2) societies differed in the way their governments coped with the challenges, and (3) societies also differ in their lasting cultural context and in their collective psychological state, and therefore reacted differently. Obviously, these developments were not universal. Not all society members experienced the crises similarly, and not all of them felt disappointment with the democratic system and searched for a different way of being governed. In some countries, authoritarian leaders won elections (for example, in Hungary, Poland, USA); in other countries, authoritarian parties

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gained votes (or example, in France, Italy, Germany, etc.), and in some other countries the effects were minor (e.g. Australia, New Zealand). The delineation of all the influencing characteristics is beyond the scope of this chapter. We will describe now only several major events, processes, and informational frameworks as examples that shook the world and point out their effects.

Terrorism The first category of major events is terrorism. Although not a new phenomenon, its appearance in the 2000s shook the world because of its intensity, frequency, global spread, and radical ideological Islamist origins.1 The most significant terrorist attack, incomparable to any other in modern history, occurred on September  11, 2001. This event included four civilian aircraft, hijacked by Muslim militants, striking two singular symbols of American power on US soil: The World Trade Center in NY and the Pentagon. This attack resulted in 2,977 fatalities, over 25,000 injuries, and at least $10 billion in property damages (CNN, 2019). The attack on United States was followed by several major terrorist events carried out in different parts of Europe by Islamic militants, including Madrid and London (2004/2005) and then Paris (2015); Brussels, Nice, and Berlin (2016); Manchester, London, and Barcelona (2017); Strasburg (2018); and London (2019). These events left hundreds of people killed or injured. Because they occurred in major cities in USA and Europe, they had great effect on Americans and Europeans, far beyond the cities and countries where they happened. They shattered the illusion of living in security for millions of Americans, Europeans, and beyond. They signaled that there is no secure place in the world, and that terrorists can penetrate into the most guarded places. The attacks had immediate effects: They severely threatened basic human needs and violated cherished values, while instilling a deep sense of injustice and victimhood (Arvanitidis, Economou,  & Kollias, 2016; Godefroidt  & Langer, 2018; Marshall et al., 2007). Studies have shown that terrorism produces higher levels of prejudice and discrimination against minority groups, as well as lower levels of tolerance for minorities and immigrants, especially for Muslims (Castanho, 2018; EchebarriaEchabe & Fernández-Guede, 2006; Vellenga, 2008). Higher levels of uncertainty and anxiety led to greater acceptance of severe restrictions on civil liberties that contradict democratic principles (Cohrs, Kielmann, Maes,  & Moschner, 2005; Huddy, Feldman, Taber, & Lahav, 2005; Kossowska et al., 2011).

The Economic Crisis in 2008 The financial crisis of 2007–08, also known as the global financial crisis, was a severe worldwide  economic crisis,  considered by many economists and

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opinion leaders to have been the most serious  financial crisis  since the  Great Depression of the 1930s. The crisis began in 2007 with a depreciation in the subprime mortgage market in the United States, and developed into a full-blown international banking crisis with the collapse of the major banks, such as Lehman Brothers. The crisis had a tremendous downturn effect on the global and states’ economies, and severely affected the economic standing of many individuals (Eichengreen & O’Rourke, 2010; Eigner & Umlauft, 2015; Reykowski, 2020) The crisis instigated many revelations about its causes and processes, as well as more general understandings about economic processes. The public learned that (1) the gap between poor and rich grew considerably through the years, (2) rich people accumulated incredible wealth—many through speculation and unproductive ways, (3) the middle class did not prosper nor improve its economic standing through the decades, (4) the federal system in the US had to bail out irresponsible bankers at huge cost, and (5) the individuals responsible were not punished (Patterson  & Koller, 2011; Snow, 2011; Wolff, 2010). All this led to loss of trust in governmental institutions, as well as deprivation of basic epistemic human needs (Earle, 2009; Hernandez  & Kriesi, 2016; Kroknes, Jakobsen,  & Grønning, 2015).

Waves of Immigration The second decade of the 21st century was characterized by a significant influx of immigrants to Europe, as well as to the US. The wars in Iraq and Syria, as well as severe economic conditions and violence in several African countries (Sudan, Eritrea, Libya), culminated in the migration of hundreds of thousands of people towards Europe (BBC, 2016 Metcalfe-Hough, 2015; Sobczyński, 2019). At the same time, a similar “wave” was taking place in Latin America, where people from violent- and poverty-ridden countries—like Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico—migrated to the US, searching for better life (Kim, Carvalho, Davis, & Mullins, 2011; Preston & Archibold, 2014). The influx of immigrants caused a sense of threat among citizens of many countries in Europe and the US (Brader, Valentino, & Suhay, 2008; Fetzer, 2000; McLaren, 2003). It led to fear of losing uniqueness, particularity, distinctiveness, and exceptionality, which characterize a national or an ethnic group and stand at the core of its particularistic values. (Ben-Nun Bloom, Arikan, & Lahav, 2015; Bruneau, Kteily, & Laustsen, 2018; Rydgren, 2008). Additionally, immigrants threatened economic security, because money was spent on their integration and welfare instead of on the societal needs of the citizenry. Furthermore, society’s members perceived a potential employment threat, despite the fact that most of the jobs taken by immigrants were shunned by locals (Ben-Nun Bloom et  al., 2015; Fetzer, 2000; Ivarsflaten, 2008; Oesch, 2008). Indeed, a November 2018 poll found that the majority of citizens in European

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countries (66% average) blamed migration for spike in local crime (Abraham, 2019). Furthermore, in an April 2016 survey, the majority of respondents in five European countries believed Muslim immigrants threatened their job security and economic benefits (overall average 50%) (Wike, Stokes, & Simmons, 2016).

Social Media and Veracity of Information Credible factual political information is an essential ingredient for political participation in a democracy (see also Cooper & Avery; and Krekó, this volume). It is assumed that citizens make decisions and take action, on the basis of reasoned arguments and careful consideration of different ideas and viewpoints, in the “marketplace of ideas”. Throughout the 20th century, traditional forms of mass media—newspapers, radio, and television—with their normative obligation to professional standards of veracity and credibility, served as the main arena for public deliberation. Additionally, friendship networks, social gatherings, and cultural events also served as venues for the exchange of sometimes uncorroborated, biased, and often misleading “word-of-mouth” information, which also influenced political behavior. However, these two modes of transmission were very distinct and separated from each other. The Internet and “social media” revolution of the 21st century blurred the distinction between these two modes of information and cast significant doubts on the credibility and veracity of traditional media-based political information. Social media is an online platform which allows ordinary people to build social networks with other people, to communicate and maintain relationships with them, and to share own thoughts, experiences, and ideas. This platform opened a completely new mode of interrelating, sharing, as well as disseminating, exchanging, and receiving information across the world. Facebook and Twitter are among the most commonly used (Shearer & Grieco, 2019). However, the consumption of news and political information through social media raises several threats to the democratic process: Live news feeds are customized for each user by mathematical algorithms, based on the probability the news item would be liked by him. Such selection inhibits exposure to opposing views and thus reinforces existing opinions (Dylko et  al., 2017). This phenomenon, termed “echo chamber” or “filtering bubble”, has been demonstrated in several recent studies regarding the political effects of social media (Boutyline & Willer, 2017; Carpenter, 2010; Spohr, 2017). In a 2019 Pew study, 79% of respondents agreed that social media services prefer news sources with a specific political stance, while 53% agreed that one-sided and inaccurate news represented a serious problem on social media feeds (Shearer & Grieco, 2019). The echo chamber effect is further compounded by the use of “likes” and re-posts, where users recycle and distribute news items among their contacts and friends. Such practices create networks of like-minded individuals that reinforce and radicalize political

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bias, as well as strangle any form of diverse political discussion (Bakshy, Messing, & Adamic, 2015; Barberá, Jost, Nagler, Tucker, & Bonneau, 2015; Spohr, 2017). Another common problem with social media is the spread of unfounded, uncorroborated, or even intentionally misleading information (fake news) through these networks. There are no checks and verification procedures for user-generated posts. It opens ways for knowingly disseminating misinformation to large number of people, easily spreading inflammatory and defamatory messages of every kind, including racist, chauvinistic, and other radical views (Spohr, 2017). Propaganda and disinformation have been used in the past by governments, societal leaders, institutions, and other political actors in order to hide the truth and provide misdirection that serves their goals. However, in the last few years the spread of fake news became a normative and prevalent way of providing untruthful knowledge (see also Krekó, this volume). Fake news undermines serious media coverage and makes it more difficult for journalists to provide truthful knowledge, and for citizens to evaluate such knowledge and act accordingly. This new phenomenon has had a remarkable influence on societies, further undermining the legitimacy and trust in the democratic system, and especially the watchdog capacity of traditional media (the fourth branch of democracy). It normalized both extreme left-wing and right-wing views, including racism, nationalism, sexism, chauvinism, homophobia, and other unacceptable violations of democratic values and freedom of open exchange and debate.

The Effects of the Major Events, Processes, and Information We would now like to turn to the analysis of the effects of these processes. In general, they caused the deprivation of primary human needs and the violation of values, especially particularistic ones. They led to the deprivation of the major needs of predictability, security, belongingness, self-esteem, identity, meaningfulness, or justice. In addition, they led to the violation of values such as security, tradition, and self-direction. In general, members of society do not know when the crises will end, or when negative events will happen to them or to someone dear to them. They live in a world that doesn’t always convey meaning for them. Doubts regarding their well-being in political, economic, cultural, and societal spheres figure prominently. They feel that they live in an unpredictable setting in which they experience helplessness and hopelessness. In such a context, individuals often have feelings of loss of control over the situation and loss of mastery over their fate. Of special importance is the satisfaction of epistemic human needs. Individuals try to reduce uncertainty and ambiguity by creating a comprehensible environment (see also Hogg & Gøetsche-Astrup; and Kruglanski et al., this volume). Therefore, they strive to perceive and structure their world in a way that

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events and people can be understood (Baumeister, 1991; Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006; Reykowski, 1982). Moreover, the major events we described often led to loss of personal and collective safety. Safety needs are also of great importance, as individuals strive to feel security, stability, protection, and freedom of fear and anxiety (Maslow, 1954). In addition, individuals have a need for collective-positive evaluation, respect, and esteem as individuals and members of a society, which defines their personal and social identity (Maslow, 1954; Tajfel, 1981). These events also violated the need for justice, which refers to the human tendency to believe that the world is managed by fair rules and standards (Lerner, 1970, 2003). Thus, information about speculation, corruption, and exploitation by vested interests such as bankers, business people, government, academia, mass media, politicians, and the widening gap between poor and wealthy, seriously violated the need for justice. Many of these threats disturb the flow of normal life and cause psychological reactions such as disappointment, distress, stress, alienation, frustration, anger, fear, resentment, helplessness, hopelessness, uncertainty, loss of trust, hostility, prejudice, and estrangement—amounting to a national crisis of identity. The crises produce highly intense symbolic and realistic threats that touch various layers of human beings’ life (Stephan  & Renfro, 2002; Stephan et  al., 2008). The effects of these experiences should be evaluated in terms of their duration, intensity, multiplicity, palpability, probability, and personal relevance (Milgram, 1986, 1993). Thus, it is possible to say that the more durable the crises, the more intense they are, the more often they occur, and the more relevant they are for the individuals. In most cases, society members cannot predict when a specific crisis will end. Thus, the negative experiences are chronic. No society member is exempt from their effect, at least vicariously. These major events, processes, and information suggest that the democratic system is unable to fulfill its promise of satisfying the needs and values of citizens. The social “contract” has been broken and a vacuum was created. Such disappointment occurred, especially to those who have low commitment to democratic system. In situations in which society members are deprived of their basic needs, they may turn to a leader who will recognize the threats and enemies and provide a solution. Since political vacuum never exists for long, in exactly such a situation do leaders, groups, organizations, and parties enter, which bring narratives that promise satisfaction of needs and values. Populism usually enters at this point, because the major goals of the leader are to provide messages that will ensure his ascent to power, disregarding any other consideration. The mission of persuasion and mobilization has to be carried in a clear, simple, comprehensible, and moralistic way. It should be seen as a populistic narrative or as propaganda (see also Crano & Gaffney, this volume). It is always first carried via rhetoric that helps the political party and its leaders get elected. And only later, when in power, can they realize the program. The narrative always refers to the deprived needs and

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the violated values. It is also based on group symbols, myths, narratives, collective memories, and heritage that appeal to personal and collective identity, culture, and worldview. Moreover, it is usually grounded in constructing threats, coming from external and internal forces that arouse fear and insecurity, and also constitute fertile ground for the presentation of the crises and the mobilization of society members. It is always selective, biased, and distorted, presenting only one-sided information and using emotional appeals to persuade and mobilize the audience. The basic point is that only the party with its leader can save the nation (Stanley, 2016).

The Emergence of Leaders and the Construction of the Satisfying Narrative The narratives of authoritarian leaders touch on at least six major themes, which can be found in their speeches: They describe the present situation, the goals that stand before the nation, the identity of the nation, the enemies, the leaders, and the actions that have to be taken. The subthemes of every theme can vary widely in scope and relate to different issues that concern a specific nation. We will provide only a number of illustrations as examples for each theme.

The Description of the Present Situation Description of different threats to the nation (political, economic, cultural, societal, religious, and so on), injustice done, corruption, description of external enemies that harm the nation, description of internal enemies that betray the nation.

The Goals That Stand Before the Nation Defense of the nation from its external enemies, improving the economic situation, stopping immigration, dismantling old elites, returning to national greatness, and protecting the purity of the nation.

The Definition of “Us” We are unique, we are strong, we are a proud nation, we have great history, heritage, and culture, we are the real patriots, we care about the nation.

The Definition of “They” Identifying old enemies, nations that want to exploit us, the organizations that want to dictate to us, minorities, immigrants, the old system, old elites, media that disagrees with our way, legal systems that prevent the achievement of our goals, opposition that is against us and the nation.

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I as the Leader l am loyal to the nation, I am part of you, I am can bring back greatness, I am uncorrupted, I am able, I respect our history, heritage, and culture, I am a real patriot, I am a savior, I can defend us. Examples of speeches of the following leaders provide clear examples to the presented theme: Donald Trump (https://factba.se/transcripts/speeche, www. rev.com/blog/transcript-category/donald-trump-transcripts); Viktor Orbán (www. kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches, http://about hungary.hu/speeches-and-remark); Jarosław Kaczyński, (www.ft.com/content/ addc05f8-d949-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17, https://notesfrompoland.com/2019/ 11/12/kaczynski-poland-has-historical-mission-to-support-christian-civilisa tion/); or Marine Le Pen (https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/09/01/presi dential-campaign-launch-march-9-2017/, www.france24.com/en/tag/marinele-pen/). The populist narratives supply examples that satisfy the need for psychological structure (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; see also Kruglanski et al., this volume). They provide information and motivate people for support and action. They mobilize people by providing a feeling that their needs are or will be satisfied, that the new leaders and system can be trusted and can serve as alternatives to the past or present system.

Summary The zeitgeist of deterioration of democracy and ascendance of populistic authoritarianism—as exhibited with the strengthening of the authoritarian political parties in Western Europe, in some countries in Eastern Europe, and in the US—is not new. The same trend was observed in Europe in the second and third decades of the 20th century. In both periods, through free and fair democratic elections, authoritarian parties not only increased their strength but also took power. We suggest a social psychological perspective to understand this process. This approach argues that society’s members, when they encounter deprivation of their fundamental human needs and violation of their central values, are vulnerable to mobilization by political forces that promise to end their crisis by leading the society in a new direction, even if it has authoritarian characteristics and populistic promises. This mobilization is especially evident among those segments of society that are less knowledgeable of, and less concerned and committed to, the democratic system. The major conclusions of this approach are that democratic regimes have to invest much more heavily in the inculcation of democratic principles and values in their citizens and motivate and teach them how to function in times of crises, in order to defend the system against authoritarian forces. Also, the citizens have to insist on the establishment of formal and informal institutions whose goals

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are protection of the democratic principles of the system and free critical media as a watch dog. The democratic system, in contrast to other regimes, needs continuous safeguarding and commitment of its citizens—their care and involvement. Without them, democracies deteriorate.

Note 1. We mostly refer to ideologically inspired terrorism, affiliated with radical Islamic ideology.

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4 BEYOND POPULISM The Psychology of Status-Seeking and Extreme Political Discontent* Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen and Alexander Bor

Populist leaders and parties, such as Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and radical right-wing parties across multiple European countries, have recently gained electoral traction. This development is widely feared as a central danger for modern Western democracies (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018), and indeed, the emergence of these parties and leaders has co-occurred with a range of troubling developments: Hateful debates on social media platforms (Grubbs, Warmke, Tosi, James, & Campbell, 2019), intensified belief in and circulation of conspiracy theories and other “fake news” (Miller, Saunders, & Farhart, 2016; Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2018), and even the onset of violent protests, for example, in France and the United States (see also Bar-Tal & Magal; Forgas & Lantos; Krekó; Marcus, this volume). Correlation, however, is not causation. While the emergence of populism has co-occurred with these developments, they may not necessarily spring from the same psychological motivations. Specifically, while they are all forms of political discontent, we argue that the most extreme forms of discontent—such as the endorsement of political violence—emerges from a distinct set of motivations. Building on psychological research on status-seeking, we argue that at the core of extreme political discontent are motivations to achieve status via dominance, i.e., through the use of fear and intimidation (Cheng, Tracy, Foulsham, Kingstone, & Henrich, 2013). Essentially, extreme political behavior reflects discontent with one’s own personal standing and a desire to actively rectify this through aggression (see also Hogg  & Gøetsche-Astrup, this volume). While populism also reflects frustrated motivations, we argue that these are related to more submissive and passive forms of discontent. Finally, we argue that this understanding of the deeper roots of extreme political discontent is important if modern democracies are to move towards less polarization.

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The Psychology of Status-Seeking For group-living animals, social status in the form of a higher placement in the hierarchy is a key adaptive resource that promotes survival and reproduction. Among humans, evolutionary psychologists and others have documented this in a myriad of ways, using evolutionary psychology, historical data, ethnographic data, and data from industrialized societies (Sidanius  & Pratto, 2001). Higher status individuals are more attractive and sire more and healthier offspring (von Rueden, Gurven, & Kaplan, 2011). Extreme examples of this genetic and evolutionary analysis suggest that substantial proportions of current populations in specific regions can be traced back to single individuals such as, for example, Genghis Khan in East Asia (Zerjal et al., 2003). More broadly, we can conceptualize status as a meta-resource that determines the flow of other, more tangible resources, especially when access to these resources is contested. For most animals, the allocation of contested resources is determined by relative differences in physical strength and size. However, for humans and other ultrasocial animals, the ability to mobilize conspecifics on your behalf is even more important (Tooby, Cosmides, & Price, 2006). Two people can almost always prevail over any single person, independently of their individual strength. Consistent with this, a line of research has consistently demonstrated that we intuitively think of individuals in well-coordinated groups as more formidable adversaries (Fessler & Holbrook, 2016) and, hence, people to avoid engaging in conflict with. Social status is key in this respect. Social status implies social influence, and individuals with higher status can more easily direct the course of action that others take (von Rueden et al., 2011). This allows for mobilizing others on behalf of the self and for demobilizing potential adversaries. Essentially, social status is a resource that allows you to win contests without having to fight. Because of the evolutionarily recurrent importance of social status, a large number of psychological mechanisms in the human mind are specifically designed for status-acquisition. These mechanisms underlie at least two broader classes of strategies: Prestige and dominance (Cheng et  al., 2013). Prestigebased strategies involve the cultivation of talents and skills that are valuable for others, and hence, prestige-based status is based on a reciprocal relationship wherein status is granted in exchange for service. Dominance-based strategies, in contrast, involves the use of “fear and intimidation” in order to get recognition from others. A craving for status is universal, but individuals will differ in whether they follow prestige- or dominance-based strategies to acquire it. For example, individuals with high physical formidability or low trait empathy are better able to navigate conflicts pursuing dominance-based strategies (Petersen  & Laustsen, 2019). This can be further reinforced by situational factors. Individuals with high degrees of human capital, for example, can more easily utilize a prestige-based

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strategy. Individuals with less socially valued skills, in contrast, are pushed towards dominance-based strategies.

Political Discontent and the Tactics of Dominance-Based Strategies The psychology of dominance is likely to underlie some current-day forms of extreme political discontent—and associated activism—for two reasons. First, radical discontent is characterized by verbal or physical aggression, thus directly capitalizing on the competences of people pursuing dominance-based strategies. Second, current-day radical activism seems linked to desires for recognition and feelings of “losing out” in a world marked by, on the one hand, traditional ­genderand race-based hierarchies, which limits the mobility of minority groups, and, on the other hand, globalized competition, which puts a premium on human capital (Kitschelt, 2002; Kriesi & Schulte-Cloos, 2020; see also Bar-Tal & Magal; de Zavala et al.; Ditto & Rodriguez; Kruglanski et al.; this volume). Extreme discontent, in other words, is a phenomenon among individuals for whom ­prestige-based pathways to status are, at least in their own perception, unlikely to be successful. Despite their political differences, this perception may be the psychological commonality of, on the one hand, race- or gender-based grievance movements and, on the other hand, white lower middle-class right-wing voters (see also Feldman; Huddy & Lorente, this volume). Broadly speaking, dominance-based strategies for status-acquisition involve, at least, two classes of aggressive tactics: Direct and indirect aggression. Direct aggression is the use of verbal or physical violence, or threats thereof, directed against the perceived adversary. In the context of current-day political discontent, such adversaries can be authorities or opposing political groups, and the specific tactics can cover a wide-range of behaviors from direct confrontations in the streets to hostile social media interactions. Examples of the more extreme tactics include the “Yellow West” movement in France, which has repeatedly clashed with police; the anti-government protests in Chile, which has involved significant rioting; and US extremist groups related to both left and right, which has clashed violently with each other and the police in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests. Indirect aggression is an even more complex set of specific tactics. Indirect aggression often involves gossiping with the aim of diminishing the value of the target in the eyes of others (Archer & Coyne, 2005), but indirect aggression can also take the form of attempts to mobilize others for aggression directed against adversaries. Mobilization is an extraordinarily difficult process as it not only requires the alignment of preferences (“we need to do X . . .”) but also the alignment of attention (“. . . and we need to it now!”) (Petersen, 2020; Tooby et al., 2006; see also Vallacher & Fennell, this volume). Furthermore, mobilization for

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intergroup aggression is even more difficult, as the needed level of mobilization is always relative to the enemy: You need your group not just to be well coordinated but better coordinated than the outgroup (Laustsen & Petersen, 2015). Thus, in group conflicts, the better coordinated group is more likely to prevail. Accordingly, there are several lines of research that suggests that aggression from other groups activates accelerated motivations to engage in mobilization processes (De Dreu et al., 2016). There are multiple ways to facilitate aggressive mobilization, but three have received significant attention: Moralization, rumor-sharing, and followership (Petersen, 2020). Moralization refers to the process of recasting or framing a position as moral or immoral, i.e., either in accordance or discordance with the group’s overarching social norms (see also Krekó, this volume). Moral principles are principles that are just from the perspective of a neutral spectator, and hence, moralization is a key strategy to draw otherwise neutral audiences into a conflict, as moralization entails the message that the conflict is relevant from their perspective as well. Thus, a common mobilization tactic is to describe one’s own position as moral and the position of an adversary as immoral (see also Cooper & Avery; Crano & Gaffney, this volume). This can not only mobilize people on behalf of one’s own position by inducing the perception that their interests are aligned with the advocated position but can also have the additional advantage of demobilizing people who might otherwise support the position of the adversary. If a position is broadcasted as moral, fear of moral condemnation can demotivate others from opposing it. Rumor-sharing has always played a significant role in conflicts. For example, in a systematic review of violent ethnic riots, Horowitz (2001, p. 74) observed that concealed threats and outrages committed in secret figure prominently in pre-riot rumors. Rumors are . . . embedded in the riot situation, because they are satisfying and useful to rioters and their leaders.  .  .  . Rumor is likely to prevail over accurate information. . . . Rumor prevails because it orders and organizes action-in-process. Consistent with this description, psychological studies of conspiracy theories and misinformation show that people are likely to both believe and share rumors that portray enemy groups in a negative way (Miller et al., 2016; Osmundsen, Bor, Vahlstrup,  Bechmann, & Petersen, 2020; see also Krekó, this volume). This is interpretable as instrumental or motivated attempts to broadcast information that will mobilize audiences against the adversary. Thus, rumors used in intergroup conflict from ethnic riots to modern politics are extraordinarily similar in that they all emphasize that the adversary is evil, powerful, and about to act, creating a sense of urgency in receivers to engage in counter-activities. One striking example was the Pizzagate conspiracy shared by Republicans during the 2016 presidential US

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election, arguing that leading Democrats were holding abused children hostage in the basement of a named pizzeria in Washington DC. For one person, the sense of urgency created was strong enough for him to come to the pizzeria with an automatic rifle, intending to save the children. Finally, leaders play a central role in mobilization processes. Whereas moralization and information-sharing are attempts to organize groups from the bottomup, leaders are crucial vehicles for organizing groups from the top. Leaders can facilitate collective action by sanctioning free-riders and by acting as first movers (Glowacki & von Rueden, 2015). Importantly, however, leaders do not emerge from thin air. Rather, in many if not most human groups, leaders emerge because a substantial proportion choose to follow them. In this way, followership decisions can play a central role. Essentially, individuals invested in mobilizing others for aggressive projects can strategically choose to follow leaders who they believe will escalate conflicts and endorse aggressive solutions. Converging lines of research suggest that strong, dominant leaders cater to such motivations, and psychological studies show that primes of intergroup conflict increases motivations to follow dominant leaders (Petersen & Laustsen, 2020; see also Forgas & Lantos; and Krekó; this volume).

Beyond Populism: Extreme Discontent as a Dominance Syndrome These arguments suggest that status-seeking motivations and, in particular, dominance-oriented status-seeking could be at the center of a large number of discontent-related forms of political activism, such as endorsement of political violence, hostile interactions on social media, excessive moralization, sharing of and believing in misinformation, and the promotion of aggressive leaders. Consistent with this, past research has demonstrated that individual differences in status-seeking or dominance motivations are highly predictive of participation and support of political violence (Bartusevicius, van Leeuwen, & Petersen, 2020), political hostility both online and offline (Bor & Petersen, 2019), moral grandstanding (Grubbs, Warmke, Tosi, James, & Campbell, 2019), motivations to share conspiracy theories (Petersen, Osmundsen, & Arceneaux, 2020), and preference for dominant leaders (Laustsen  & Petersen, 2017). Thus, based on the background of these existing studies, we contend that motivations to gain status via dominance is the underlying syndrome, activated in the context of current-day politics, that fuels these extreme expressions of political discontent. These motivations are most likely distinct from some of the motivations underlying populism, as this concept is commonly understood. Populism involves a combination of elite-skepticism and a belief in wisdom of “the people” or some form of common will (Marchlewska, Cichocka, Panayiotou, Castellanos, & Batayneh, 2018; see also Marcus; Bar-Tal & Magal, this volume). Some studies suggest that populism correlates with a lack of agreeableness (Bakker,

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Rooduijn, & Schumacher, 2016), feelings of anger (Rico, Guinjoan, & Anduiza, 2017) and collective narcissism (see also Golec de Zavala et  al., this volume). These factors are also likely to be related to status-seeking motivations, and this could lead to the expectation that there is some overlap between populist support and status-seeking motivations. However, other studies have argued that the key psychological precursors of populist support include authoritarianism (Norris & Inglehart, 2019; but see Dunn, 2015; see also Feldman, this volume), traditionalism (Sniderman, Petersen, Slothuus, & Stubager, 2014), and the need to conform to particular identities (Salmela  & Scheve, 2017), as, for example, reflected in the nationalism that is part of many right-wing populist agendas (Dunn, 2015; see also Huddy  & Del Ponte, this volume). Furthermore, and consistent with the emphasis on “the people,” evidence suggests that populist voters often are egalitarian and support redistributive policies (Malka, Lelkes, Bakker, & Spivack, 2020; Sniderman et al., 2014). The orientation towards both group conformity and equality are in stark contrast to dominance motivations. In contrast to conformity, dominance leads to self-promotion. In contrast to equality, dominance leads to support for steep hierarchies (see also Krekó, this volume). While many extreme forms of political discontent are temporally correlated with the emergence of populism in Western democracies (and, potentially, are linked to the same underlying structural causes), we thus suggest that populism and extreme political discontent are nonetheless psychologically distinct phenomena.

Status Seeking, Discontent, and Populism: Empirical Evidence To empirically explore these arguments, we collected data from a survey fielded on the Lucid platform in March  2020. Lucid, the largest US marketplace for online convenience samples, uses quota sampling to approximate national representativeness. Researchers increasingly turn to online convenience samples to test theories about human psychology, and while Lucid is a new and probably less well-known source of online respondents, early results appear very promising: “Demographic and experimental findings on Lucid track well with US national benchmarks” (Coppock and McClellan, 2019, p. 1; see also Graham, 2020). We recruited 1,030 US citizens to participate in our study. We excluded 233 participants who failed at least one out of three attention checks, and another twelve participants with missing values on at least one of the central variables described below. The attention checks were designed to capture (1) response set (i.e., providing the same answer regardless of the question, sometimes referred to as “straight lining”), (2) inattention to instructions, and (3) so-called survey trolling, i.e., insincere reporting of extreme behavior (Lopez & Hillygus, 2018). Given the nature of some of the questions, we deemed this three-fold approach necessary. It should be noted, however, that the substantial conclusions do not change if we include all respondents in the analyses.

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Of the remaining 795 participants, 54% were females and the average age was 46 years old (standard deviation (SD) = 17 years). In terms of education, 3% reported “less than high school” as their highest completed degree, 15% were “high school graduate[s],” 26% selected “some college, but no degree,” 12% had a “two-year college degree,” 24% said “four-year college degree,” and 9% had a “graduate or professional degree” category. The median household income before taxes was “$40,000 to $49,999.” In the study, 75% of participants identified as white/Caucasian. Our study had three main goals. The first goal was to test if status-seeking is a driver of a range of manifestations of extreme political discontent. The second goal was to directly compare the discontent-related correlates of statusseeking and populism and to assess whether these are the same or different. Finally, the third goal was to show that the association between status-seeking and political discontent was the product of dominance strategies rather than prestige. We asked all survey participants to answer questions related to these key variables.

Status-Seeking Motivations Our key independent variable is status-seeking motivations, which we measure with a validated Status-Driven Risk-Taking scale from Ashton and colleagues (2010). Informed by evolutionary psychological research on competitive risk taking, the authors developed the scale to measure the pursuit for money, power, and social prestige (ibid. 734). The Status-Driven Risk-Taking scale asks participants to indicate on 7-point scales if they agree or disagree with fourteen statements like “I would enjoy being a famous and powerful person, even if it meant a high risk of assassination” and “I would rather live a secure life as an ordinary person than risk everything to be ‘at the top’ ” (reverse coded). The statements formed a reliable battery (α = .91) and were summed and rescaled to form an index ranging from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating greater status-driven risk taking (M = .30, SD = .21).

Populism To measure populist attitudes, we asked participants to complete the short, six-item version of the populist attitude scale developed by Castanho Silva and colleagues (2018) (e.g., “The government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves”; response on 7-item scale: 0 = Strongly Disagree; 1 = Strongly Agree; α = .73, M = .50, SD = .14). To enable us to isolate the distinct effects of status-seeking, all analyses adjust for this populism measure. In addition, we adjust for a comprehensive set of sociodemographic factors: Gender, age, educational level, income level, and ethnicity.

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Dominance and Prestige As previously discussed, humans can follow two distinct paths to social status, where the dominance path uses intimidation, aggression, and fear to attain status while the prestige route leads to social status through the possession of skills and resources that others value. Our argument entails that expressions of political discontent—especially its extreme forms, which we examine here—flows from a desire to obtain status through dominance rather than prestige. To assess this, we measure both dominance- and prestige-related motivations, using slightly modified forms of two scales from Cheng, Tracy, and Henrich (2010). The dominance scale asks participants how accurately eight statements describe them (e.g., “I enjoy having control over others,” “Others know it is better to let me have my way”; response on 7-point scale: 0 = Strongly Disagree; 1 = Strongly Agree; α = .80, M = .36, SD = .19). The prestige scale asks about the accuracy of nine items (“People I know respect and admire me,” “Others seek my advice on a variety of matters”; response on 7-point scale: 0 = Strongly Disagree; 1 = Strongly Agree; α = .76, M = .61, SD = .6).

Political Discontent Political discontent, our key dependent variable, can take many forms. As discussed above, its more extreme manifestations include a variety of attitudes and behaviors: Support for, and participation in, violent political riots and protests; political sympathies for “strong” leaders with a distaste for democratic rules of conduct; the sharing of political misinformation and blatant lies about political elites; and disruptive behavior in online political discussions. To fully grasp the nature and shape of extreme political discontent, we included as many of these different strands as possible. We first measured political violence intentions with a revised 10-item version of the scale from Moskalenko and McCauley (2009; see Gøtzsche-Astrup, 2019; e.g., “I would attack police or security forces if I saw them beating members of my group”; response on 7-point scale: 0 = Strongly Disagree; 1 = Strongly Agree; α = .91, M = .29, SD = .22). We next measured strong leader preferences with Sprong and colleagues’ (2019) 3-item scale (e.g., “We need strong leadership in order to overcome societies’ difficulties”; response on 7-point scale: 0 = Strongly Disagree; 1 = Strongly Agree; α = .88, M = .83, SD = .19). Next, we included measures of beliefs in and intentions to share hostile political rumors from Petersen et al. (2020). Their measures ask participants to read six rumors denigrating mainstream political actors from both the political left and right, and then to state whether participants agree (1) the rumors are true, and whether (2) they would want to share the rumors on social media. We combined participants’ responses into additive scales measuring beliefs the rumors were true (response on 7-item

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scale: 0 = Strongly Disagree; 1 = Strongly Agree; α = .63, M = .39, SD = .20) and measuring intentions to share the rumors (response on 7-item scale: 0 = Strongly Disagree; 1 = Strongly Agree; α = .88, M = .26, SD = .25). Our final two measures of political discontent came from Grubbs and colleagues (2019): moral grandstanding and political/moral conflict. Moral grandstanding— the use of moral talk in debates to enhance one’s social status and belittle others— was measured with a 4-item scale (e.g., “I share my moral/political beliefs to make people who disagree with me feel bad”; response on 7-item scale: 0 = Strongly Disagree; 1 = Strongly Agree; α = .90, M = .27, SD = .25). Grubbs et al. (2019) originally created two subscales to measure moral grandstanding motivations. We focus on their Moral Grandstanding: Dominance striving subscale, which is the theoretically relevant one. Furthermore, we measured political/moral conflict—the tendency to launch into online political fights with others—with Grubbs and colleagues’ (2019) 7-item scale (e.g., “Over the past twelve months, I have . . . gotten into fights on social media because of my political/moral beliefs”; response on four-item scale: 0  =  Never/Not at all; 1  =  Several times; α  =  .91, M = .24, SD = .27).

Status-Seeking, Populism, and Extreme Political Discontent We begin our exploration by asking: Were status-seeking motivations associated with extreme political discontent? Did people with a desire to improve their social status express stronger political discontent and dissatisfaction than people without that same drive for status? In a word: Yes. The motivation to attain status was strongly associated with the majority of ways extreme political discontent manifests itself. Figure 4.1 presents the results. It shows estimated ordinary least squares regression coefficients from models that regress the six measures of political discontent on status-seeking motivations and our set of sociodemographic covariates. To conserve space, the figure only includes the coefficients for statusseeking motivations and populist attitudes. We scale all variables to range from 0 to 1, which allows us to interpret the coefficients as the change in percentage points of the full scale of the dependent variable as we move from the low to the high extreme of the independent variable. Figure 4.1 reveals that participants with a desire for status expressed higher levels of political discontent on five out of the six measures compared to participants with low status aspirations. Status-seeking was positively associated with intentions to engage in political violence (βviolent activism = .50, p < .05), beliefs that hostile political rumors about mainstream politicians are true (βbelieve hostile rumors = .21, p < .05), intentions to share those same hostile rumors on social media (βshare hostile rumors = .45, p < .05), the inclination to demonstrate moral and political superiority in online discussions (βmoral grandstanding = .40, p < .05), and, finally, readiness to fight over political and moral questions online (βsocial media political conflict = .31,

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Status−Seeking, Populism, and Political Discontent

Status−Seeking

Model Violent Activism Share Hostile Rumors Moral Grandstanding Political Conflict Believe Hostile Rumors Strong Leader Populism

−0.4

−0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 Estimated Regression Coefficient

0.6

FIGURE 4.1 

Estimated regression coefficients from models that regress six measures of political discontent on status-seeking motivations and populist attitudes. Unstandardized OLS regressions coefficients with 95% confidence intervals. All variables are scaled to range from 0 to 1, allowing us to interpret the unstandardized regression coefficients as the change in percentage points of the full scale of the dependent variable as we move from the low to the high extreme of the independent variable. The models adjust for gender, age, educational level, household income level, and ethnicity.

p < .05). In substantive terms, these associations were consistently strong: Moving from the lowest to the highest level of status-seeking aspirations was associated with a 20–50 percentage point increase in political discontent, varying slightly depending on which of the five aspects of discontent we focus on. Together, these findings are consistent with our claim that status-seeking motivations are critical for understanding citizens’ political dissatisfaction and disengagement. Figure 4.1 also offered one result that runs counter to our hypothesis. Highstatus participants disapproved of one particular manifestation of political discontent: Strong political leaders (βstrong leader = −.13, p < .05). A theoretically derived possibility is that those who crave status hesitate to endorse strong leadership, because strong leaders may hamper their chances of climbing the social ladder. At the same time, it should be noted that the scale of leadership preferences is a highly skewed distribution of leadership preferences—almost all of the

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participants preferred strong political leadership—which leaves us with little variation to explain. Of note here is that we gathered the data in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic where strong leadership was in high demand. Finally, consistent with our argument, Figure  4.1 shows that only a limited variety of political discontent is widespread among citizens who support populist ideas. Populist attitudes were only positively associated with three of six manifestations of political discontent, and not the ones that arguably reflect the most “extreme” discontent, like support for violence. One noteworthy finding that we highlight here was that populism—unlike status-seeking—was positively associated with preferences for strong political leadership. This comports with earlier work highlighting how approval of strong leadership is one characteristic that various conceptions of populism have in common (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2014), and it suggests that populism may indeed be associated with such narrow, moderate forms of political discontent. This latter finding notwithstanding, we maintain that the results presented so far firmly support our hypothesis. The drive for attaining status seems to be at the nexus of various manifestations of extreme political discontent that many democracies currently witness. Further, the results make clear that status-seeking motivations may be a more important mechanism in understanding political dissatisfaction and political polarization than other usual culprits, like populist sentiment.

Dominance, Prestige, and Extreme Political Discontent The analysis so far has shown that status-seeking motivations are associated with political discontent. We devote the remaining part of the analysis to determine if extreme political discontent—with its emphasis on individual and collective action involving aggression and antagonistic encounters with political foes— reflects a drive for status rooted primarily in dominance motives rather than prestige. To understand whether self-perceived dominance rather than self-perceived prestige contributes more to explaining variation in political discontent, we now turn to Figure 4.2. It presents estimated ordinary least squares regression coefficients from models that regress the six measures of political discontent on dominance, prestige, and a set of covariates, including populist attitudes. Like before, we facilitate interpretation by scaling the variables to range from 0 to 1. What is most striking in Figure 4.2 is how differently dominance and prestige mapped onto political discontent. While Status-Driven Risk-Taking and dominance motivations were not perfectly correlated (r = .55), results for dominance were almost identical to those from the analysis on status-seeking motivations: Participants who viewed themselves as dominant expressed much stronger political discontent on five out of the six measures than low-dominance participants; βviolent activism = .45, p < .05; βshare hostile rumors = .35, p < .05; βmoral grandstanding = .48,

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Dominance, Prestige, and Political Discontent

Prestige

Model Moral Grandstanding Violent Activism Political Conflict Share Hostile Rumors Believe Hostile Rumors Strong Leader Dominance

−0.6

−0.3 0.0 0.3 Estimated Regression Coefficient

0.6

FIGURE 4.2 

Estimated regression coefficients from models that regress six measures of political discontent on dominance and prestige. Unstandardized OLS regressions coefficients with 95% confidence intervals. All variables are scaled to range from 0 to 1, allowing us to interpret the unstandardized regression coefficients as the change in percentage points of the full scale of the dependent variable as we move from the low to the high extreme of the independent variable. The models adjust for gender, age, educational level, household income level, populist attitudes, and ethnicity.

p  1000) participants, whose performance is then sloppy enough to cause 30% or even higher failure rates on a superficial attention check. Indeed, the attrition rate is not even assessed routinely (Zhou & Fishbach, 2016). Much less attention is given to the size of stimulus samples nested within participants. Huge sample sizes,

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to be sure, render even small and negligible effects significant, yielding, say, t ≈ 2.5 at df = 500 or even 1000. With reference to the main criterion of quality control, size of participant samples, the authors then praise themselves for high (but elusive) statistical power. In preceding power discussions, sample sizes are (allegedly) tailored to guarantee sufficiently powerful tests of H1, based on effectsize estimates imported from meta-analyses (of studies with highly variable effect sizes) or from general expectancies of the size of effects encountered in a whole research area. Compliance norms and obedience attitudes, in the absence of critical reflection of all the detailed prescriptions and new statistics, have fostered many other unwanted changes in recent years. Researchers allude to technical labels of software tools shared by the R-community that most journal readers do not understand; one may suspect that often the authors themselves do not understand the assumptions underlying their data analyses. What counts is obviously compliance (obedience) with the statistical opinion leaders among the journal reviewers. Following common practices, they often report unstandardized regression weights (obscured by unequal variance ratios of predictor and criterion). Or, they proudly report mediation analyses based on bootstrapping procedures (typically across norm distributions of 10000 simulated trials or more), but they ignore causal and logical constraints on mediation analysis (Fiedler, Harris, & Schott, 2018). The populism syndrome is evident in the readiness with which the scientific community adopts these fashionable but questionable criteria of scientific quality.

Populist Replication Science The uncritical imitation of populist (i.e., simplifying, emotionalizing, irrational) norms is perhaps most apparent in the new culture of replication science. Despite its positive reputation and its entitlement to be the epitome of strong science, replication research is largely devoid of an own methodology. It seems to be commonly expected that replication research must be published regardless of how it was conducted and without reference to a distinct set of methodological rules (Camerer et al., 2018; Open Science Collaboration, 2015). For instance, a failure to replicate a former experiment that supported the hypothesis H: If ΔX, then ΔY may be due either to the fact that the premise ΔX was not met (i.e., the intended shift in the independent variable was in fact not induced), or that the failure to observe an effect ΔY in the dependent variable may occur in spite of an effective manipulation. The former case is logically mute regarding the hypothesis to be replicated. However, deliberate manipulation checks are not obligatory in replication science. Likewise, the critically minded community that is apparently so deeply interested in strictness and precision does not care about the replicandum, that is, the exact definition of what it is that must be replicated. In the replication literature in general and on “exact replication” in particular, it is widely presupposed that

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results obtained in previously conducted and published research represent the “original” to be replicated in novel research. However, why should the present result not be considered the “original”, the replications of which in previous research often provided stronger results, contrary to the “replication crisis”? Is the replicandum really the older finding? Is it not necessary to define replication independently of temporal precedence? And if so, what alternative criterion can be used to define the “original”, or replicandum?

Ignoring the Regression Trap The growing literature on replication presupposes the existence of a “replication crisis”, which is a truly populist concept, based on a highly welcome simplification and charged with a good deal of emotional surplus meaning and personalized blame. The simplified coverage of the replication logic completely misses the incontestable truism that all replication results are inevitably complicated by the regression trap (Fiedler & Krueger, 2012; Fiedler & Prager, 2018). In a nutshell, when plotting replication effect sizes as a function of original effect sizes, the slope of the regression line β is inevitably less than 1. Strong original findings (i.e., strong enough to be published) must be expected to be weaker in the next test of the same finding, simply because regression is inevitable. It is “as inevitable as death and taxes” (Campbell & Kenny, 1999, p. ix). Whenever one variable Y2 is plotted as a function of another variable Y1, an imperfect correlation of rY1,Y2 < 1 implies that Y2 must be regressive relative to Y1. This is because a high (or very high) measured value on the “original” variable Y1 is more likely contaminated with a high (or very high) measurement error than a low measured Y1 value. From elementary statistics we know that the true or expected values E(Y1) can be estimated as the deviation of Y1 (from the mean) multiplied by the reliability RY1, to which the mean must then be added again. The true value of an “original” value to be replicated is the measured value times the reliability. Thus, if the reliability is .6, the true value of an “original” effect size of d = 1.00 is only dtrue = 0.60. If this true effect size is then replicated assuming the same reliability, a realistic expectation for the same effect is a replicated effect shrunk to only dtrue · RY1 = 0.36. Thus, regressive shrinkage alone accounts for a “replication crisis”. It is hard to understand why—given the common training in elementary statistics—the regression debate fully ignores the regression trap and continues to test (and to publish even in the best journals) the—fully irrelevant—hypothesis that replication effect sizes are as high as original effect sizes. The replication literature also ignores the need to consider reverse regression, that is, to also plot the “original” or earlier effect sizes as a function of the later “replication effects”. Experience with this cross-test justifies the term “regression trap”. We all know from statistics that when A (plotted against measured B) is regressive, the very same data array will show that B (plotted inversely against measured A) is also regressive. Thus, as

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Galton (1886) has shown, tall (short) fathers tend to have shorter (taller) sons but, at the same time, tall (short) sons tend to have shorter (taller) fathers. In the same vein, Erev, Wallsten, and Budescu (1994) have shown in an enlightening article that correctness rates plotted against confidence ratings exhibit overconfidence, although in the same data set confidence plotted against correctness rates exhibits under-confidence. It is no surprise that a reverse-regression analysis of the Open Science Collaboration (OSC, 2015) replication data provides evidence for reverse regression. When “original” effect sizes are plotted as a function of replication effects, the strongest effects are clearly weaker in the original measure (Fiedler & Prager, 2018). A regression analysis of the OSC data reveals that stronger original effect sizes are not a remedy against regressive shrinkage. The opposite is true for mathematically obvious reasons; the strongest original effect sizes show the strongest absolute shrinkage in replication tests, simply because regression increases with the strength of a measured effect.2 A replication culture that almost completely ignores the regression trap meets all defining features of populism. The simplification of a long understood statistical problem is striking; or is it pathological? The emotional side effects are enormous; researchers whose findings regressed to non-significant levels are discouraged and harmed as a fair appraisal of their work is missing. The irrational nature of the continued neglect of the counter-intuitive regression principle is obvious, and it “replicates” many renowned scholars’ lessons provided again and again over more than one last century (Baltes, Nesselroade, Schaie,  & Labouvie, 1972; Campbell, 1996; Furby, 1973; Galton, 1886; Rulon, 1941; Tversky & Kahneman, 1971).

Is the Analogy Fair? Again, the question regarding populism is, what is the essential difference between denying climate change and denying regression in empirical research? Do we have the right to ridicule people who fall prey to myths and ecological fake news and scientists who jointly ignore a truism that is as inevitable as death and taxes (Campbell & Kenny, 1999)? Rather than quickly searching for a difference, one might rather admit the analogy to better understand the sources of populism. Reasoning about such an analogy is of course speculative, and it would be imprudent to present an answer as sound psychological evidence. Nevertheless, in a non-populist article like the present one, presenting at least a hypothetical answer should not be prohibited. Just as the denial of climate change, the discourse about the replication crisis clearly serves an attention-grabbing function, assuring the spontaneous interest by journalists and the rewarding feeling that one has discovered an important phenomenon. Overcoming the simplification would be disillusioning, destroying the fascinating thoughts revolving around the provocative theme. A rational reanalysis of replication research—in the light of the regression trap, manipulation

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check, and several other tricky aspects—would be experienced as cowardly withdrawal or evasive behavior. Admitting the weakness of empirical research soon becomes a quasi-moral obligation; self-defensive behavior would be as unwarranted as resorting to a rational analysis. Nevertheless, the self-defensive responses by those “perpetrators” whose so far leading position is undermined by failures to replicate causes open animosity and conflict, directed against the “prosecutors” in this game, who are in turn accused of building their career on destructive arguments. It seems obvious that face-saving motives and liability reasons stabilize this emotional confrontation, and a cultural super-norm prohibits scientists from evading an unpleasant debate. Is the analogy to other variants of populism not compelling? Does the example not highlight the fact that it is up to science to be accepted as a trustworthy cultural instrument that can ultimately help people to counteract superstition and establish rationality? Assuming approval to this suggestion, it is first of all essential to repel populism from science itself, if science is expected to play the convincing role of a role model providing a remedy.

Ineffective Debunking and Persistence of Myths That Undermine Trust in Science The persistence of unwarranted beliefs and rituals in science is by no means confined to methodological practices. The populism syndrome extends to many other prominent myths and illusions, the persistence of which is hard to understand, because their unwarranted and irrational nature is so easy to recognize. A memorable and ever-fresh example of such a seemingly uncorrectable myth is the continued belief in the validity of the control-question test (CRT) in polygraph lie detection. In a recent up-to-date review article, Iacono and BenShakhar (2019) complain that fifteen years after the National Research Council (NRC, 2003) has clearly stated, and convincingly explained, that the CRT cannot be considered an approved diagnostic tool, many scientists continue to treat the CRT as a valid instrument and its proponents cite the NRC report as if it testified to 90% or better accuracy. As a consequence, Iacono and Ben-Shakhar (2019) come to “conclude that the quality of research has changed little in the years elapsing since the release of the NRC report, and that its landmark conclusions still stand”. There are good theoretical and logical reasons why CRT must be in vain, not just equivocal empirical evidence. The CRT’s rationale that the arousal difference in responses to relevant questions minus control questions is higher in guilty than in innocent respondents is untenable, because innocent people also understand that the test outcome is of existential importance. Defendants can simulate strong autonomic responses to control questions (e.g., by biting their tongue), which reduce or even reverse the difference between relevant and control questions (Honts & Kircher, 1994). The selection of control questions is not

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standardized but depends on the tester’s intuition; the tougher the control questions (e.g., Did you ever develop sexual fantasies related to involuntary intercourse?), the less likely it is that the autonomic responses to relevant crime-related questions (e.g., Did you rape the young women?) will be even stronger. Moreover, the often-cited evidence on the alleged high percentage of (over 90%) accurate test results is due to a clearly expounded sampling artifact (i.e., exclusion of those cases from relevant data sets that could falsify the CQT results; Fiedler, Schmid & Stahl, 2002; Patrick & Iacono, 1991). Thus, the reluctance to accept and widely adopt the clear-cut message that CQT use is scientifically unwarranted and irresponsible is not a matter of equivocal empirical evidence, or weighting of different theoretical opinions. According to scientific criteria, the situation could hardly be more unequivocal, and yet, the scientific community seems to feel it is fair and wise to give some credence to either position, pro and contra polygraph lie detection.

Who Is to Blame?—The Role of Recipients in Populist Episodes This apparent equality norm (Mahmoodi et al., 2015) strikes me as characteristic of the populism syndrome in science. However weak the underlying evidence is, or however overwhelming the empirical counter-evidence is, there seems to be a consensual feeling that it is fair to give similar non-zero weight to all positions. Note that this part of the diagnosis does not focus on the agent who employs populist strategies but on the recipients in the scientific community who seem to invite and embrace populist strategies as desirable. This indeed strikes me as an important insight to be gained from an analysis of populism in the area of science. It seems moot to blame those who play the agent part, and maybe profit most, from the populism game, like politicians Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or Viktor Orbán. Their attempts to ingratiate and please the people, to simplify and emotionalize matters, and to deny the truth that is often less comfortable would be condemned to failure if their audiences did not reward and appreciate these strategies. From a causal-attribution perspective, then, the locus of causality seems to lie in the people who play the recipient role in the malicious game. That is, the people, the scientific community, indeed, we are to blame ourselves, because we possess but do not use the power to discourage and to punish the populist’s game. Who else might truncate the game? Should we really expect the profiting agents themselves to end an episode that seems to be so successful? No, the only causal party in a reasonable action model that can be expected to terminate the populist game is the recipient, who compliments and thereby motivates populist strategies, whose task it is to educate and sanction populist agents’ behavior, and whose responsibility should be to engage in altruistic punishment (Fehr  & Gächter,

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2005). The only reasonable causal attribution is indeed to explain populism in terms of a recipient failure, rather than commenting on populism through indignant irritation about the unsurprising fact that some agent exploits the profitable outcome of a populist attempt that ought never to have worked. After all, an impeachment procedure against Donald Trump ended with an exoneration by the Senate. Boris Johnson’s Brexit offensive was rewarded by the majority of the voting people in the United Kingdom, and so was Viktor Orbán’s populist style reinforced by the people. In the same vein, it seems obvious that populist practices in science are not just tolerated; they are solicited, and can only be ended by the scientific community. The “survival of a flawed method of nullhypothesis significance testing” (Krueger, 2001) was only possible because it was welcomed by the scientific community, not just tolerated. The failure to consider regressive shrinkage in a superficial replication debate reflects the vast majority’s willingness to ignore such counter-intuitive issues. And the continued misbelief in the validity of polygraph testing (using the CQT) reflects the fact that readers of scientific magazines (such as the APA Monitor) or reviewers of leading international journals do not consequentially discard invalid tools. The tacit agreement to condone unwarranted statements in science, rather than engaging in critical assessment and strict selection, can be illustrated with an endless list of examples. It is by no means exceptional but rather the rule in the peer-reviewing process, in advanced teaching, in representing scientific results in popular media, and in the manner in which the state of the art is summarized in the introductory part of major papers. Rather than trying to illustrate this situation with more examples of blatantly wrong scientific beliefs,3 suffice it to provide a few telling examples that highlight the willingness of the scientific community to accept strong claims without any proof or cogent argument. Thus, here is a list of fundamental assumptions that can be advanced any time, without any need of a logical or empirical proof. You are always on safe ground and you do not have to fear nasty reviewer questions when you claim that a distinct competence is a product of evolution, when you propagate a dual-process model based on exactly two psychological systems (not three, four, or only one—no, two), when you call an attitude “implicit”, when you refer to automaticity without providing a clearcut definition, when you pose that a third variable that absorbs some covariance is a mediator, when you analyze asymmetric interactions without removing the main effects, when you pretend after a G-Power estimation that you did have a 90% power of your hypothesis test, or when you pretend that the best-fitting model describes the underlying psychological process. Let us discuss three examples of the scientific community’s notorious laissezfaire attitude in some more detail. The aim of this discussion is to understand three major reasons why the scrutiny of psychological science is so low and the quality control so shallow, and to illustrate at the same time why it is actually not easy to overcome the populism syndrome.

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Three Memorable Candidates for Populism in Science Nudging The first example refers to one of the most prominent topics of recent research, the notion of nudging (Thaler  & Sunstein, 2008), propagated by two Nobel Prize winners. The basic idea is that in order to induce healthy, cooperative, and ecologically adequate behavior, one should design environments in a way to make the desired behaviors likely and easy to perform. In other words, environmental arrangements are propagated that lower the threshold for desirable behavior. The nudging idea is patronizing and paternalistic, to be sure, because it presupposes that ordinary people are dependent on policy makers to exhibit adaptive behavior. One might object that the opposite is true, namely, that politicians and group leaders are often less prudent than ordinary individuals, and this sort of suspicion has actually inspired a critical debate on the paternalistic premises underlying the nudging hype. However, apart from this emotional side effect of a massively advertised popular concept, a largely ignored aspect of the nudging fashion is that it is at variance with social psychology’s most prominent theory, namely, dissonance theory. One central implication of Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance (see also Lawrence & Festinger, 1962) is that persistent learning and internalized behavior changes must be made difficult rather than easy. An uncontested law lesson from animal training and behaviorist research is that stable and “sustainable” learning must be effortful and the road to reinforcement must be hardy and rocky, as in a partial reinforcement schedule with lots of obstacles. Human learning, too, is more likely to transform into persistent behavior change when effort expenditure is high. For instance, psychotherapy was shown to increase in effectivity when patients must engage in extra efforts (Axsom & Cooper, 1985; also Cooper, this volume). Research on scarcity in attitude change points in the same direction; the subjective value of products, persons, or action goals increases when they are scarce, expensive, and hard to get. In the economy, scarceness creates high prices; the most attractive graduate programs have very high entry thresholds; most attractive people play hard to get; more generally, deep and effortful processing produces more effective and persistent learning than easily available reinforcements (Fiedler, Lachnit, Fay,  & Krug, 1992). The evidence in social and experimental psychology for difficulty and effort-dependence as keys to behavior change is overwhelming, and this long-grown evidence is clearly at variance with the principle of easiness and high availability of desired choice options that underlies the nudging program. To be sure, the point here is not to pretend that nudging is worthless or that nudging as an influence mechanism is incompatible with dissonance theory or well-established behaviorist laws. However, the conspicuous point is that no theoretical debate seems to take place. Nudging seems to be adopted as a new favorite tool of applied behavioral research without any critical assessment of the

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underlying assumptions, which are in conflict with other existing assumptions. Nudging is accepted and actually implemented in a process that resembles advertising for cosmetics or shoe polish rather than a mature scientific discourse. Such a discourse could relate nudging to other principles of social influence (Cialdini, 2009), maybe revealing that nudging is appropriate to induce people to try out new behavioral options, whereas other influence strategies are required to induce stable behavioral changes based on new internalized preferences (Moscovici, 1980). Or, a scientific discourse might relate nudging to evidence and theorizing on foraging (Giraldeau & Caraco, 2018), revolving around the distributional problem of reducing the distance of desired action goals for as many people as possible. Or, a truly scientific debate might deal with the possibility that what nudging makes easily available may lose in attractiveness and soon be replaced by other options that are more selective, scarce, and hard to get. These are of course nothing but speculations about possible meta-theories or integrative frameworks within which a truly scientific discourse on nudging might be embedded. I do not want to fabricate scientific results that do not exist; I simply want to highlight the unscientific manner in which the fashionable nudging message is spread among scientists and into the public. There is apparently no attempt to relate nudging to the extant literature, to theoretical priors, and to well-established empirical principles. The cute idea is simply propagated like a shallow consumer ad, along with prominent names and selective sample episodes, in a communication process that shares all defining features of populism: high simplification, emotional appeal, detached from rational (theoretical) reasoning, and high in social desirability because the idea is so easy and convenient and leaves the work load to other agents and decision makers.

Moral Dilemmas Another example of a highlight in recent social psychology is research on moral dilemmas. In the trolley problem, for instance, participants are given a choice between two options: (a) letting five people working on a track die from a trolley that is out of control or (b) preventing the death of five people by deliberately pushing one person onto the tracks. In the tradition of other dual-process theories, the decision task is framed as a conflict between two moral principles, which are treated as clearly distinct and mutually incompatible, namely, the deontological rule that one should never kill another human being, and the utilitarian rule that one should try to minimize the number of people dying from the episode. These two moral principles are then aligned with the two behavioral options: letting five people die is considered a deontological choice whereas killing one person to save five lives is utilitarian. The fascination with these dualistic simplifications is enormous, as manifested in about thirty dual-process theories. It is, however, easy for every scientist to see that the underlying assumptions are untenable. Living without killing anybody

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is not purely deontological, but also may be a high-ranking part of a subjective utility function. Violating this principle may reduce satisfaction for the rest of one’s life. Conversely, the decision to kill one person in order to save five others may not only be utilitarian but also be reflective of an agent’s deontological norm not to kill others. An individual might assume that killing by omission may be as serious a sin as killing by commission, as evident from many situations in the history of mankind. In any case, there is no scientific basis for the dualistic assumption that moral dilemmas involve a conflict between exactly two motives or moral principles. This sort of reservation was indeed mentioned in the literature, that is, the scientific community has been sensitized to the conceptual weakness of moraldilemma research, just as the conceptual and logical impossibility of other dual process-theories has been clarified forcefully and convincingly (e.g., by Keren & Schul, 2009). However, like compelling counter-arguments are blatantly ignored in other populist games, research on dual process theories in general, and on moral dilemmas in particular, go on as before, as if they had never been shown to be untenable. Researchers who pit plainly utilitarian motives against plainly deontological motives still succeed in getting their research published in even the most prestigious journals, and proponents of many other dual-process theories continue to base their research on the untenable assumption that forced choices (e.g., between speed and accuracy) afford cogent evidence for either System 1 or System 2. Again, it seems fair to say that the success story of dual-process theories reflects all defining features of populism in science. Juxtaposing two complementary options as mutually exclusive and exhaustive of all possible outcomes is a highly comfortable and desirable state in the world. Simplifying dichotomies promise clear-cut all-or-none solutions, without any residual uncertainty. It is much more complicated and incriminating to admit that reality allows for manifold combinations of two (or more) principles, such as deontology and utilitarianism.

Precognition and Psi Whereas the two preceding examples, nudging and moral dilemmas, suggest that the simplification and lack of rationality that characterize populist science enhance comfort and social desirability, the last examples shows that the lethargy and myopia among scientists may override even discomfort and undesirable states. This example refers to Bem’s (2011) parapsychological work on precognition, which was greatly depreciated among scientists and yet did not instigate a truly scientific debate. In a series of experiments published in the “flagship” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Bem (2011) demonstrated in a kind of sequential priming paradigm that when a positive or negative stimulus was selected by a random generator after the participant had already made a “positive” or “negative” choice, respectively, the rate of evaluative congruity was significantly above

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50%. That is, the random generator tended to produce more positive stimuli after “positive” predictions and more negative stimuli after “negative” predictions than incongruent stimulus-prediction pairs. Bem’s parapsychological account, which was generally respected by the community without protest, said that participants exerted a “precognitive” influence on the subsequent physical random-generator process. Had psychology behaved like a real science, if only to cope with Feynman’s (1974) provocative reference to psychology as a cargo-cult science, one might have discarded Bem’s so-called precognition findings as a case of meta-physics rather than parapsychology. Because the participants’ “positive” or “negative” responses were already given as an antecedent condition, before the random generator selected a positive or negative stimulus, the event to be explained was the random generator’s behavior. A general logical premise of all empirical science is that consequent events (i.e., random generator choices) must be explained as a function of antecedent conditions (participants’ “precognitive” predictions), not the reverse. (Without this fundamental rule, finding higher life satisfaction in good rather than in bad weather might mean that high life satisfaction causes good weather.) If psychology wants to be a real science that takes such logical principles seriously, the editors might have sent the manuscript back, suggesting that Bem should submit it as evidence for meta-physics to a journal in physics or computer engineering, trying to argue that random generators of the radioactive decay type follow human precognition. Nobody would seriously expect such a journal to publish a paper with such a claim. In psychology, however, it was enough that Bem labeled his work as “precognition” rather than “meta-physics”. As a reviewer of the Bem article, I made this point from the beginning, but the editors refrained from making a strict decision on logical ground. They decided not to reject the memorable article because they did not want to appear prejudiced against unorthodox work, as if there had been no scientific reason for rejection other than prejudice. By the way, when we tried to publish our own critical assessment (Fiedler  & Krueger, 2013) in the same journal, it was rejected because (a) this journal is not devoted to critical comments and (b) because our comment entailed criticism of the editors’ decision. This episode nicely reflects all three defining features of populism. Simplification is evident in the arbitrary labelling of a finding as “precognition” and in the acceptance of a random generator as unbiased even though it was by definition biased. The emotionalized experience of the whole affair is reflected in avoidance behavior, of prejudice and of a comment that implies criticism. And irrationality is apparent from the failure to distinguish antecedent and consequent conditions of the reported findings. Rather than basing a rational and self-confident decision on such a clearcut logical principle, editors and journal readers, who wanted to set themselves apart from Bem, once more resorted to statistics and significance testing. Rather than offering clear-cut logical or psychological reasons against the notion of

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precognition, the journal (otherwise not devoted for critical comments) published a statistical note by Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, and van der Maas (2011), which showed that a more conservative way of Bayesian significance testing may have prevented the precognition effects from being statistically significant. Most people were now apparently content with questionable significance as a means of getting rid of the unwanted article in a prestigious journal. Unfortunately, though, this attempt to solve the scientific issue statistically was soon countered by Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron, and Duggan (2015), who published a meta-analysis of 90 experiments that provided strong evidence for “precognition” at an astronomically high level of statistical significance. “Fortunately,” however—and this may also be telling about populism—the climate had changed and a new majority of opinion leaders were disposed against the Bem results. So, the much stronger evidence from the meta-analysis was never given the same attention as the much weaker evidence from the earlier article.

Concluding Remarks The title of the present chapter announces a non-populist perspective on populism in science. It is certainly non-populist in the sense that it is low in social desirability, and unlikely to make many new friends for the author. More crucially, I have made a deliberate attempt to provide an a priori definition of populism. And, I have presented a number of hypothetical conclusions that can be tested empirically and rejected if they are wrong. Let us finally summarize what I consider to be the message of the present chapter, for which I feel accountable. First, my chapter relies on the provocative assumption that populism is not a communication style for a naïve, superficial, and intellectually uninterested audience. Rather, I have tried to point out that populism can be found even in science, among intellectuals expected to be particularly high in argumentation, critical assessment, and scrutiny. Nevertheless, the significance testing ritual and other unwarranted aspects in methodology, the conspicuous lack of theorizing, and the failure to take logical principles into account testify to the uncritical nature of the scientific endeavor. I anticipate that not all readers will agree with this appraisal and will react with anger and negative affect, rejecting my perspective as arrogant and fully out of place. However, when we return to argumentation, my selfcritical appraisal might help scientists play a pioneer role in overcoming populism, a role model to be imitated in politics and culture. Second, my analysis led to the conclusion that populism should not be attributed solely to the populist agents but also to uncritical recipients, whose compliance provides fertile ground for populism, giving more weight to comfort and simplicity than to rational criteria and quality control. Indeed, I have argued (and I  actually believe) that from a social psychological perspective, the only viable remedy to populism lies in recipients’ critical ability not to follow tempting ingratiation and unrealistic simplifications.

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Third, I did not refrain from naming concrete examples of how populism is manifested in science, hoping that readers will share my suspicion that we can learn a lot about populism in general from an analysis of populism in a culture that appears to be as immune to populism as science. Regardless of whether a reader finds all my examples convincing, he or she should agree that populism is facilitated by such conditions as superficial conformity and compliance, thinking in terms of blatant dichotomies, and the failure to engage in critical quality control in politics, health, social, ecological, and legal affairs. Last but not least, in spite of my critical appraisal of existing populism in science, it is my firm conviction that it is the ultimate responsibility of scientists to become role models of how one can overcome populist influences. Although, or exactly because, it is unlikely or impossible in the 21st century to evade the impact of social media and electronic media, a most prominent function of science is to demarcate a limit of logical rules and factual evidence that is not disputable. Maybe the help of other cultural institutions—such as journalism or school education—is required to live up to such an ambitious goal. In the meantime, however, science might go ahead and manage to establish intellectual integrity and rational assessment within its own procedures of scientific quality control.

Notes 1. Logically, the overshadowing impact of other causes must be included in an estimate of the expected effect size. Note also that randomized designs do not eliminate the vicissitudes of the multicausal world, because no experimental manipulation can be assumed to affect but one causal factor (for a discussion, see Fiedler, 2020). 2. Note that although error is uncorrelated with true scores, error is indeed naturally correlated with measured scores, which include the error component. 3. This might be met with defensive reactions and attempts to re-establish the validity of obviously invalid claims.

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