The personality of populists: How the Big Five traits relate to populist attitudes

Placing "trust" in science: The urban-rural divide and Americans' feelings of warmth toward scientists

Long-standing discussions of the so-called urban-rural divide in the United States have uncovered meaningful differences between urbanites and rural residents, but much of this work has focused on political attitudes. However, there is reason to believe that geographic divides also influence Americans' science attitudes, including, for example, positive affect toward scientists and levels of trust in them. Unfortunately, existing work has not clearly ruled out confounding factors such as religiosity, political views, media habits, and conspiracism. This brief article addresses this problem by drawing on survey data from 2016 to test the hypothesis that rural residency will be associated with colder feelings toward the scientific community, even with controls in place. The results offer support for this expectation. These findings lend support to recent arguments that rural Americans' science attitudes are influenced by factors that go beyond demographics, conspiracism, political polarization, differences of religiosity, and (partisan) media consumption.

Populist ideology, ideological attitudes, and anti-immigration attitudes as an integrated system of beliefs

A challenge for the identification of the core components of a beliefs system is the topological examination of these components within the overall structure of the said system. By modeling beliefs as nodes of interconnected networks, this research investigated the centrality of adherence to populist ideology and classical ideological attitudes in relation to voting behavior and negative feelings toward immigrants. Data from a sample of 774 Italian adults were examined by means of three Network Analysis models. Results showed four constitutive dimensions of populist ideology: People Sovereignty, Anti-elitism, People Homogeneity, and Manichaeism. The dimensions of Anti-elitism, People Sovereignty and Homogeneity were found to be the core. Analyses also highlighted the centrality of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) within the broader beliefs system, including voting, populist ideology dimensions, and anti-immigration. RWA was positively related to the core of populist ideology, whilst SDO was negatively associated with or unrelated to it. However, both RWA and SDO exceeded populist dimensions when associated with populist right-wing voting, representing the unique intermediate links in connecting it with anti-immigration. Five Star Movement voting emerged as a purer form of populist support, relating directly only to populist dimensions and placing itself at a greater distance from ideological attitudes and anti-immigration.

Recalibrating populism measurement tools: Methodological inconsistencies and challenges to our understanding of the relationship between the supply- and demand-side of populism

The analysis of the congruence between the demand- and supply-side of populism is key to understand the relationship between citizens and populist parties, and to what extent this is mainly a "pull" or "push" phenomenon. Although the study of populism has experienced an unprecedented growth across social sciences during the last decade, research directly addressing this connection remains scarce. Moreover, most existing tools used to measure populism have not been created paying much consideration to their compatibility with those applied in the other side of this demand-supply divide. This article critically revisits the influential Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Module 5 dataset to illustrate shortcomings regarding current efforts to measure the demand- and supply-sides of populism. We show that according to CSES data the, often presumed, correspondence between "populist" attitudes and likelihood of voting for "populist parties" is only partial and country specific. But more importantly, we identify three main potential sources of such mismatch linked to instrumental issues: (i) problems with the choice, design and operationalization of attitudinal survey items; (ii) problems in the assessment of parties' populism; and (iii) instrument biases that make them more effective with some varieties of populism than with others. These methodological limitations are hindering our ability to settle longstanding theoretical debates concerning the correspondence between the demand- and supply-side, the relative centrality of attributes, and varieties of populism. Therefore, we invite scholars working in this field to update existing measurement tools, or develop new ones, considering the multidimensionality of this latent construct, the diversity of movements, and the need to apply consistent criteria and operationalization techniques when assessing degrees of populism in citizens and parties.

The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory

The question of how people change their opinions through social interactions has been on the agenda of social scientific research for many decades. Now that the Internet has led to an ever greater interconnectedness and new forms of exchange that seem to go hand in hand with increasing political polarization, it is once again gaining in relevance. Most recently, the field of opinion dynamics has been complemented by social feedback theory, which explains opinion polarization phenomena by means of a reinforcement learning mechanism. According to the assumptions, individuals not only evaluate the opinion alternatives available to them based on the social feedback received as a result of expressing an opinion within a certain social environment. Rather, they also internalize the expected and thus rewarded opinion to the point where it becomes their actual private opinion. In order to put the implications of social feedback theory to a test, we conducted a randomized controlled laboratory experiment. The study combined preceding and follow-up opinion measurements via online surveys with a laboratory treatment. Social feedback was found to have longer-term effects on private opinions, even when received in an anonymous and sanction free setting. Interestingly and contrary to our expectations, however, it was the mixture of supportive and rejective social feedback that resulted in the strongest influence. In addition, we observed a high degree of opinion volatility, highlighting the need for further research to help identify additional internal and external factors that might influence whether and how social feedback affects private opinions.

Understanding the psychological appeal of populism

Psychology can play an important role in expanding our understanding of the demand-side of populism by revealing its underlying relational logic. Social psychological perspectives on populism are beginning to show how: 1) the division between us ('the good people') and them ('the corrupt elites'/'foreign others') taps into core intergroup dynamics, 2) economic and cultural processes are construed in terms of basic status concerns, and 3) collective emotions become mobilised through political communication. Taking these insights into consideration, we reflect on psychology's contribution to the study of populism thus far, and chart out an ambitious role for it at the heart of this interdisciplinary field.