Justice for the People? How Justice Sensitivity Can Foster and Impair Support for Populist Radical-Right Parties and Politicians in the United States and in Germany

Many people argue that support for populist radical-right political agents is motivated by people feeling “left behind” in globalized Western democracies. Empirical research supports this notion by showing that people who feel personally or collectively deprived are more likely to hold populist beliefs and anti-immigration attitudes. Our aim was to further investigate the psychological link between individuals' justice concerns and their preferences for populist radical-right political agents. We focused on stable individual differences in self-oriented and other-oriented justice concerns and argue that these should have opposing correlations with preferences for populist radical-right parties. We tested our hypotheses in two national samples, one from the United States (N = 1500) and one from Germany (N = 848). Sensitivity to injustice towards oneself enhanced the likelihood of preferring Trump (United States) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) (Germany) via increased anti-immigration attitudes and increased populist attitudes. Sensitivity to injustice towards others reduced the likelihood of preferring Trump and AfD via decreased anti-immigration attitudes. We discuss our findings in regard to how stable individual differences in the evaluation of fairness can motivate intra- and interpersonal political conflicts in modern w estern societies and how politics and mass media can fuel these conflicts.     

How Social-Class Background Influences Perceptions of Political Leaders

In this research, we contribute to a nascent literature examining how cues to social class can guide voters' political judgments. Drawing upon and merging a voting-cues framework with the stereotype-content model, we test predictions that, relative to those from high-class backgrounds, candidates from lower- and working-class backgrounds will be perceived to be more ideologically liberal, warmer, and will be evaluated more positively. We test these predictions across four experimental studies (N_Study1 = 200; N_Study2 = 537; N_Study3 = 352; N_Study4 = 654) employing a candidate-evaluation paradigm; participants were presented with basic candidate background information, including cues to candidate class and other demographics, and were asked to read an excerpt from a speech before providing their judgments. Findings reveal that candidates from lower- and working-class backgrounds were perceived to be more liberal and warmer than those from high-class backgrounds. Additionally, we found that lower-class candidates were generally evaluated more positively than high-class candidates, and we found some evidence for evaluations across class to be moderated by participants' political ideology. These effects generally held across candidate gender and race. This work has important theoretical and practical implications offering insight into the social-class gap between the electorate and the largely elite elected policymakers.     

The Paranoid Style in American Politics Revisited: An Ideological Asymmetry in Conspiratorial Thinking

It is often claimed that conspiracy theories are endorsed with the same level of intensity across the left-right ideological spectrum. But do liberals and conservatives in the United States embrace conspiratorial thinking to an equivalent degree? There are important historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons dating back to Richard Hofstadter's book The Paranoid Style in American Politics to doubt this claim. In four large studies of U.S. adults (total N = 5049)—including national samples—we investigated the relationship between political ideology, measured in both symbolic and operational terms, and conspiratorial thinking in general. Results reveal that conservatives in the United States were not only more likely than liberals to endorse specific conspiracy theories, but they were also more likely to espouse conspiratorial worldviews in general (r = .27, 95% CI: .24, .30). Importantly, extreme conservatives were significantly more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking than extreme liberals (Hedges' g = .77, SE = .07, p < .001). The relationship between ideology and conspiratorial thinking was mediated by a strong distrust of officialdom and paranoid ideation, both of which were higher among conservatives, consistent with Hofstadter's account of the paranoid style in American politics.     

Personality,Religion, and Politics: An Investigation in 33 Countries

The relations of HEXACO personality factors and religiosity with political orientation were examined in responses collected online from participants in 33 countries (N = 141 492). Endorsement of a right‐wing political orientation was negatively associated with Honesty‐Humility and Openness to Experience and positively associated with religiosity. The strength of these associations varied widely across countries, such that the religiosity–politics correlations were stronger in more religious countries, whereas the personality–politics correlations were stronger in more developed countries. We also investigated the utility of the narrower traits (i.e. facets) that define the HEXACO factors. The Altruism facet (interstitially located between the Honesty‐Humility, Agreeableness, and Emotionality axes) was negatively associated with right‐wing political orientation, but religiosity was found to suppress this relationship, especially in religious countries. In addition to Altruism, the Greed Avoidance and Modesty facets of the Honesty‐Humility factor and the Unconventionality and Aesthetic Appreciation facets of the Openness to Experience factor were also negatively associated with right‐wing political orientation. We discuss the utility of examining facet‐level personality traits, along with religiosity, in research on the individual difference correlates of political orientation. Copyright © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Openness relates to COVID-19 vaccination rates across 48 United States but politics trump personality

Does geographic variation in personality across the United States relate to COVID-19 vaccination rates? To answer this question, we combined multiple state-level datasets: (a) Big Five personality averages (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness; Rentfrow et al., 2008), (b) COVID-19 full-vaccination rates (CDC, 2021a), (c) health-relevant demographic covariates (population density, per capita gross domestic product, and racial/ethnic data; Webster et al., 2021), and (d) political and religiosity data. Analyses showed openness as the strongest correlate of full-vaccination rates (r = 0.51). Controlling for other traits, demographic covariates, and spatial dependence, openness remained significantly related to full-vaccination rates (r_p = 0.55). Adding political and religiosity data to this model diminished openness effects for full-vaccination rates to non-significance (r_p = 0.26); however, extraversion emerged as a significant correlate of full-vaccination rates (r_p = 0.37). Although politics are paramount, we suspect that states with higher average openness scores are more conducive to novel thinking and behavior—dispositions that may be crucial in motivating people to take newly-developed vaccines based on new technologies to confront a novel coronavirus.     

The structure of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale: Theoretical and methodological considerations

The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS; Zigmond - Snaith, 1983) is widely used; however, its factor structure is unclear, with studies reporting differing unidimensional, two-factor and three-factor models. We aimed to address some key theoretical and methodological issues contributing to inconsistencies in HADS structures across samples. We reviewed existing HADS models and compared their fit using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We also investigated methodological effects by comparing factor structures derived from Rasch and Principal Components Analysis (PCA) methods, as well as effects of a negative wording factor. An Australian community-dwelling sample consisting of 189 females and 158 males aged 17–86 (M = 35.73, SD = 17.41) completed the 14-item HADS. The Rasch Analysis, PCA and CFA all supported the original two-factor structure. Although some three-factor models had good fit, they had unacceptable reliability. In the CFA, a hierarchical bifactor model with a general distress factor and uncorrelated depression and anxiety subscales produced the best fit, but the general factor was not unidimensional. The addition of a negative wording factor improved model fit. These findings highlight the effects of differing methodologies in producing inconsistent HADS factor structures across studies. Further replication of model fit across samples and refinement of the HADS items is warranted.     

Position,Preference and Personality: A Microlevel Explanation of Negativity in Day‐To‐Day Politics

While many scholars investigate the determinants of negativity in the political sphere, it remains largely unclear why some politicians are more negative than others. Studies thus far lack explanations at the individual level, and they almost exclusively focus on negativity during electoral races. Surveying national and regional representatives in Belgium (N = 228), this study seeks to explain individual politicians’ willingness to go negative during everyday politics. The results show that negativity is not so much related to institutionally driven differences between representatives but more to politicians’ personal characteristics and preference roles. Negative politics, hence, is not an inevitable result of institutional structures, rules, and norms, but rather depends on the characteristics and motivations of the individual representatives citizens elect.     

A bright side of sadness: The depolarizing role of sadness in intergroup conflicts

Intractable conflicts constitute violent and threatening environments that lead to intense emotions and polarized attitudes. Sadness is one emotion frequently elicited by the price of such conflicts. This investigation characterized the effects of sadness on conflict‐related information processing and attitudes in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Findings from four experimental studies suggest that both incidental and integral sadness can induce a depolarization of political attitudes. In Study 1 (N = 163), sadness reduced the effect of political ideology on conflict‐related decisions. Sadness reduced the effect of political ideology on in‐group bias in resource allocation in Studies 2 (N = 213) and 4 (N = 274), willingness to negotiate in Studies 1 and 3 (N = 174), and openness to information supporting the out‐group's perspective (Study 4). Overall, in addition to its more negative implications, these results suggest that sadness (compared to both the non‐emotional and anger conditions) may have a bright side, since it may induce depolarization of political attitudes in intractable conflicts.     

Limits of authenticity: How organizational politics bound the positive effects of authentic leadership on follower satisfaction and performance

The authentic leadership paradigm has been widely advocated as an effective leadership approach for organizations interested in promoting positive and ethical leader—member relations. Despite accumulating evidence concerning the positive follower effects of authentic leadership, research examining potential boundary conditions remains limited. The political influence theoretical perspective promises to shed new light on the effects of authentic leadership by proposing that authentic leadership may be less effective in political contexts, bounding its positive operation on followers. Specifically, we anticipate that organizational politics will erode the motivational power of authentic leaders on followers, reducing their ability to engender positive performance contributions in followers. We also predict that organizational politics will weaken the positive relationship between authentic leadership and job satisfaction by reducing the ability of employees to realize their goals at work. To explore these theoretical assertions, we incorporated a two-study functional replication (n₁ = 265; n₂ = 175) to ascertain how authentic leadership and organizational politics impact follower job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and task performance. We find that organizational politics consistently weaken the positive effects of authentic leadership on follower OCB across two studies. Furthermore, in Study 2, our findings suggest that organizational politics attenuate the positive impact of authentic leadership on follower job satisfaction and task performance. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.     

Beyond ‘Liberals’ and ‘Conservatives’: Complexity in Ideology,Moral Intuitions,and Worldview Among Swedish Voters

This research investigated the congruence between the ideologies of political parties and the ideological preferences (N = 1515), moral intuitions (N = 1048), and political values and worldviews (N = 1345) of diverse samples of Swedish adults who voted or intended to vote for the parties. Logistic regression analyses yielded support for a series of hypotheses about variations in ideology beyond the left–right division. With respect to social ideology, resistance to change and binding moral intuitions predicted stronger preference for a social democratic (vs. progressive) party on the left and weaker preference for a social liberal (vs. social conservative or liberal-conservative) party on the right. With respect to political values and broader worldviews, normativism and low acceptance of immigrants predicted the strongest preference for a nationalist party, while environmentalism predicted the strongest preference for a green party. The effects were generally strong and robust when we controlled for left–right self-placements, economic ideology, and demographic characteristics. These results show that personality variation in the ideological domain is not reducible to the simplistic contrast between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, which ignores differences between progressive and non-progressive leftists, economic and green progressives, social liberal and conservative rightists, and nationalist and non-nationalist conservatives.     

Who do we trust? Differences in types of trust and beliefs in conspiracy theories between vaccinated and unvaccinated Europeans across 17 European countries

A plethora of research has highlighted that trust in science, political trust, and conspiracy theories are all important contributors to vaccine uptake behavior. In the current investigation, relying on data from 17 countries (N = 30,096) from the European Social Survey we examined how those who received (and wanted to receive the COVID-19 vaccine) compared to those who did not differ in their trust in: science, politicians and political parties, international organizations and towards people in general. We also examined whether they differed in how much they believed in conspiracy theories. Those who received (or wanted to receive) the COVID vaccine scored significantly higher in all forms of trust, and lower in conspiracy theory beliefs. A logistic regression suggested that trust in science, politicians, international organizations, as well as belief in conspiracy theories were significant predictors, even after accounting for key demographic characteristics.     

Invariance of the “NEO-PI-R” factor structure across exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses

Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) carried out in the last decades to test the Five-factor simple structure have generally obtained negative results. McCrae, Zonderman, Costa, Bond, and Paunonen (1996) suggested that CFA limitations were the main cause of such negative results. They also claim that Procrustes Orthogonal rotation method is an adequate procedure to test the replicability of the Five-factor structure. The aim of the present paper is twofold: (A) comparing several Exploratory factor procedures (including the Procrustes rotation) to test what is the most appropriate one to analyse the replicability of the Five-factor structure, and (B) replicating the CFA results of the McCrae et al.’s study with a larger number of subjects. The normative American (N = 1000), and Spanish (2000) standardization samples of the NEO-PI-R, together with an independent university sample (N = 948) were analysed. Results were replicated in the three samples, and suggest that: (1) structural properties of the Five-factor model, as measured by the NEO-PI-R, are invariant irrespective of the Exploratory factor procedure used, and (2) when CFA limitations are surpassed, the Five-factor structure is supported.     

Intellectual Humility and Political Polarization: An Exploration of Social Networks,Attitudes, and Affect

Political polarization is increasing in the United States, threatening social harmony. As this threat grows, it is important to identify factors that engender polarization and ways to disrupt them. To this end, we examined the buffering role of intellectual humility against political polarization and the potential mediating role of political heterophily (i.e., affiliation and communication with political outgroup members). Data were collected in five assessments over an eight-month period, beginning one day prior to the 2020 U.S. presidential election (N = 387) and ending in July 2021 (N = 181). Results showed that intellectual humility was associated with (1) less affective and attitudinal polarization (although in some cases this effect was only present among conservatives) and (2) more political heterophily. Cross-sectional and prospective mediation analyses suggested that intellectual humility may act through political heterophily to reduce attitude polarization. Our findings offer support for the notion that intellectual humility buffers against political polarization and provide preliminary evidence for political heterophily as one mechanism of action.     

General and contextualized emotion goals and its link with well-being across late,middle, and young adulthood

Prior research with young adults has shown how emotion goals (i.e., cognitive representations of preferred emotional states) can be instrumental (positive or negative) depending on the context and how this context sensitivity is linked to higher well-being. However, this research has overlooked older adults. We argue it is important looking at this age group as there is mixed evidence given that on one hand they have been described as exhibiting a positivity bias (hedonic orientation; preference for positive emotion goals), and on the other hand, being capable of suppressing this when it is adaptive to do so. Importantly, this bias towards positive emotion goals has been linked to better emotion regulation and higher well-being in older adults. In order to understand whether older adults can also exhibit instrumental emotion goals and whether this is linked to well-being, we conducted an exploratory study with older (N = 43, M_age = 68.33), middle (N = 47, M_age = 43.83), and young adults (N = 47; M_age = 21.98) who reported about their general and contextual emotion goals (in collaboration and confrontation), their well-being, and their current positive and negative affect. Although older adults reported lower negative affect than young adults, there were no age differences for general and contextualized emotion goals. Across the three age groups, a higher preference for happiness in general and in collaboration was linked to higher well-being. The obtained results highlight the need to study emotion goals longitudinally to better understand their possible changes throughout the lifespan and their influence on well-being.     

Construct validation of the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire in Spanish-speaking countries: Assessment of the reliability,structural and external validity and cross-cultural equivalence

A recent re-operationalisation of grandiose narcissism has resulted in the distinction of two narcissistic strategies based on the cognitive, affective-motivational and behavioural dynamics: admiration (assertive self-enhancement) and rivalry (antagonistic self-protection). The Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ) was developed to assess this model with two higher-order dimensions. However, cross-validations of the NARQ have not been extensively conducted across diverse population groups and languages. This study aimed to test the internal and external validity (through the relation with envy and self-esteem), reliability and cross-cultural equivalence of the Spanish version of the NARQ. The psychometric properties were evaluated in a Spanish sample (N = 310), and cross-cultural equivalence was tested in participants from Chile (N = 234) and Colombia (N = 256). The results supported the reliability and validity of the Spanish NARQ, as well as the cross-cultural equivalence across Spanish-speaking countries. In addition, we discuss obtained differences across Spanish, Chilean and Colombian sample within two narcissistic strategies.     

On the Relation Between Religiosity and the Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories: The Role of Political Orientation

Religious and conspiracy beliefs share the feature of assuming powerful forces that determine the fate of the world. Correspondingly, they have been theorized to address similar psychological needs and to be based on similar cognitions, but there exist little authoritative answers about their relationship. We delineate two theory-driven possibilities. If conspiracy theories and religions serve as surrogates for each other by fulfilling similar needs, the two beliefs should be negatively correlated. If conspiracy and religious beliefs stem from the same values and cognitions, this would speak for a positive correlation that might be diminished—for example—by controlling for shared political ideologies. We approached the question with a meta-analysis (N = 10,242), partial correlations from large Christian-dominated datasets from Germany, Poland, and the United States (N = 12,612), and a preregistered U.S. study (N = 500). The results indicate that the correlations between religiosity and conspiracy theory endorsement were positive, and political orientation shared large parts of this covariance. Correlations of religiosity with the more need-related conspiracy mentality differed between countries. We conclude that similarities in the explanatory style and ideologies seem to be central for the relation between intrinsic religiosity and endorsing conspiracy theories, but psychological needs only play a minor role.     

Exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories promotes prejudice which spreads across groups

This research experimentally examined the effects of exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories on prejudice and discrimination. Study 1 (N = 166) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories concerning immigrants to Britain from the European Union (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) exacerbated prejudice towards this group. Study 2 (N = 173) found the same effect in a different intergroup context – exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) increased prejudice towards this group and reduced participants’ willingness to vote for a Jewish political candidate. Finally, Study 3 (N = 114) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people not only increased prejudice towards this group but was indirectly associated with increased prejudice towards a number of secondary outgroups (e.g., Asians, Arabs, Americans, Irish, Australians). The current research suggests that conspiracy theories may have potentially damaging and widespread consequences for intergroup relations.     

Parent-early adolescent relationship quality and problem behavior in Hungary,the Netherlands,India, and Iceland

Higher parent-child relationship quality has been associated with less internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. However, it remained less clear whether these associations are universal or depend on the country under investigation. Furthermore, fathers are still understudied, even though there is increasing evidence of their important role in early adolescent development. Our study compared the association of mother-child as well as father-child relationship quality with early adolescents’ problem behavior in four culturally different countries, namely Hungary (N = 293; M_age = 11.22; 53% boys), the Netherlands (N = 242; M_age = 11.20; 48% boys), India (N = 230; M_age = 10.68; 61% boys), and Iceland (N = 261; M_age = 10.90; 53% boys). Early adolescents filled out questionnaires in their classroom, assessing warmth and conflict with fathers and mothers and internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. Stepwise multi-group path analysis demonstrated no cross-cultural differences in associations between quality of the parent-child relationship and problem behavior. We did not find any effects of maternal or paternal warmth. However, across samples conflict with mothers was associated with more internalizing and externalizing problem behavior, and conflict with fathers was associated with more externalizing problem behavior. Our findings highlight the need to target conflict with both fathers and mothers in interventions across different countries, especially when addressing externalizing problem behavior.     

“Escape from Freedom”: Authoritarianism-related traits,political ideology,personality, and belief in free will/determinism

Philosophers have long speculated that authoritarianism and belief in determinism are functionally related. To evaluate this hypothesis, we assessed whether authoritarianism and allied personality and political variables predict varieties of belief in determinism in three community samples (N₁ = 566 to 20,010; N₂ = 500; N₃ = 419). Authoritarianism and allied variables manifested moderate to large positive correlations with both fatalistic and genetic determinism beliefs. Controlling for political conservatism did not meaningfully attenuate these relations. Further, openness was negatively related to fatalistic determinism beliefs and agreeableness was negatively related to genetic determinism beliefs. Taken together, our findings clarify the nature of relations between authoritarianism and general personality, on the one hand, and free will/determinism beliefs, on the other, and suggest intriguing intersections between worldviews and personality traits.     

Personal values and political activism: A cross‐national study

Using data from 28 countries in four continents, the present research addresses the question of how basic values may account for political activism. Study (N = 35,116) analyses data from representative samples in 20 countries that responded to the 21‐item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ‐21) in the European Social Survey. Study (N = 7,773) analyses data from adult samples in six of the same countries (Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Poland, and United Kingdom) and eight other countries (Australia, Brazil, Chile, Italy, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine, and United States) that completed the full 40‐item PVQ. Across both studies, political activism relates positively to self‐transcendence and openness to change values, especially to universalism and autonomy of thought, a subtype of self‐direction. Political activism relates negatively to conservation values, especially to conformity and personal security. National differences in the strength of the associations between individual values and political activism are linked to level of democratization.