Abstract Systematic differences of electoral participation between various social groups indicate crucial constraints of comprehensive democratic inclusion. Yet, there is a dearth of research on electoral participation among individuals with intellectual disability (ID), whose participation rates are considerably lower than among non‐ID citizens. This study examines determinants of electoral participation among individuals with ID based on administrative records covering five cohorts of individuals from the Swedish upper‐secondary school for pupils with ID ( N = 8438), and their parents. Our main results indicate that the severity of the disability and parents who have voted are the strongest predictors of voting among individuals with ID. The latter suggests that family background is vital. However, the socioeconomic status of the families, such as parents' level of education, income, and occupation, are less pivotal factors.
Abstract Do sunk costs shape how voters judge political leaders, or do reputational signals carried by current choices dominate? Across three preregistered experiments (total N = 1462) using vignettes about a national rail project, we orthogonally manipulated sunk costs (high vs. absent), leaders' decisions (continue vs. abandon), campaign commitments (pro, anti, none), and reminders of prior voting behavior. In Experiment 1 ( N = 346), Bayesian ANOVA showed that evaluations (vote likelihood, perceived honesty, competence) were reliably higher when leaders continued rather than abandoned a project, with no main effect of sunk costs and no interaction. Experiment 2 ( N = 719) replicated the null sunk‐cost effect and further found no effect of campaign commitments once the leader's current decision was known. Experiment 3 ( N = 397) used a structural equation model to test mediation: perceived commitment—but not perceived sunk costs—robustly predicted evaluations, and abandonment sharply reduced perceived commitment; prior‐vote cues were weak and did not mediate effects. Together, the studies indicate that people take continuation to signal commitment and view it positively, whereas abandonment stopping signals a breach of commitment and is penalized. Apparent sunk‐cost sensitivity in politics may often reflect a premium on consistency rather than waste aversion. We discuss implications for designing “face‐saving” off‐ramps and reframing evidence‐based reversals as fidelity to higher order commitments.
Abstract Existing scholarship on propaganda in authoritarian regimes centers on whether it persuades or coerces. Within the persuasion camp, researchers have examined how factors such as message source, content, credibility, and audience demographics shape propaganda effectiveness. This study shifts attention to psychological needs. Drawing on evidence from China, it integrates multi‐round survey experiments, a virtual lab‐in‐the‐field experiment using a mobile news app developed by the author, text analysis of state media, and field interviews. The results show that propaganda appealing to the need to belong, the need to maintain self‐esteem, or the need to express core values is most effective among individuals for whom the corresponding need is particularly strong—but generalized propaganda, even when psychologically engaging, is not. The findings suggest that propaganda is most persuasive when targeted to stable psychological orientations rather than designed for broad consumption. These findings have implications for understanding how authoritarian regimes sustain public support: propaganda effectiveness depends not only on content or reach, but also on how closely its psychological appeals correspond to the stable motivational orientations of its audience. The shift in authoritarian communication strategies toward psychologically targeted appeals makes the mechanisms identified here increasingly relevant to understanding contemporary propaganda.
Abstract When political elites and activists promote anti‐discrimination policies, they often frame discrimination as violating liberal moral values such as fairness, care for vulnerable groups, and equality. However, this approach may fail to resonate with conservative voters and could even alienate them. Through two separate studies, this article uses a multi‐method approach to examine the moral values held by supporters and opponents of discrimination and test how conservative and liberal value appeals influence acceptance. The findings reveal that values like loyalty, care for the in‐group, authority, and sanctity appear in acceptors' justifications and that framing discrimination as a violation of these values, associated with conservatism, reduces acceptance across the political spectrum. Contrastingly, appealing to values associated with liberalism backfires and increases Republicans' acceptance. While liberal values were central in shifting social norms towards anti‐discrimination, appealing to conservative values may be more effective in reducing contemporary acceptance of discrimination.
Abstract In political contexts, identities are typically based on shared values. Populist rhetoric often utilizes real and perceived threats to evoke such identities, especially on the far right. Using dedicated items in a survey covering all 27 EU Member States ( N = 27,032), we present evidence on the understudied link between perceived identity threat and values, reflecting foundational motivations of people, as well as downstream political attitudes. At the EU level, personal values related to anxiety avoidance correlate positively with perceived identity threat, whereas growth‐focused values correlate negatively. The positive relationship between identity threat and values focusing on increasing one's self‐efficacy and status is especially pronounced, suggesting compensatory motivational processes. National‐level analysis reveals a more nuanced picture. Perceived identity threat correlates strongly with lower support for liberal policies. This result is relatively homogenous across the EU‐27 and holds when controlling for personal values. Overall, the findings resonate with populist rhetoric focusing on in‐groups and status while attacking liberal policies and universalist values. Conversely, the findings offer hope that policies and communication reducing identity threat may reinforce support for liberal policies and aligned values.
Authoritarian regimes increasingly deploy digital surveillance to monitor citizens, but how this affects citizen compliance remains understudied. We argue that, beyond repressing or deterring regime opponents, digital surveillance serves as an instrument of everyday governance that operates through psychological mechanisms rather than direct coercion. Specifically, pervasive monitoring fosters routine compliance with the regime through self-regulation and mutual observation. However, these effects attenuate over time as citizens habituate to surveillance and update risk assessments about noncompliance. We test this argument against empirical evidence from China. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork and employing a quasi-natural experiment enabled by two pilot surveillance projects that coincided with two national social surveys, we reveal digital surveillance's paradoxical short- and long-term effects: Newly introduced surveillance significantly boosts citizen compliance. Over time, however, this effect diminishes, and even reinforced surveillance cannot sustain the initial surge in compliance. The findings highlight both the potency and the limits of digital surveillance as a tool of authoritarian governance.
This research investigates how perceptions of political betrayal-that is, the perceived violation of mutually known pivotal expectations by a political entity-shape political trust. We test a generalization hypothesis that the loss of trust might extend beyond the specific political entity (i.e., the one who betrayed) and generalize to others. Across three preregistered studies (one cross-sectional and two longitudinal) in Germany, the UK, and the US (N = 2136), we observe that perceptions of betrayal by one political entity is consistently associated with lower trust in that same entity, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Additionally, we find evidence for two types of generalizations: assimilative and contrastive. Perceived betrayal by one figure often decreases trust in other political entities (presumably categorized within a similar category; i.e., assimilation). Conversely, perceived betrayal sometimes increases trust in other political entities (most often political rivals, thus presumably categorized in different categories; i.e., contrast). Lastly, we observe reverse effects from trust toward betrayal, indicating that trust can function as a buffer in the political context. Additional analyses could not identify any distinct or stable partisan effects in these dynamics. We discuss implications for future research and policymaking.
Emotions, such as anger and anxiety, play a central role in political behavior and are extensively studied by political scientists. However, political science has largely adopted psychological theories of emotions without testing their core assumptions in political contexts. In this paper, we focus on appraisal theory and test whether emotions in response to political events follow distinct appraisal patterns and whether the underlying theoretical models accurately predict emotions in political contexts. Across two surveys, participants recalled emotional experiences from either the general or political domain, labeled their emotions, and rated the event along 18 appraisal dimensions. We trained several models to predict emotion families based on the reported appraisals. In the general domain, discrete emotions have distinct appraisal profiles and we can predict them based on the reported appraisals with high accuracy. In the political domain, negative emotion families (anger, anxiety, despair, guilt) have overlapping appraisal profiles, and models perform consistently worse when predicting these emotions. Our findings challenge the assumption that emotions function similarly in political and general domains and suggest that appraisal-based models do not consistently capture political emotions. To understand how emotions arise in response to politics, we need theoretical frameworks that account for these contextual differences.
Although previous research has shown that citizens of democratic nations tend to report higher well-being, the psychological mechanisms underlying this association remain insufficiently understood. Guided by Self-Determination Theory, the present study examined whether democratic functioning enhances well-being in part through the satisfaction of autonomy, a basic psychological need. We distinguished between objective democratic functioning, as captured by standardized democracy indices, and individuals' subjective perceptions of living in a democracy. Data were drawn from three large-scale cross-national surveys. We tested the explanatory role of autonomy at three levels: between individuals (Study 1, 28 countries), between countries (Study 2, 33 countries), and within-country change over time (Study 3, 92 countries). Between individuals, between nations and within nations across time, perceived democratic functioning was consistently associated with greater well-being and lower ill-being via enhanced autonomy. In addition, we found that these subjective perceptions only partially aligned with countries' objective democracy scores across continents. Findings underscore that the subjective experience of democratic functioning, more than objective democratic conditions, is crucial for supporting autonomy and, in turn, mental health. Implications are discussed in terms of how democratic governance is experienced across nations, alongside study limitations and directions for future research.
There is growing research on the relationship between populism and national identity, but findings remain conceptually and methodologically fragmented. This scoping review synthesizes quantitative evidence from 69 manuscripts (87 studies, 232 associations). Following JBI and PRISMA-ScR guidance, we charted study characteristics and used thematic content analysis to classify populism as demand-side (attitudes/beliefs, sentiments/evaluations, endorsement/voting) or supply-side, and national identity as secure versus defensive forms. Evidence is concentrated in Europe (approximate to 69% of studies) and relies mainly on cross-sectional designs (approximate to 75%), with fewer experimental (approximate to 16%) and longitudinal studies (approximate to 7%). Across operationalizations, populism shows consistent positive links with defensive national attachments (e.g., nationalism, national narcissism), especially for voting/endorsement and affective evaluations of populist actors. In contrast, associations with secure national identification (e.g., national satisfaction/pride) are mixed, often null or negative, depending on measurement and modeling choices. Overall, the findings provide a comprehensive evidence mapping that can inform future research on populism and identity.
When are identity-based groups harmful to democracy? We argue that identity-based groups become harmful to democracy when they engage in and promote victimized majority narratives-portraying the majority as being removed from power and sidelined by minority groups. We support this argument through a mixed-method approach and by analyzing Muslim groups in Indonesia. Through interviews with leaders of moderate and hardliner Muslim groups, we show that the narratives are more prevalent in the latter than the former type of groups, even though the groups may hold similar views on other issues such as the question of heterodoxy and blasphemy. We then test this argument at the individual level using original panel data of identifiers of Muslim groups, showing that identifying with hardliner groups-but not the moderate groups-correlates with higher support for political Islam, higher religious intolerance, and higher support for religious violence.
Do liberals prioritize distant others over close relationships, inverting the moral hierarchy? Across three studies, we test this claim directly. Study 1a analyzes a nationally representative U.S. sample (N = 1000). Study 1b reanalyzes four Prolific samples (N = 3201). Study 2 preregisters a new sample (N = 899) using both unconstrained Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES) ratings and a fixed-resource allocation task. Across all studies and ideological groups, ingroups consistently receive the highest moral concern. In unconstrained settings, greater concern for distant entities does not predict reduced concern for close others; ideological differences reflect how far moral concern extends outward, not compromised ingroup prioritization. When concern is treated as a fixed resource, tradeoffs emerge as expected: allocating more to distant targets means allocating less elsewhere. However, even under constraint, ingroups remain the top priority across the political spectrum; liberals simply reallocate more toward distant categories than conservatives do. These findings challenge claims of moral inversion and clarify that liberal moral universalism reflects circle expansion, not reversal in the ordering of concern.
Peace after violent conflict often hinges on reconciliation with persons suspected of having collaborated with an enemy. Receiving communities must refrain from vengeance, lest the cycle of violence renew. Can accused collaborators mitigate past wrongs through attempts at redemption? We present results of an experiment embedded in a face-to-face survey (n = 4592) of communities confronting the return or resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) accused of collaboration with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Despite both reconciliation and revenge being keys to unlocking durable peace, they are rarely investigated within a single study. We find that perceived culpability for past wrongs strongly predicts reconciliation and revenge propensities towards stigmatized IDPs. Redemptive signals have little to no impact, though IDPs who assist in security efforts to combat the enemy elicit more reconciliatory responses. Cognitive and emotional decomposition analyses indicate that past behavior shapes latent reconciliation and revenge propensities because it simultaneously activates a past-oriented moral condemnation and a future-oriented heuristic assessment of the value and risks of associating with the IDP. These results suggest that durable peace requires careful programming attentive to the culpability of individual crimes, and that prevailing redemptory strategies for accused collaborators may be ineffective.
Informing people about historical atrocities and injustice is considered critical for sustaining democracies and preventing similar atrocities in the future. Yet, what remains unknown is whether exposure to factual information about ingroups' historical injustices, such as genocide, slavery, or colonial crimes, leads to increased willingness to address those injustices. In the first study to systematically assess the impact of such exposure in five countries (Canada, France, Germany, Spain, United States), using large samples (n > 1500 per country) and a comprehensive battery of outcomes, we find significant, although limited, impact of exposure to factual information. Pre-registered analyses across countries revealed that participants in the experimental condition reported increased acknowledgment and increased distancing from the identity, while no direct impact on collective action and denial was observed. Exploratory analyses revealed that across countries exposure led to self-reported learning, which predicted all measured outcomes, as well as interesting heterogeneity at the country-level. These findings suggest that factual information is an important first step but that other ingredients are needed to facilitate broader dismantling of past injustice.
In recent years, depression has entered the research agenda of political psychology, emerging as a meaningful psychological correlate of diverse political attitudes and behaviors. Surprisingly, however, its link to populism-the political phenomenon that has probably attracted most public and scholarly attention over the past several years-has not yet been studied. We address this notable blind spot and provide a first exploratory evaluation of the relationship between depressive symptoms and the inclination to populism. To do so, we make use of two European datasets (CRONOS-2 and ESS 11) that include a validated, epidemiological short scale to measure depressive symptoms (CES-D8) and allow us to consider both populist attitudes and populist voting as key individual-level manifestations of populism. Our analyses show that individuals experiencing depressive symptoms tend to exhibit a stronger affinity for populist ideas and are more likely to support populist parties. Our study thus underlines the importance of prevention, early detection, and treatment measures targeting the widespread "black dog" of depression-also in the interest of preserving and promoting democratic health.
Recent studies have highlighted the emotions individuals may experience in response to environmental crises, particularly climate anxiety. Despite a growing literature investigating eco-emotions, further research is needed to identify the associated appraisals-especially moral constructs. This study qualitatively explores young adults' perspectives on environmental crisis, particularly looking at how environmental injustice and perception of political stakeholders are linked to specific emotions. It also examines how eco-emotions may drive self-reported pro-environmental actions. Thirty French young adults (18-29) were interviewed. Sadness and anger were associated with injustice, while diverse emotions were associated with various political stakeholders: Anger was associated with institutions and "other people," hope to non-governmental organizations and anxiety to the media. The study also found that for two thirds of respondents, emotions appear to drive action, with positive emotions (hope, joy) and negative emotions (anxiety, anger and sadness) both having considerable influence. Among other elements, this study highlights how individuals' perception of different political stakeholders leads to a better understanding of their eco-emotions. It also shows that positive emotions can be an equally significant driver of action as negative emotions.
Policy interventions to address global warming have been politically controversial despite the scientific consensus that action is needed. Many environmental groups have thus demanded the use of deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) or "climate assemblies" to give citizens direct influence over policymaking. However, if these assemblies are to be effective at overcoming political gridlock, then their recommendations must affect policy. We investigate the conditions under which the public would support assemblies with this type of power. Our focus lies on how information about the selection procedures used by an assembly, and hence the identity of participants, affects public perceptions of mini-publics. While DMPs sometimes use random samples from the population, they also frequently use samples created by purposively sampling from sub-groups that may be particularly impacted by the policy in question. What effect does purposive sampling have on support for DMPs and their recommendations? We use data from two pre-registered survey experiments in the United Kingdom to examine this question. Contrary to expectations derived from theories of procedural fairness, we find that DMPs that involve targeted recruitment are associated with heightened public support relative to DMPs that utilize pure random sampling.
How do scapegoating narratives emerge, diffuse, and solidify within digital media ecosystems? This paper introduces an actor-affect-affordance (3A) model to explain how complex social problems become symbolically attributed to marginalized groups. This framework is applied to the rise of the "trans terrorism" narrative that followed the 2023 Nashville school shooting, which framed mass shootings as the product of an alleged "gender ideology epidemic," focusing on discourse within a right-wing alternative social media platform where this narrative in part crystallized. Findings offer new insight into the construction of exclusionary identities in the digital age, opening several avenues for future scholarship at the intersection of political psychology, digital communication, and cultural sociology.
How immigrants respond to discrimination is a well-studied topic in political psychology. However, less attention has been paid to whether the impact of discrimination on in-group identification varies within minority groups and why. In Western Europe, Muslims experience significant discrimination and hostility based on their religious identity despite increasing educational integration and upward social mobility. Building on social identity theory and measuring both the strength and relative importance of religious identity, this paper reexamines the discrimination-in-group identification link and investigates heterogeneity based on educational level. Drawing on an original survey of 1456 Turkish immigrants in Germany and combining a survey experiment and an observational study, this paper finds substantive heterogeneity: Higher educated immigrants strengthen their attachment to their religious group when they perceive discrimination, whereas lower educated immigrants tend to distance themselves from their in-group. Additionally, while observational analyses support prior research showing that the average association between discrimination and in-group identification is positive, the priming experiment does not provide evidence for a positive average causal effect. This study makes important empirical and theoretical contributions to research on in-group religious identification and the integration paradox.
What is the nature of affective partisan polarization? We answer this question in a preregistered laboratory study conducted in the United States measuring partisans' affective reactions tostatic images of U.S. politicians with self-reports and physiological indicators of valence and arousal. Consistent with prior research, participants reported substantially more negative evaluations of out-party than in-party politicians. However, we do not observe reliable physiological differentiation between in-party and out-party elites under these conditions. This disconnect between self-reported negative affect and concurrent physiological responses suggests that, in the context of minimal elite exposure, affective polarization can be expressed without detectable visceral activation. These findings are consistent with constructivist and attitude-retrieval accounts and constrain strong versions of the hot cognition thesis, though they do not logically exclude all possible roles for visceral affect under different conditions.
