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 western societies and how politics and mass media can fuel these conflicts.
Citizens' attitudes toward science are related to their use of science-related information from various sources. Evidence is scarce regarding citizens' individual media repertoires for staying informed about science as segmentation studies so far have primarily focused on scientific attitudes. In this paper, we explore audience segments regarding their science-related information behavior and whether such segments are comparable or vary between two countries with similar information environments. Based on two surveys in Switzerland and Germany, we identify national audience segments that differ in their sciencerelated information repertoires, and analyze their sociodemographic characteristics and science-related attitudes. In both countries, we find very comparable information user segments ranging from those who inform themselves frequently about science ("Active Seekers"/"Science Consumers") to those who hardly get in contact with any information about science and research ("Non-Users"). Those segments which get in contact with information about science frequently show generally more positive attitudes. AbstractCitizens' attitudes towards science are related to their use of science-related information from various sources. Evidence is scarce regarding citizens' individual media repertoires for staying informed about science as segmentation studies so far have primarily focused on scientific attitudes. In this paper, we explore audience segments regarding their science-related information behavior and whether such segments are comparable or vary between two countries with similar information environments. Based on two surveys in Switzerland and Germany, we identify national audience segments that differ in their sciencerelated information repertoires, analyze their sociodemographic characteristics and sciencerelated attitudes. In both countries, we find very comparable information user segments ranging from those who inform themselves frequently about science ("Active Seekers"/
Interindividual differences in how people think and feel about politics have been investigated for decades. However, the great number of attitudinal concepts that has been developed to describe these differences is likely to distract from their conceptual overlap and dimensional structure. In addition, not much is known about the cross‐cultural invariance of their interrelation. We propose that attitudes towards politics can be structured by two broad higher‐order factors, a factor of general political involvement and a factor of general political trust. In two studies (N1 = 767; N2 = 29,018), including representative samples from 26 democracies, we first conduct several confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to show that the higher‐order model is a well‐fitting and parsimonious alternative to a baseline model without higher‐order factors in most samples. Second, we present evidence from multigroup CFA that the overall patterns of factor loadings are the same across all 26 countries. We interpret this structural equivalence across different democracies as support for the assumption that general political involvement and general political trust reflect basic orientations towards politics that are based on (1) demands of democratic political systems and (2) universal principles in human trait structure.
Caprara et al. (European Journal of Social Psychology 39:1002-1020, 2009) criticized existing measures of internal political efficacy for not taking into account psychological theories of self-efficacy and for the resulting low construct validity. As an alternative, they presented a ten-item measure called Perceived Political Self-Efficacy (P-PSE) Scale. Based on social cognitive theory, it adopts a psychological understanding of self-efficacy and captures the phenomenon in a more systematic and complete manner than previous measures of internal efficacy. We translated the P-PSE scale to German and tested it in a German national quota sample, using quotas for age, gender and education (N = 1025). We provided evidence on the scale's construct validity (by testing its correlations towards related constructs) and on its criterion validity (by regressing political participation propensity on the P-PSE score). The scale explained ΔR 2 = 26% of people's propensity for political participation over and above sociodemographic variables, and ΔR 2 = 12% over and above previously existing measures, demonstrating its incremental value. We also tested cross-cultural measurement invariance towards an Italian sample, establishing configural, as well as partial metric and scalar invariance. In addition, we validated a four-item short version of the scale, which proved to be similarly valid as the full version. We argue, that these two measurement instruments provide a more adequate way of assessing internal political efficacy for research in German-speaking countries.
Objective Relations between the Big Five personality dispositions and individual differences in political trust and involvement in politics have been investigated in many studies. We aimed to systematically integrate these findings and further explore the correlations at different hierarchical levels of the Big Five and political trust and involvement. Method We conducted a meta‐analysis of 43 publications (N1 = 207,360 participants) and estimated latent correlations at different hierarchical levels using two additional samples (N2 = 988 and N3 = 795). Results The meta‐analysis revealed substantial correlations between involvement and openness (+), extraversion (+), and neuroticism (−), but only small correlations between trust and the Big Five. We also found a substantial amount of inconsistency in findings across studies. Our additional analyses showed that (a) correlations with the Big Five were larger for higher‐order factors of general political trust (as opposed to subdimensions such as trust in politicians) and general political involvement (as opposed to subdimensions such as political interest) and (b) correlational patterns within each Big Five domain differed across facets. Conclusion Our analyses indicate that political involvement is more strongly linked to the Big Five than political trust. We discuss the theoretical and empirical relevance of hierarchical constructs.
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