Populism as Identity Politics

Abstract

Populists combine anti-elitism with a conviction that they hold a superior vision of what it means to be a true citizen of their nation. We expected support for populism to be associated with national collective narcissism-an unrealistic belief in the greatness of the national group, which should increase in response to perceived ingroup disadvantage. In Study 1 (Polish participants; n=1007), national collective narcissism predicted support for the populist Law and Justice party. In the experimental Study 2 (British participants; n=497), perceived long-term ingroup disadvantage led to greater support for Brexit and this relationship was accounted for by national collective narcissism. In Study 3 (American participants; n=403), group relative deprivation predicted support for Donald Trump and this relationship was accounted for by national collective narcissism. These associations were present even when we controlled for conventional national identification. We discuss implications of the link between collective narcissism and support for populism.

Swaying to the Extreme: Group Relative Deprivation Predicts Voting for an Extreme Right Party in the French Presidential Election

“…This indicates, consistent with past research on GRD in other domains (e.g., Abrams & Grant, 2012), that a deep feeling of collective injustice involving a comparison between the national ingroup and immigrants is a strong motive behind voting for the ER in France. On the other hand, however, our analysis showed that there were large differences between populist left-wing and populist right-wing supporters in their mean levels of GRD, suggesting that feelings of deprivation may not necessarily underpin populist movements as such, as suggested by Marchlewska et al (2018), but rather that it may be unique to those who sway towards ER candidates. Together, GRD is a distinct predictor of the ER vote alongside anti-immigrant prejudice, but it does not predict left-right political placement.…”

“…IRD, on the other hand, had no impact on political change beliefs. Similarly, Marchlewska et al (2018) manipulated the long-term group-level disadvantage, assuming it evoked GRD, and found that it was responsible for higher likelihood of voting for Brexit in the UK sample (Study 2), whereas self-report GRD in the US was associated with a willingness to vote for Trump over Clinton in the most recent presidential elections (Study 3; see also Pettigrew, 2017). It appears then that feeling deprived in relation to some other groups may motivate individuals to support parties that address these feelings of deprivation in their political rhetoric.…”

In search of an imaginary enemy: Catholic collective narcissism and the endorsement of gender conspiracy beliefs

“…Potentially fertile ground for future research would also be to check if the results would be similar after controlling for different types of collective narcissism (e.g., national collective narcissism; Golec de Zavala et al, 2009;Marchlewska, Cichocka, Panayiotou, Castellanos, & Batayneh, 2018). This seems important especially in Polanda country in which the Roman Catholic Church continues to hold a very strong position and both of these forms of collective narcissism may be strongly related to each other.…”

Low self-esteem predicts out-group derogation via collective narcissism, but this relationship is obscured by in-group satisfaction.

“…The recent and prevalent wave of populism across nations can also be linked to analogous economic and societal conditions. National collective narcissism stands behind the endorsement of populist parties, policies, and politicians (Federico & Golec de Zavala, 2017;Golec de Zavala, Guerra, & Simão, 2017;Marchlewska et al, 2018). Also, a detailed analysis of the populist message indicates that the collective-narcissist belief about the lost grandeur of the in-group lies at the core of populist beliefs (Golec de Zavala et al, 2019).…”