Ricerc@Sapienza

Psychology devoted significant efforts to study the psychological antecedents, correlates and consequences of ideological and political preferences by focusing, almost exclusively, on the left-right ideological divide. However, the recent rise of populism in Italy as well as in other countries (e.g., Trump election in the USA) requires new insights that cannot be easily extrapolated from previous research. From the psychological point of view, populism is thus a rather new topic of research. Our research project will approach this issue with three main goals in mind. First we want to examine whether different forms of social exclusion (e.g., anomie, ostracism, economic inequality) can affect endorsement of populism. In addition we want to test whether the desire to reacquire control can be a mediator of the influence of exclusion on populistic ideology. Second, building on previous research in political psychology, we want to examine how a variety of dispositions are associated with populism and whether a psychological profile of a person embracing a populistic view can be identified. Third, we want to examine the consequences of endorsing populism on attitudes, evaluations and behaviors pertaining different important issues of political and social life such as immigration, conspiracy beliefs about health and environment, political participation.
To accomplish the planned goals we will adopt a variety of research methodologies, tools and measures. We will recur to experimental research, which will include physiological and implicit measures, in the lab to establish clear casual associations. Moreover, ad-hoc large scale correlational research will be designed and conducted. Lastly, analyses will be performed on representative survey data , such as the American National Elections Studies (ANES) and the European Social Survey (ESS).