The education cleavage in populist voting constitutes a fundamental transformation of Western democracies. While anger is a central driver of populist support, it remains a puzzle why the same structural threats (economic and cultural) only fuel anger among less educated, low-income voters, while it cannot explain anger among less educated, well-off voters and the opposite among high-education, low-income voters. This registered report proposes a social psychological explanation that centers on the discrepancy between how much people believe that their social group should be valued and how much they think they are actually valued in society. Using a four-country survey experiment that exposes respondents to group-based social devaluation, we shed light on the psychological and emotional factors that motivate voters to be more receptive to populism in this current political moment.
Bio: Can Zengin is a Postdoctoral researcher at CEVIPOF, Sciences Po. The project is funded by the McCourt Institute and investigates the impact of social media on people'ssocial and political behavior. He studies Comparative Politics and International Relations with a focus on Political Psychology. He is interested in the role of emotions (shame/guilt/pride) in peoples' political behavior about the effects of psychological biases and causes of political polarization. He received his PhD from the Political Science Department at Temple University. His research has been published in Royal Society Open Science.
