LEI_F_03 Perceived Collective Agency as a Driver of Populist Movements in Times of Threat?
Objectives/ Research Questions
This project focuses on the following questions: What makes populist movements on the political fringe attractive? Is it possible to transfer these processes to democratic majority groups? The project team pursues these questions from the perspective of experimental social psychological research on motivated social cognition, group processes, and social identity. According to the RISC heuristics, this is an affective identity-based perspective on social cohesion. It is based on the model of group-based control. The model assumes that perceived personal helplessness and lacking personal influence can be restored by identifying with powerful groups and acting as group member (not as an individual). Populist-extremist groups focus on a collective we (e.g. the ethnically defined people) and social change through collective action (e.g. “assert the will of the people against the elites”), which expresses collective agency. Membership in such a group (or even just in the category addressed) should therefore become attractive to people, especially when they experience personal loss of control (e.g. in times of social crisis).
Hypothesis:
Populist-extremist (vs. other) groups are perceived as agentic. This perceived agency should determine whether people perceive a social group as attractive (or not). Social-psychological field and laboratory experiments will be conducted to investigate the specific group characteristics that underlie perceived agency and whether – and when – democratic majority groups are also perceived as agentic and therefore become more attractive under conditions of threat.
Thematic relation to social cohesion
Populist-extremist groups pose a potential threat to social cohesion through polarization and antidemocratic attitudes. At the same time, their appeal to potential followers is likely based on emphasizing social cohesion through collective action, albeit in the name of extremist reference groups such as an ethnically defined nation or "the people" versus "the elites." It appears that the same psychological processes and needs (for social belonging and agency) that can lead to the pursuit of social cohesion are working in a "perfected" manner for the success of populist-extremist groups. This should be particularly effective in times of social crises.
The project initially aims to empirically demonstrate these psychological processes to explain the attractiveness of populist-extremist groups. At the same time, we investigate whether - and under what conditions - these processes can also promote overall societal cohesion in times of crisis. Populist-extremist groups often dominate polarized discourses, presumably (also) due to the suggestion of collective agency through seemingly clearly defined collectives and shared collective goals. In experimental intervention studies, it is important to examine whether markers of collective agency, such as clear collective goals, can also increase the perceived agency of democratic majority groups and thus enhance their attractiveness as a psychological in-group. Simultaneously, the project contributes to the development of an integrative theory of social cohesion (and resentment towards otherness) by identifying fundamental psychological processes.
