Competitive Norms and the Rise of the Populist Radical Right

• In Event: Anger and Fear in Populist Politics

Abstract

Radical Activation - Competitive Norms and the Rise of the Populist Radical Right
Who and under what circumstances vote for the populist radical right (PRR)? PRR support has been linked to economic grievances and subjective status threat, on the one hand, and to disagreeableness, neuroticism, and narcissistic rivalry, on the other. Building on a previous correlational study (Bifurcated Model of Narcissistic Populism; Komáromy et al., in press), our first study experimentally tests two distinct pathways between subjective status threat, and PRR support. The first pathway involves economically vulnerable individuals with high neuroticism and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), while the second encompasses middle-class individuals with scoring high on narcissistic entitlement and xenophobia. Our first experiment corroborates these pathways, revealing that both narcissistic rivalry (disagreeableness) and vulnerability (neuroticism) positively correlate with PRR support. Crucially, we find evidence for the Radical Activation Hypothesis claiming that narcissistic vulnerability is amplified by low perceived social status, whereas the effect of rivalry is activated by high status. Drawing on previous findings linking narcissism to a competitive worldview (Abraham & Pane, 2016; Jonason & Zeigler-Hill, 2018), defining envy as a competitive emotion (Aristotele, 2007; Da Silva & Vieira, 2019), and linking RWA positively to competitive/vertical and negatively to communal/horizontal societies (Kemmelmeyer et al. 2003), our second experiment explores whether emphasizing communal rather than competitive social norms can attenuate the Rivalry-PRR support and the RWA PRR support paths. This research contributes to our understanding of how reshaping social norms and reimagining institutions can be used to counteract the anti-democratic impact of authoritarian populist parties.

Authors

• Daniel Komaromy, University of Amsterdam

• Matthijs Rooduijn, University of Amsterdam

• Gijs Schumacher, VU University Amsterdam