Bringing political psychology into the study of populism

Abstract

Although it is true that populism is a contested concept in the social sciences, there is increasing consensus around the use of an ideational definition of populism within the political science literature. This definition has the advantage of providing a clear concept that can be employed to empirically study not only the supply side but also the demand side of the populist phenomenon. Not by chance, an increasing number of scholars are working with a set of survey items to measure the presence and relevance of populist ideas at the mass level, something that is usually conceived of as populist attitudes. Despite the incremental study of populist attitudes in political science, only very limited links with the political psychology literature have been established so far. In this short piece, I address this shortcoming by discussing two avenues for further research on populism that seek to promote much-needed dialogue between comparative politics and political psychology: political identities and conspiracy theories. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.