The Relationship Between Populist Attitudes, Political Efficacy, Trust and Cognitive Beliefs: A Network Analysis Approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.240101Keywords:
Populist attitudes, Trust, Cognitions, Political efficacy, Network analysis, ModeratorsAbstract
Political attitudes, trust and political efficacy are important indicators of the state of democratic countries. Along with cognitive beliefs, they shape the way people approach political and societal problems or situations. This study aims to (1) examine the relationship between populist attitudes, external political efficacy, trust and cognitive beliefs in a global network model, and (2) test the invariance of the network structures across several moderating variables. A sample based on representative quotas for gender, age, education and region of Slovakia (N = 254) was analysed. The structure of a network of populist attitudes and related variables was examined using a network analysis and moderation analysis. Within the network, mistrust of experts and a conspiracy mentality scored highest on both the strength and closeness index, while the belief in simple solutions had the smallest centrality indices. For moderating variables, relative deprivation, anger, anxiety and powerlessness caused invariance in the network’s global strength or structure. Efforts aimed at reducing populist attitudes may be more effective if they prioritise the enhancement of trust in experts while mitigating tendencies toward conspiracy beliefs. Further replication of the proposed network analysis is, however, needed.
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Data availability statement: All data and code underlying the results presented in this study are available from OSF: https://osf.io/7nhqt/files/osfstorage.
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EPSKAMP, S., BORSBOOM, D. and FRIED, E. I. (2018) Estimating psychological networks and their accuracy: A tutorial paper. In: Behavior Research Methods. Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 195-212. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-017-0862-1.
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FAWZI, N. (2019). Untrustworthy news and the media as “enemy of the people?” How a populist worldview shapes recipients’ attitudes toward the media. In: The International Journal of Press/Politics. Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 146-164. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161218811981.
FILSINGER, M., HOFSTETTER, N. and FREITAG, M. (2023). The emotional fabric of populism during a public health crisis: How anger shapes the relationship between pandemic threat and populist attitudes. In: European Political Science Review. Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 523-541. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773923000036.
GAZAREK, A. and UHRECKÝ B. (2023). Populist Radical Right Parties and the Rhetoric of Emotions. In: Slovak Journal of Political Sciences. Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 56-84. https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.230103.
GEURKINK, B., ZASLOVE, A., SLUITER, R. and JACOBS, K. (2020). Populist attitudes, political trust, and external political efficacy: Old wine in new bottles? In: Political Studies. Vol. 68, No. 1, pp. 247-267. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719842768.
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GONZÁLEZ, S. (2020). Testing the evidence, how good are public sector responsiveness measures and how to improve them? In: OECD Working Papers on Public Governance, No. 38. Paris: OECD Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1787/c1b10334-en.
HAMELEERS, M., BOS, L. and DE VREESE, C. H. (2016). ‘They did it’: The effects of emotionalized blame attribution in populist communication. In: Communication Research. Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 870-900. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650216644026.
HAMELEERS, M., REINEMANN, C., SCHMUCK, D. and FAWZI, N. (2019). The persuasiveness of populist communication: Conceptualizing the effects and political consequences of populist communication from a social identity perspective. In: C. REINEMANN, J. STANYER, T. AALBERG, F. ESSER, AND C. H. DE VREESE (eds.). Communicating Populism: Comparing Actor Perceptions, Media Coverage, and Effects on Citizens in Europe. New York: Routledge, pp. 143-167.
IMHOFF, R. and BRUDER, M. (2014). Speaking (un‐)truth to power: Conspiracy mentality as a generalised political attitude. In: European Journal of Personality. Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 25-43. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/per.1930.
IMHOFF, R. and LAMBERTY, P. (2018). How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine‐grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories. In: European Journal of Social Psychology. Vol. 48, No. 7, pp. 909-926. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2494.
ISVORANU, A. M., EPSKAMP, S., WALDORP, L. J. and BORSBOOM, D. (2022). Network Psychometrics with R: A Guide for Behavioral and Social Scientists. New York: Routledge.
JONES, P. J., MA, R. and MCNALLY, R. J. (2021). Bridge centrality: A network approach to understanding comorbidity. In: Multivariate Behavioral Research. Vol. 56, pp. 353-367. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2019.1614898.
JUNGKUNZ, S., FAHEY, R. A. and HINO, A. (2021). How populist attitudes scales fail to capture support for populists in power. In: PLoS ONE, Vol. 16, No. 12, e0261658. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261658.
KALOGEROPOULOS, A., SUITER, J., UDRIS, L. and EISENEGGER, M. (2019). News media trust and news consumption: Factors related to trust in news in 35 countries. In: International Journal of Communication. Vol. 13, pp. 3672-3693.
KEVICKÝ, D. (2022). Where is the populist radical right successful? Spatial analysis of populist radical right parties in Slovakia and Czechia. In: Eurasian Geography and Economics. Vol. 65, No. 5, pp. 605-626. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2022.2151485.
LOEW, N. and FAAS, T. (2019). Between thin- and host-ideologies: How populist attitudes interact with policy preferences in shaping voting behaviour. In: Representation. pp. 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2019.1643772.
LOZIAK, A. and PITEROVÁ, I. (2023). Populist attitudes as a mediator between relative deprivation and conspiracy mentality. In: Studia Psychologica. Vol. 65, No. 3, pp. 262-278. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/sp.2023.03.879.
MARTÍNEZ, C. A., VAN PROOIJEN, J. W. and VAN LANGE, P. A. M. (2022). The hateful people: Populist attitudes predict interpersonal and intergroup hate. In: Social Psychological and Personality Science. Vol. 14, No. 6, pp. 698-707. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221127491.
MEDE, N. G. and SCHÄFER, M. S. (2020). Science-related populism: Conceptualizing populist demands toward science. In: Public Understanding of Science. Vol. 29, No. 5, pp. 473-491. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520924259.
MUDDE, C. (2019). The Far Right Today. Cambridge (UK): Polity Press.
MUDDE, C. and ROVIRA KALTWASSER, C. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Data availability statement: All data and code underlying the results presented in this study are available from OSF: https://osf.io/7nhqt/files/osfstorage.
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2024-08-01
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Loziak, A. and Piterová, I. (2024) “The Relationship Between Populist Attitudes, Political Efficacy, Trust and Cognitive Beliefs: A Network Analysis Approach”, Slovak Journal of Political Sciences, 24(1). doi: 10.34135/sjps.240101.
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