An introduction to the article collection “Measuring attitudes and tendencies of degradation”

Fired by a global dynamic of multiple and interrelated crises, right-wing populist move ments and parties have been on the rise worldwide, advocating increasingly more anti democratic and even extremist positions, and deepening the social divide by offering scapegoats and easy answers to complex problems.This is accompanied by wide array of attitudes, beliefs, resentments, and ideologies that call into question the core of democ racy and human rights.We use the umbrella term "attitudes of degradation" to refer to all concepts and phenomena related to this development.While some attitudes of degradation have a long history (e.g., authoritarianism, right-wing extremism, xenopho bia, antisemitism), and much empirical research has been dedicated to measuring and explaining trends over time, some concepts are less well-established, seem to have been forgotten and reemerged (e.g., anti-intellectualism, antifeminism), and/or developed new dynamics due to changing societies (e.g., transphobia, skepticism towards media/science).This article collection is dedicated to issues of adequately measuring attitudes of degradation in their everchanging manifestations, as well as capturing the values and personality attributes that are connected to it.Covering an array of topics, our contributions include novel scale developments, validations, and translations, as well as analyses of measurement invariance across time and social strata.This way, the article collection provides methodologically sound instru ments to assess attitudes of degradation and their development over time, thus adding