What is in populist voters' minds? An investigation of the social psychological correlates of populist attitudes among Italian voters

While much research in the past decade has sought to define populism as a novel political phenomenon and to identify the institutional, political, and economic conditions associated with its electoral success, we still know little about the individual-level differences linked to these attitudes. Findings from research on political communication, voting decisions, and attitudes toward political issues suggest that populist voters may differ from other voters not only in their values, beliefs, and worldviews, but also in how they understand political facts and process information from political campaigns. Our paper aims to shed light on the relationship between populist attitudes and specific individual features in terms of personality and cognitive tendencies. We analyzed data from 525 Italian participants who completed a survey on political opinions and information. Populist attitudes were measured using an 11-item scale. We also measured political orientation and attitudes toward several current political issues, as well as a range of individual psychological and psychosocial characteristics, namely: personality traits, need for cognition, and conspiracy mentality. Results showed a positive association between populist attitudes and the traits of agreeableness and neuroticism, as well as with conspiracy mentality. Populist attitudes were instead negatively associated with need for cognition. Participants with stronger populist attitudes were less able to distinguish between real and fake news, and specifically less likely to detect fake news. The discussion focuses on how a better understanding of the social psychological and cognitive profile of people with populist attitudes can help in understanding and predicting some dynamics of our democratic system.