The emotional fabric of populism during a public health crisis: How anger shapes the relationship between pandemic threat and populist attitudes

Abstract

While conventional wisdom connects crises and external threats to increasing support for populism, several questions remain unanswered. Following insights of affective intelligence theory (AIT), we posit that anger and fear elicited by pandemic threat relate differently to populist attitudes. While such relations have already been explored in the context of other hazards (such as financial turmoil, terrorism, or immigration), our study allows us to evaluate the emotional bedrocks of populism in the context of a threat that is not apparently connected to the classical political grievances underlying populism. Expanding the literature on psychological underpinnings of populism and on the political consequences of the pandemic, our analyses of original survey data support our contentions that pandemic threat-induced anger is positively related to populist attitudes while fear is negatively linked to populist stances. This holds in particular for anti-elitism and the Manichean outlook inherent in populism. Altogether, we provide new comparative evidence to the puzzle about the emotional bedrocks of populism by illuminating a domain that has not been systematically explored before.