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The social psychology of populism

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Mapping Populism

Approaches and Methods

Edited by Amit Ron and Majia

Nadesan
First published 2020
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Chapter 16

The social psychology of populism

Paris Aslanidis

Populism revolves around a logic of collective identification, inviting citizens to

see their grievances in the context of a fundamental tension between two distinct
social groups: a positively valorized “people” versus an adversarial “elite.” The
principle of popular sovereignty furnishes the normative foundation for this
claim: the collective will of the people should enjoy absolute primacy in the pol­
itical decision-making process; yet, it is threatened or has already been upended
by elite agents who game the system for their own ends. Accordingly, populists
urge us to mobilize toward the restoration of popular sovereignty.
Populist narratives do not commit to an ideologically coherent policy package
nor do they entice a fixed audience. On the contrary, they involve a highly varie­
gated discourse that can accompany progressive or conservative economic agen­
das while sliding along the socio-cultural axis, from its most liberal to its most
authoritarian endpoints (Aslanidis, 2017). Crisscrossing the Cartesian plane of
political values and offering highly erratic policy prescriptions, populism is
bound to remain elusive for most mainstream theories of voter representation
(Rooduijn, 2018), especially those based on the epistemology of individual cost–
benefit calculations.
Social psychologists have traditionally criticized individualistic conceptions
of personal and group processes, claiming that individuals do not operate in
a social vacuum. Interpersonal utility decision making may be well captured
by game-theoretical analytical instruments, but actual politics involves complex
social processes, irreducible to the forces of individual psychology (Brown,
2000). Given the overwhelming evidence that collective identification is
a significant predictor of collective mobilization (Reicher & Hopkins, 1996),
social psychologists recommend correcting for the over-individualistic portrayal
of social activity by studying the interaction between self and society.
In recent years, the relevance of social psychological theories for political sci­
ence has been repeatedly acknowledged, leading to valuable findings for
a variety of research questions (e.g., Conover, 1984; Jenkins, 2008; Kinder &
Kam, 2010; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001). However, and despite evident affinities
between populism and processes of collective identification, scholars have so far
failed to bring the two fields together. This short chapter delineates a research
 The social psychology of populism 167

agenda to fill the gap, focusing on the social psychological dynamics of the cru­
cial dichotomy between people and elites that underpins populist discourse. The
core argument of my analysis is that populist entrepreneurs manage to sever
voters from their existing political allegiances by discursively politicizing the
social identity of “the people” to benefit from the normative effects of self-
categorization. Thus, ingroup favoritism encourages support for the populist
party or leader, while outgroup derogation solidifies the identity of the populist
camp by “othering” political opponents associated with “elites.”

Social identity theory and political mobilization

Among other topics, social psychology deals with the complex mechanics of
intragroup and intergroup behavior (Hornsey, 2008; Thoits & Virshup, 1997).
Identification with a group influences personal conduct by rendering the indi­
vidual sensitive to her commonality with ingroup peers and her distance from
non-peers, leading to the adoption of stereotypical norms of behavior that can
potentially instigate intergroup conflict. Through the pioneering work of Muza­
fer Sherif (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961) in the Robbers Cave
experiments, it was first established that intergroup behavior was not confined
to ascribed identities such as race or sex, as it was commonly held. Arranging
individuals of similar backgrounds into two arbitrary groups and exposing
them to competitive contests over scarce resources leads to the straightforward
construction of an ingroup identity and a hostility against the outgroup.
An even more important breakthrough took place with Henri Tajfel’s and his
associates’ “minimal group” experiments, which demonstrated that competition
over resources was superfluous for group identity formation and intergroup con­
flict (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971). The mere act of categorizing people
into arbitrary groups produced a psychological effect strong enough to trigger
ingroup bias, in the absence of clear material benefits for the ingroup, and even at
a net cost for its members. When the notion of “group” is introduced among
strangers who have never met each other in person, ingroup favoritism emerges
irrespective of explicit social pressure or realistic benefits toward acting in such
a fashion. Building on the outcome of these experiments, Tajfel formulated
a general theory of intergroup relations, known as Social Identity Theory (SIT)
(Tajfel, 1974; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). SIT along with self-categorization theory
(SCT), developed subsequently by Tajfel’s student John Turner and his associates
(Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), are now the most influential
theories of group processes and intergroup relations.
The concept of social identity, defined as “that part of an individual’s self­
concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership [in] a social
group (or groups) together with the emotional significance attached to that mem­
bership” (Tajfel, 1974, p. 69), is pivotal for intragroup and intergroup behavior.
A person will start to act as part of a group when the social identity associated
with the latter acquires enough salience to produce depersonalization, a condition
168 Paris Aslanidis

where “individuals tend to define and see themselves less as differing individual
persons and more as the interchangeable representatives of some shared social
category membership” (Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty, 1994). While per­
sonal identities influence our self-interpretation as unique individuals, social
identities operate at a higher level of abstraction (Stürmer & Simon, 2004). In
other words, self-categorization—through depersonalization—shifts our assess­
ment of reality from a personal identity viewpoint to a social identity one, from
thinking in terms of “I” to thinking in terms of “we.” This, in and of itself, is
not however a necessary invidious attitude. While different explanations have
been suggested, Tajfel and Turner saw self-categorization as the manifestation of
an inherent human need to hold on to positive group identities in our effort to
sustain a healthy level of individual self-esteem and personal value.
How can we determine whether an individual will indeed experience depersonal­
ization vis-à-vis a specific group identity? SCT’s answer is that the person is
required to perceive this identity as reflecting their expectations, values, motives,
and needs, as conditioned by the existing social context. More specifically, group
identification has both a cognitive and an evaluative component, represented
respectively by the concepts of comparative fit and normative fit (Turner et al.,
1994). Comparative fit is governed by the principle of meta-contrast, which states
that we may consider including ourselves into a group if we perceive our intra-class
differences as significantly smaller compared to inter-class differences within
a given frame of reference (Turner et al., 1987). The ingroup must be seen as intern­
ally coherent and adequately distinct from competitive groups. However, mere vari­
ation is insufficient on its own; the category’s contents also matter. Normative fit
refers to the requirement that the emerging difference between the focal category
and its background exhibits consistency with our “normative beliefs and theories
about the substantive social meaning of the social category” (Turner et al., 1994,
p. 455). The prospective ingroup must exhibit uniqueness and moral merit.
The socio-cognitive passage from “I” behavior to “we” behavior is pivotal for
political mobilization. Empirical studies have repeatedly confirmed that alle­
giance to partisan identities explains electoral behavior better than alternative
theories (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Conover, 1984; Huddy,
Mason, & Aarøe, 2015). It is now trivial to point out that political attitudes are
frequently group-based, arising “from basic cognitive categorization processes
that partition the social world into ingroups and outgroups” (Brewer, 2007,
p. 695). Moreover, strategic agency in political contestation entails that otherwise
regular processes of social categorization may become exacerbated “through
deliberate manipulation by group leaders in the interests of mobilizing collective
action to secure or maintain political power” (Brewer, 2007, p. 703). Politicians
are able—if not obligated—to do this because group-relevant appeals carry
greater legitimacy over claims couched in terms of personal utility (Brewer,
2001). This inherently moral element in the mobilization of political identities
(Gamson, 1992) tends to prioritize collective causes over the explicit pursuit of
personally beneficial outcomes.
 The social psychology of populism 169

Social psychological processes in populist mobilization

As Klandermans (1984; also Simon, 2004) indicates, successful recruitment to
any type of collective political cause happens in stages: communicating the
existence of the ingroup to the targeted individual, conveying eligibility for
inclusion, establishing the social significance of the ingroup for current polit­
ical affairs, extending an invitation and persuading the individual of the nor­
mative value of symbolically enlisting in the ingroup, and, finally, nudging the
new member toward adopting and enacting the group’s norms in terms of mani­
fest political behavior at the voting booth or elsewhere.
Several psychological mechanisms need to be activated before the last stage
can be reached, but agency is a crucial factor. In order to become focal categories
for political contestation, social identities require politicization by strategically
oriented political entrepreneurs (Simon & Klandermans, 2001). Depersonalization
into politicized group consciousness instills the “realization that the inability to
gain valued resources in a society is not a consequence of personal failings but
rather results from inequities in the decision-making and reward distribution pro­
cess” (Miller, Gurin, Gurin, & Malanchuk, 1981, p. 508). The individual must
acquire a political awareness of the ingroup’s relative position in society while
establishing a commitment to mobilize and win satisfaction for the ingroup’s
aggregate societal demands (Miller et al., 1981).
How, then, do populists achieve self-categorization into their ingroup? From
a basic conceptualization of populism as an anti-establishment discourse in the
name of popular sovereignty (Aslanidis, 2016a), we can infer two main social
identities at work: the ingroup is defined as “the people,” while “the elite” operate
as the adversarial outgroup. The ingroup is amenable to both comparative and nor­
mative fit. First of all, the social category of “the people” is symbolically recog­
nizable and accessible to the average citizen. Historically, the political currency of
the popular masses gained value when the novel fiction of the “sovereignty of the
people” started to displace the older fiction of the “divine right of Kings”
(Morgan, 1988). This monumental transformation reverberated in most parts of
the Western world, and the demand for popular sovereignty became the seed from
which the identity of “the people” could develop to acquire political relevance.
Owing to the legacy of the great democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and
nineteenth century, the principle of self-government by the people rests de jure
within the core of our political credos, denigration of which is morally unaccept­
able, even by those skeptical of majoritarian democracy.
Fulfilling the basic requirements posed by SCT, self-categorization into the
populist ingroup can take place in most societies, allowing populists to claim the
high moral ground as champions of popular sovereignty. However, the fact that
populist discourse pits people and elites against each other does not determinis­
tically lead to the adoption of the ingroup’s identity by a given audience exposed
to such rhetorical devices. Populism may exhibit a certain level of “out-of-the­
box” comparative and normative fit that can function as a springboard for
170 Paris Aslanidis

mobilization, yet the social identity of “the people” is usually moot in the
absence of a social dilemma to render it salient.
Put differently, as citizens, we may be passively exhibiting allegiance to our
social identity of “the people,” but we are not necessarily assertive about it
(cf. Dalton & Welzel, 2014). The identity of “the people” possesses
a notorious fluidity that can even hamper mobilization due to its failure to
exhibit quotidian relevance. Populist identity entrepreneurs need to struggle
hard to provide a mobilizing impetus before the psychological benefits of
social categorization can foster wider recruitment. They thus strategically con­
struct the ingroup to be as wide as possible, while accentuating its differences
to a specific outgroup. The outcome is a strictly dichotomous identity space
where inclusion in the populist ingroup is the only morally appropriate political
self-categorization outcomes.
The wide scope of the populist social identity and the inward permeability of
the boundaries of “the people” are key factors. According to SCT, self-
categorization into overlapping social identities follows a hierarchical system of
classification (e.g., Chelsea FC fan, Londoner, British, European, liberal) that
operates at different levels of abstraction according to the level of inclusivity in
each identity. Given the hierarchical structure of politically relevant social iden­
tities, politicians benefit the most when they accentuate identities at the higher end
of the scale because, at the margin, electoral returns are greater when a larger pro­
portion of the general audience is involved (Reicher & Hopkins, 1996).
This is where populists, with their disdain for sectoral interests and their
emphasis on the hyper-inclusivity of the valued category of “the people,” have
an advantage vis-à-vis their competitors. Open to enlisting any sort of societal
grievance (as long as it can be envisioned within the wider struggle between
people and elites) while at the same time prohibiting salience for less-inclusive
nested identities (e.g., worker, Catholic, student), populists effectively censor
competing calculations of identity structures, limiting self-categorization exclu­
sively to the hierarchically superordinate level that is occupied by the populist
ingroup. They thus discursively encompass the whole spectrum of positively
valenced political identities, aiming to draw maximum support from the gen­
eral pool of voters who feel part of “the people,” regardless of potential incom­
patibilities in social identification at lower levels of inclusiveness.
Populists will therefore downplay subordinate “we” identities, declaring
them irrelevant compared to the ultimate political goal, the restoration of
popular sovereignty. During the Great Recession, for instance, populist move­
ment entrepreneurs were extremely vigilant maintaining the monopoly of the
populist “we” identity. Conscious of the dangers of allowing subordinate
identities to produce centrifugal anomalies in the fragile social coalition they
were constructing, they aligned their populist framing in such a way as to
underplay the role of nation, religion, class, and other competing social cat­
egories that could split the movement into competing factions (Aslanidis,
2016b, 2018; Gerbaudo, 2017).
 The social psychology of populism 171

The populist ingroup is not only constructed wide enough to be virtually all-
encompassing, its boundaries are also further depicted so as to be asymmetric­
ally permeable. Due to its normative and apartisan standing, the social identity
of “the people” presents minimal barriers to entry, allowing the individual to
incur limited costs in acquiring it, compared to other political identities. For
instance, the psychological strain involved in shedding a previously cherished
conservative political identity to join a progressive ingroup (and vice versa)
can be enormous. On the contrary, members of either group can more readily
activate the universally venerated baseline value of popular sovereignty and
join the populist cause. This allows populists to drive a wedge into the existing
structure of political identities and encroach into adjacent constituencies.
Furthermore, populist discourse enlists outgroup derogation as a means of
recursively enhancing ingroup cohesion. Because self-categorization is inherently
comparative, the salience of group membership entails accentuating intragroup
similarities as well as intergroup differences. Therefore, ingroup behavior leads
to a cognitive and affective “dichotomization of the social world into clearly dis­
tinct and non-overlapping categories” (Tajfel, 1974, p. 88). However, intergroup
conflict is not a predetermined outcome. Populists discursively construct their
ingroup wide enough to subsume and police competing social identities, and
then direct intergroup hostility toward those who by populist fiat are refused
inclusion into the body of the people. While these targets may either be specific
individuals or collective interest groups, it is essential that they are seen as form­
ing a discernible outgroup. Persistent derogation in the name of the ingroup
elicits an “outgroup homogeneity effect,” a “tendency for within-group accentu­
ation of similarity to apply to outgroups rather more than it does to ingroups”
(Oakes, 2001, p. 11). Outgroup members are made to “all look alike.” While the
ingroup hosts all those entertaining socially beneficial goals, elites do not repre­
sent equally legitimate political perspectives and thus have no legitimate social
bearing; they are self-serving. What holds “them” together is their desire to
retain their ill-acquired privileges as members of “a caste,” “an oligarchy,”
a handful of oppressors of the vast majority of “the 99%.”
Together, depersonalization and intergroup polarization facilitate a sense of
urgency to overthrow “the system” that stacks the deck against “us.” Depend­
ing on the salience of the acquired populist identity, the individual may switch
altogether from expressing grievances as a personal predicament to perceiving
their interests in terms of “the needs, goals and motives associated with
ingroup membership” (Turner et al., 1987, p. 65). Therefore, populists consist­
ently avoid assigning unmitigated primacy to particular grievances that may
become contested; instead, they strive to deflect attention away from the
intragroup discrepancies of their constituency by stressing their differences—as
a whole—with the elite outgroup.
Because residual (non-populist) identities are denied moral legitimacy and no
alternative positive identity can exist at the same level of inclusivity as “the
people,” the identity field is thereby effectively dichotomized. The audience is
172 Paris Aslanidis

presented with a stark choice either acquire the positive social identity of “the
people” and join the ingroup in its struggle for popular sovereignty, or retain
your old political allegiances and risk becoming “othered” as a disciple of the
morally discredited elite. In this sense, populism can be seen as an amalgam of
an “identity identity” of “we, the people” and an “anti-identity identity” as “we,
the anti-elite.” The populist identity entrepreneur will interchangeably focus
on solidifying the ingroup ex positivo by stressing the moral primacy of popular
sovereignty, or ex negativo by investing in the cultivation of the anti-identity
aspect. However, before the group-distinctive perceptions of populism can pre­
scribe political behavior, its entrepreneurs must eventually weave the two
together into a coherent narrative because, conceptually, populism requires their
combination (Aslanidis, 2016a).

Conclusion: social psychological advantages of populist

entrepreneurship
Despite the pivotal role of social psychological processes in political contest­
ation, populist mobilization has not been adequately analyzed from a social-psy­
chological perspective, obstructing our view of a core explanatory mechanism.
The comparative advantages of populism’s particular social psychological format
can be summarized as follows: (a) uncontested availability of comparative and
normative fit due to the historically constituent value of popular sovereignty,
allowing ingroup members to claim the high moral ground; (b) low barriers of
citizen self-categorization due to ingroup permeability, fostering cross-ideological
recruitment; (c) superordinate positioning in the hierarchy of social identities due
to the hyper-encompassing scope of the category of “the people,” facilitating
compatibility with a wide array of societal grievances while authorizing the
censorship of competing intragroup identities; (d) strong ingroup cohesion and
identity commitment due to the dichotomization of social space by means of the
outgroup homogeneity effect and the concomitant attenuation of intragroup
factionalization.
This chapter closes with two important qualifications. First, at a meta-
theoretical level, the stress is on the overwhelming significance of the constructed
and contextual nature of political mobilization. Given that humans are active
meaning-seekers (Simon, 2004) and that language is the primary domain in which
political identities are defined and contested (Billig, 2003; Reicher & Hopkins,
1996), it is unsurprising that political entrepreneurs—of all stripes—manufacture
ingroups and outgroups using linguistic vectors to encourage self-categorization
into groups supportive of their strategic aims (Purdue, Gurtman, Dovidio, & Tyler,
1990). As Brubaker and Cooper (2000) stress, groupist political rhetoric
has a performative and constitutive quality exactly because social reality can be
negotiated and contested. Instead of criticizing this aspect of political meaning-
making, we should understand it as normal and necessary. Accordingly, I avoid
painting populism in normative terms or presenting populist entrepreneurs as
 The social psychology of populism 173

somehow taking advantage of manipulative psychological mechanisms. Rather,

I simply highlight a particular application of otherwise universal social psycho­
logical principles and their specific repercussions for populist mobilization.
Secondly, identity construction should not be overstated as the exclusive
factor conditioning support for a political project. This would render the theory
overly groupist and deterministic, thereby swinging the pendulum to the oppos­
ite extreme compared to reductionist individualistic approaches. Politicized col­
lective identities may indeed consist of unique social psychological motors of
political involvement, but eventual political preferences also draw from cost–
benefit assessments. Social self-categorization operates alongside realistic inter­
est concerns with context arbitrating whether one of the two additive pathways
gains priority (Ellemers & Haslam, 2012; Stürmer & Simon, 2004). Besides, at
a practical level, as Reicher and Hopkins (2001) put it, the success of identity
construction “depends upon hiding all traces of construction and making the
definition of identity that is present seem self-evident” (p. 23).
Given these qualifications, I conclude by suggesting an understanding of
populism as a powerfully inviting discursive container around a set of potentially
substantive political claims. Its logic rests on a sound political principle—popu­
lar sovereignty—that carries great social psychological import for the average
citizen. The ostensibly apartisan nature of populist discourse and its ability
to accommodate multiple social grievances allows populists to win the at least
initially sympathetic attention of a large number of voters with anti-elitist senti­
ments. This chapter comprises an introductory outline of these interesting
dynamics, which political scientists and social psychologists should work
together to develop further.

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