CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Barbieri, Andrea |
|---|---|
| Title | Activating Populism: How Negative Emotions Increase Populist Attitudes |
| Summary | This thesis focuses on the relationship between cognition and populist attitudes. Following the ideational approach to populism, this research contributes to the current literature by providing insights into how citizens form these attitudes. The study asks whether negative emotions and the use of blaming frames increase populist tendencies. Moreover, a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis looks at the interactions between populist attitudes and support for populist candidates in Spain. With a qualitative approach, the thesis verifies what political leaders among the five major national parties in Spain use populist rhetoric. With a survey experiment instead, the thesis tests if and what emotions relate more with populism and if a blaming attribution strategy increases populist attitudes. Even with a small sample size (N = 165), the study is able to confirm the relation between populist attitudes and support for populist candidates and confirms the positive effect of the hypothesized mechanisms on populist attitudes. The thesis also offers interesting methodological insights for future research endeavors. |
| Supervisor | Littvay, Levente |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/barbieri_andrea.pdf |
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