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Populism has been a major political phenomenon in liberal democracies throughout the last decade. Focusing on economic distress as one of the basic triggers of populism, we proposed a model integrating individual‐level indices of economic distress and status‐based identity threat (i.e., frustration of identity motives) as predictors of populism. We conducted two survey studies operationalizing populism as an individual‐level thin ideology among members of the general French population (Study 1: N = 458; Study 2: N = 1,050). Structural equation models supported status‐based identity threat as a partial mediator in the links between indices of relative deprivation and populism (Study 1). Additional analyses revealed frustrated belonging (i.e., feelings of social exclusion) as the central identity motive in this pattern. Reproducing the same model with belonging frustration instead of global‐identity motive frustration gave similar results (Studies 1 and 2). These findings provide the first evidence implicating identity threat—and belonging threat in particular—in the development of populist thin ideology and showed how identity motives are related to the economic distress pattern that predicts populism.

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice - known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked to a higher country environmental performance - a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicated this initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the association between social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show this relationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many current societal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related to living in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudice towards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and more complex forms of cooperation in societies.

Men sometimes withdraw support for gender equality movements when their higher gender status is threatened. Here, we expand the focus of this phenomenon by examining it cross-culturally, to test if both individual- and country-level variables predict men's collective action intentions to support gender equality. We tested a model in which men's zero-sum beliefs about gender predict reduced collective action intentions via an increase in hostile sexism. Because country-level gender equality may threaten men's higher gender status, we also examined whether the path from zero-sum beliefs to collective action intentions was stronger in countries higher in gender equality. Multilevel modeling on 6,734 men from 42 countries supported the individual-level mediation model, but found no evidence of moderation by country-level gender equality. Both country-level gender equality and individual-level zero-sum thinking independently predicted reductions in men's willingness to act collectively for gender equality.

Men sometimes withdraw support for gender equality movements when their higher gender status is threatened. Here, we expand the focus of this phenomenon by examining it cross-culturally, to test if both individual- and country-level variables predict men's collective action intentions to support gender equality. We tested a model in which men's zero-sum beliefs about gender predict reduced collective action intentions via an increase in hostile sexism. Because country-level gender equality may threaten men's higher gender status, we also examined whether the path from zero-sum beliefs to collective action intentions was stronger in countries higher in gender equality. Multilevel modeling on 6,734 men from 42 countries supported the individual-level mediation model, but found no evidence of moderation by country-level gender equality. Both country-level gender equality and individual-level zero-sum thinking independently predicted reductions in men's willingness to act collectively for gender equality.