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Leaders' persona and the state of the economy are among the two most salient topics during election campaigns. Existing scholarship treats these as two independent or even competing factors. Economic perceptions are overlooked as cues for leader evaluations, while leader evaluations rarely enter considerations of the economic vote. This article builds on evolutionary leadership theory to bridge these distant literatures. It proposes that evaluating leaders' performance based on the resources available to group members may have improved followers' fitness ancestrally. Accordingly, it predicts that the effect of economic perceptions on vote choice is mediated by leaders' warmth and competence impressions in modern democracies. To test these predictions, the article first analyzes representative survey data from seventeen elections in three countries (USA, Australia and Denmark). Second, it relies on two original, well-powered manipulation-of-process experiments to test the validity of the causal claims.

Recent studies have documented large discrepancies between mass preferences and policies in U.S. states consistent with theories that highlight the oversized influence of affluent Americans on policymaking. In this note, we replicate and extend a recent such study (Simonovits, Guess, and Nagler, 2019) to assess how policy bias evolves in time. Specifically, relying on novel data and methods, we construct measures of minimum wage preferences and compare them to observed policies in each state for the years of 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2021. We demonstrate that, averaged across states, policy change closely tracked a pronounced increase in preferences for higher minimum wages, but the size of policy bias remained relatively stable. However, this national pattern hides an increasingly polarized policy landscape: in many states, insufficient responsiveness led to an increasing deviation between preferences and policies, while in other states policy changes—larger than preference changes—closed initial policy bias.

AbstractPartisans view their own candidates through rose‐coloured glasses and see competing candidates much more negatively. However, recent advances in political behaviour reveal that such directional motivated reasoning is not simply about love and hate, but also about more nuanced shifts in preferences. Combining two insights from the psychological sciences – coalitional reasoning and a general dislike of self‐interested leaders – we form the novel prediction that voters pay more attention to out‐party than to in‐party candidates' warmth. We show firm evidence for this prediction relying on election studies data with candidate warmth impressions from 27 elections from seven countries (Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States) between 1984 and 2016; and a re‐analysis of existing experimental data (total N = 140K). Our paper reveals sophisticated psychological mechanisms regulating the importance of candidate warmth and implies that candidates seeking to reduce the partisan gap should establish a warm image.

Hadefuld adfærd på de sociale medier i forbindelse med eksempelvis politiske diskussioner anses for et stigende samfundsproblem. I denne artikel spørger vi: Hvem er udøverne af det politiske had på internettet – og hvem er ofrene? Og er udøverne af og ofrene for had anderledes på internettet end udenfor internettet? Analyserne viser, at de personer, som optræder hadefuldt og rammes af had i forbindelse med politiske diskussioner, i høj grad er de samme både online og offline. Aggressiv adfærd er generelt mere udbredt blandt unge mænd, og analyserne viser, at det også først og fremmest er unge mænd, der optræder hadefuldt både online og offline. I overensstemmelse med viden om aggression generelt retter hadet sig også først og fremmest mod andre unge mænd. Internethad ser således ikke ud til at være en særlig form for had eller aggressivitet. De, der er aggressive offline, er også aggressive online, og de går efter de samme ofre begge steder.

Hostile behavior on social media in connection with, for example, political discussions, is considered a growing societal problem. In this article, we ask: Who are the perpetrators of political hostility on the Internet – and who are the victims? And are the perpetrators and victims of hostility on the Internet different from the victims outside the Internet? The analyses show that the people who act in hostile ways and report being targeted by hostility in connection with political discussions are largely the same both online and offline. Aggressive behavior is generally more prevalent among young men, and the analyses show that it is also primarily young men who behave in hostile ways both online and offline. Consistent with knowledge of aggression in general, hostility is also directed primarily at other young men. Thus, Internet hostility does not appear to be a particular form of hatred or aggression. Those who are aggressive offline are also aggressive online, and they seek out the same victims both places.
Keywords: social media, political debates, hostility, personality

Hostile behavior on social media in connection with, for example, political discussions, is considered a growing societal problem. In this article, we ask: Who are the perpetrators of political hostility on the Internet – and who are the victims? And are the perpetrators and victims of hostility on the Internet different from the victims outside the Internet? The analyses show that the people who act in hostile ways and report being targeted by hostility in connection with political discussions are largely the same both online and offline. Aggressive behavior is generally more prevalent among young men, and the analyses show that it is also primarily young men who behave in hostile ways both online and offline. Consistent with knowledge of aggression in general, hostility is also directed primarily at other young men. Thus, Internet hostility does not appear to be a particular form of hatred or aggression. Those who are aggressive offline are also aggressive online, and they seek out the same victims both places. Keywords: social media, political debates, hostility, personality

Why are online discussions about politics more hostile than offline discussions? A popular answer argues that human psychology is tailored for face-to-face interaction and people's behavior therefore changes for the worse in impersonal online discussions. We provide a theoretical formalization and empirical test of this explanation: the mismatch hypothesis. We argue that mismatches between human psychology and novel features of online environments could (a) change people's behavior, (b) create adverse selection effects, and (c) bias people's perceptions. Across eight studies, leveraging cross-national surveys and behavioral experiments (total N = 8,434), we test the mismatch hypothesis but only find evidence for limited selection effects. Instead, hostile political discussions are the result of status-driven individuals who are drawn to politics and are equally hostile both online and offline. Finally, we offer initial evidence that online discussions feel more hostile, in part, because the behavior of such individuals is more visible online than offline.

AbstractDuring the COVID‐19 pandemic, the imposition of moralistically justified costs on unvaccinated individuals was used to incentivize vaccination uptake. Here, we ask whether such a strategy creates adverse consequences in the form of lowered trust in the pandemic response among unvaccinated individuals, which could jeopardize their compliance with the broader set of health interventions. As our empirical case, we use a press conference held by the Danish government on 8 November 2021, where COVID‐19‐vaccination passports were reintroduced, in part, to pressure unvaccinated people to take up the vaccine. We analyse the effects of the press conference using daily, nationally representative survey data (total N = 24,934) employing a difference‐in‐differences design. We demonstrate that the press conference decreased the trust in the pandemic management by 11 percentage points among unvaccinated individuals, while trust remained high among vaccinated individuals. Moralistic cost imposition also reduced collective action motivation and coping appraisal among unvaccinated individuals, and, while it increased societal threat appraisal among vaccinated people, it failed to do so among unvaccinated individuals. Our findings imply that decision‐makers using moralized cost imposition as a health intervention should be aware of its potential unintended adverse consequences.

What are the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for people's political attitudes and behavior? We tested, specifically, whether the psychological burden of the COVID-19 pandemic relates to antisystemic attitudes (dissatisfaction with the fundamental social and political order), peaceful political activism, and political violence. Nationally representative two-wave panel data were collected via online surveys of adults in the United States, Denmark, Italy, and Hungary (ns = 6,131 and 4,568 in Waves 1 and 2, respectively). Overall, levels of antisystemic attitudes were low, and only a small share of interviewees reported behavioral intentions to participate in and actual participation in political violence. However, preregistered analyses indicated that perceived COVID-19 burden was associated with antisystemic attitudes and intentions to engage in political violence. In the United States, the burden of COVID-19 was also associated with self-reported engagement in violence surrounding the Black Lives Matter protests and counterprotests. We found less robust evidence that perceived COVID-19 burden was associated with peaceful activism.

AbstractIn democracies, majority-rule voting is an esteemed rule for collective decisions, but its hazards have recently become apparent after a series of controversial referendums and ascendant populist leaders. Here, we investigate people's judgments about when voting is appropriate for collective decisions across five countries with diverse cultures and political institutions (Denmark, Hungary, India, Russia, and USA). Participants read scenarios in which individuals with conflicting preferences need to make a collective decision. They judged whether the group should decide by voting, consensus, leadership, or chance. We experimentally manipulated whether the group contains a vulnerable minority – a smaller number of people with more at stake than the majority. In all five countries, participants generally preferred voting without a vulnerable minority, with relatively greater support for voting in more democratic countries. But, when the group included a vulnerable minority, participants in all countries reduced their support for voting and instead preferred consensus.