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Abstract
Before the Great Recession, the rising income inequality within the "old" European Union has been suggested as an important driver of the increase in Euroskepticism. We revisit this finding for the 27 EU member states from 2006 to 2011, introducing individual negative financial expectations as a further driving factor. We also distinguish between Western and Eastern European countries. In the period of Eastern EU enlargement after 2005, Euroskepticism increased by one third while income inequality on average remained stable. Negative financial expectations are positively related to Euroskepticism in the West and non-significantly negatively related in the East. This suggests that Westerners interpret European integration as a threat, while Easterners view it as a chance. In addition, income inequality lost its role in "old" Europe. An increase of one Gini point decreases the probability of Euroskepticism by half a percentage point in the West, while it has no impact in the East.

Before the Great Recession, rising income inequality within the European Union member states has been considered to be one driver for an increasing Euroskepticism. Using rich data on attitudes towards European integration from the Eurobarometer (EB) surveys, we revisit the issue by analyzing the relation between macroeconomic indicators, socio-economic background variables, individual attitudes and the level of Euroskepticism within the 27 EU member states for the period 2006 to 2011. Our analysis shows that Euroskepticism has increased by on third during the financial crisis, while income inequality on average stayed stable. We find that the increase in Euroskepticism is mostly due to "mood:" the fear of losing cultural identity and financial expectations and by large unrelated to economic background variables like income inequality. We find evidence that negative financial expectations are positively related to Euroskepticism in Western European countries and negatively related to Euroskepticism in Eastern European countries. That suggests that financially pessimistic people in Western Europe might interpret European integration as a threat to their financial situation, while Eastern European people might view it as a chance to improve their economic situation.

The present study examined the nomological network of the Short Dark Tetrad scale (SD4). The SD4 measures narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism. We translated the original English SD4 into German and used an online sample (N = 594, 77% women) to investigate its nomological network with regard to the Big Five, honesty-humility, maladaptive personality traits, impulsivity, aggression, motives, values, sociosexual orientation, the octants of the interpersonal circumplex model, and self-esteem. The overall profile similarities between the observed and hypothesized nomological networks were very high. Few correlations differed concerning direction or magnitude. Hence, our study extends the nomological network of the Dark Tetrad in a meaningful way and suggests that the SD4 can be validly interpreted and used for the assessment of narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism.