Psychology of Attack Politics - Perceptions, Evaluations and Effects

The Psychology of Attack Politics explores negativity in election campaigns, and the way in which the, often deliberate, use of negative messaging impacts voters, and has wide reaching societal consequences.

Table des matières

Preface and acknowledgements
List of tables and figures
The authors
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. Attack Politics is a Shady Business
1.1.1. Defining Attack Politics
1.1.2. All the Shades of Attack Politics: Negativity, Incivility, and Intolerance
1.1.3. Navigating the Spectrum of Attack Politics
1.2. A Constructivist Approach to Attack Politics
1.2.1. What is Constructivism?
1.2.2. Studying Attack Politics from a Constructivist Perspective
1.2.3. The Logic of Attack Politics: Perceptions, Evaluations, and their Effects
1.2.4. Message-, Person-, and Context-level Influences
1.3. The Structure of this Book
Chapter 2. Perceptions: Attack politics in the eye of the beholder
2.1. Seeing attack politics for what it is
2.2. Experimental evidence of message perceptions and their drivers
2.2.1. A multi-country experiment
2.2.2. Perceptions of negativity, incivility, and intolerance
2.3. Candidate and message effects: an exploration via a conjoint experiment
2.3.1. A conjoint experiment
2.3.2. Message effects
2.3.3. Perceptual influences of partisanship and gender
2.3.4 Personality and message characteristics
2.4. Concluding remarks
Chapter 3. Evaluations: Attack politics is a matter of taste
3.1. Evaluating political attacks: Commonality, moral legitimacy, and entertainment value
3.1.1. Political attacks as common
3.1.2. Political attacks as morally legitimate
3.1.3. Political attacks as entertaining
3.2. Message evaluations and their drivers: evidence from a multi-country experiment
3.2.1. Evaluations of negativity, incivility, intolerance
3.2.2. Perceptions and evaluations
3.2.3. Profile differences
3.2.4. Country differences
3.3. The role of message context: evidence from a conjoint experiment in the USA
3.2.1. Main effects of the message
3.2.2. Social acceptance and social control - legitimate when others support it?
3.2.3. The Dark Triad and negativity, incivility, and intolerance
3.4. Concluding remarks
Chapter 4. Candidate likeability and backlash
4.1. Winning that damn' election
4.1.1. A large-scale dataset to measure negativity and incivility in elections worldwide
4.1.2. Negativity and incivility worldwide
4.1.3. Winning an election by going negative and uncivil?
4.2. Candidate likeability
4.2.1. Candidate likeability and ideology
4.2.2. Candidate likeability and populist attitudes
4.3. Experimental evidence
4.3.1. Direct effects
4.3.2. The mediating role of perceptions and evaluations
4.4. Concluding remarks
Chapter 5. Demobilization and radicalization
5.1. A (de)mobilizing effect?
5.1.1. Attack politics and interest in the election
5.1.2. Attack politics and turnout
5.2. Attack politics and political violence
5.2.1. Negative attitudes towards the outgroup
5.2.2. Supporting political violence
5.3. Beyond politics
5.4. Concluding remarks
Chapter 6. Conclusion
6.1. Main findings at a glance
6.1.2. Not all attacks are alike
6.1.2. We are not all equal before attack politics
6.1.3. Context matters
6.1.4. Perceptions and evaluations drive (some of) the effects of attack politics
6.2. What does this all mean?
6.2.1. For academics
6.2.2. For practitioners
References
Appendices:
Appendix A. Additional materials for Chapter 2
Appendix B. Additional materials for Chapter 3
Appendix C. Additional materials for Chapter 4
Appendix D. Additional materials for Chapter 5

A propos de l'auteur

Alessandro Nai is Associate Professor of Political Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His work deals with the dark side of politics, radical partisanship, and political violence.
Lukas P. Otto is a senior researcher and head of the team Designed Digital Data at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Science, Computational Social Science department, Cologne, Germany. His work focuses on effects of political communication, political trust and cynicism, as well as (mobile and computational) methods in the social sciences.
Chiara Vargiu is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on the perceptions of elite incivility and their effects.

Détails du produit

• Auteurs: Alessandro Otto Nai, NAI ALESSANDRO, Lukas P. Otto, Chiara Vargiu
• Edition: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Langues: Anglais
• Format d'édition: Livre Relié
• Sortie: 25.07.2025
• EAN: 9781032283845
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3228384-5
• Pages: 276
• Thème: Global Perspectives in Political Psychology
• Catégories: Sciences humaines, art, musique > Psychologie > Psychologie théorique; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Political Parties, PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology, PSYCHOLOGY / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Democracy, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Leadership, PSYCHOLOGY / Applied Psychology, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Corruption & Misconduct, Political leaders & leadership, Organizational theory & behaviour, Social, group or collective psychology, Groups & group theory, Elections & referenda, Organizational theory and behaviour, Political leaders and leadership, Groups and group theory, Elections and referenda / suffrage, Political psychology;campaign negativity