Is There a Connection Between Social Devaluation and Support for Populism?

The education cleavage in populist voting constitutes a fundamental transformation of Western democracies. While anger is a central driver of populist support, it remains a puzzle why the same structural threats (economic and cultural) only fuel anger among less educated, low-income voters, while it cannot explain anger among less educated, well-off voters and the opposite among high- education, low-income voters. This registered report proposes a social psychological explanation that centers on the discrepancy between how much people believe that their social group should be valued and how much they think they are actually valued in society. Using a four-country survey experiment that exposes respondents to group-based social devaluation, we shed light on the psychological and emotional factors that motivate voters to be more receptive to populism in this current political moment.