Playing Fair: Cooperative vs. Competitive Games and Populism and Punitivism

• In Event: All About Populism

Abstract

In the past thirty years, populist parties and candidates have come to power in many western industrialized countries. The effect of these parties and candidates on political attitudes and behaviors as well as the underlying causes of support for populism have received significant scholarly attention. For instance, research has shown that anger and anxiety causes increased support for populist sentiment and endorsement of more punitive behaviors towards other individuals. Furthermore, the success of populist parties has widely been shown to shift attitudes towards populist parties’ ideal points; while exposure to populist messaging itself has also been shown to increase negative affect and punitivism. This work builds on these projects by examining how to interrupt the populism-punitivism pathway by encouraging respondents to perceive fellow citizens as collaborators rather than competitors. Utilizing a pre-registered survey experiment, we examine how engaging in zero-sum vs. positive-sum games affects support for populist ideologies. Our findings show that individuals who are assigned to play zero-sum games are more likely to support populist sentiments than those who are assigned to collaborative games. Furthermore, this effect is diminished in zero-sum games if the defector is punished. These findings have important implications for understanding both the appeal of populism as well as how this appeal can be mitigated.

Authors

• James Fahey, University of Florida--Dept. of Political Science

• Matthew Rhodes-Purdy, Clemson University

• Stephen Michael Utych, Boise State University