COVID-19 Threat and Populism: The Mediation Effect of Epistemic and Significance Motivations

In this work, we analyze the root causes of support for populism through a motivational lens. We propose that threats elicited in periods of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to increase the support for populist attitudes through three motivational processes: the need for personal significance (Kruglanski et al., Perspectives on Psychological Science 17:1050–1071, 2022), the need for collective significance (Kruglanski et al., American Psychologist 68:559–575, 2013; Jasko et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 118:1165–1187, 2020), and the need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski & Webster, Psychological Review, 103(2):263–283, 1996). These motivations can be activated in several circumstances. For example, the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic can induce a sense of uncertainty about the circumstance surrounding the event, which leads individuals to search for clarity and responses. The threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic can also undermine the sense of self-certainty and group-certainty, which induces individuals to search for self-affirming means such as strongly identifying with relevant social groups and subscribing to identity-defining self (Hogg et al., 2010). Polarized ideological platforms that offer certainty and simplicity as well as self-affirming means are particularly suited to address these needs. Accordingly, partially building on the results obtained in two studies, one conducted at the beginning of the pandemic (Spring 2020), and one a year into the pandemic (Spring 2021) in Italy (Study 1, n = 2010; Study 2, n = 1837), we argue that populist narratives play two functions. First, their clear-cut and dichotomous core that draws a line between good and evil is certainty-promoting and thus appealing to those seeking closure. Second, populist narratives promise empowerment, social recognition, and dignity by providing significance-bestowing values to pursue, such as fighting various alleged enemies of the ‘people’. According to this argument, the results showed that the relation between the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and populist attitudes was mediated by epistemic and significance-affirming motivations (i.e., personal and collective need for significance). Specifically, we found that the higher the perceived COVID-19 threat, the higher the need for cognitive closure, the quest for individual significance, and the quest for collective significance. These motivational forces, in turn, were positively related to populist attitudes.