Navigating uncertainty: how war and COVID-19 threats shape populist sentiment through need for cognitive closure

Social crises and threatening situations can undermine the sense of certainty leading individuals to seek self-affirming means such as subscribing to belief systems and ideologies that are unambiguous, all-encompassing, and explanatory such as populism. In two cross-sectional datasets collected in Italy one year apart, we tested the indirect effect of different kinds of threats (i.e., threats related to COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict) on populist attitudes through Need for Cognitive Closure (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994, NFCC). In 2022 (N = 1668), we found that both the perceived threat posed by COVID-19 and the threat posed by the Russia-Ukraine Conflict were positively related to NFCC, which in turn was positively related to high levels of populist attitudes. When controlling for the indirect effect of NFCC, COVID-19 threat still held a significant direct effect on populist attitudes, suggesting a partial mediation. The effect of the threat related to the ongoing war on populist attitudes was fully mediated by NFCC. In 2023 (N = 1152), similarly to what we found in the data collected in 2022, the effect of the COVID-19 threat on populist attitudes was partially mediated by NFCC. Whereas the effect of the threat posed by the war was not mediated by NFCC, but directly and positively linked to populist attitudes. Our findings highlighted how populism serves an explanatory function and sense-making when uncertainty arouses from threatening circumstances. Moreover, they underscore the importance of considering contextual variations and distinct threat types when exploring the dynamics of threat perception, and cognitive processes such as perception of uncertainty, and populist attitudes. The results are discussed in light of the relevant literature on threats and the circumstances at the time of the data collection.