| Literature DB >> 31566081 |
Stefanie Sprong1, Jolanda Jetten2, Zhechen Wang2,3, Kim Peters4, Frank Mols5, Maykel Verkuyten6, Brock Bastian7, Amarina Ariyanto8, Frédérique Autin9, Nadia Ayub10, Constantina Badea11, Tomasz Besta12, Fabrizio Butera13, Rui Costa-Lopes14, Lijuan Cui15, Carole Fantini16, Gillian Finchilescu17, Lowell Gaertner18, Mario Gollwitzer19, Ángel Gómez20, Roberto González21, Ying-Yi Hong22, Dorthe Høj Jensen23, Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti24, Minoru Karasawa25, Thomas Kessler26, Olivier Klein27, Marcus Lima28, Laura Mégevand29, Thomas Morton30, Paola Paladino31, Tibor Polya32, Tuuli Anna Renvik33,34, Aleksejs Ruza35, Wan Shahrazad36, Sushama Shama37, Heather J Smith38, Ana Raquel Torres39, Anne Marthe van der Bles40, Michael J A Wohl41.
Abstract
Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, N = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, N = 96; Study 3b, N = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. We also found that this relationship is mediated by perceptions of anomie, except in the case of objective inequality in Study 1. This suggests that societal inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie) and that a strong leader is needed to restore order (even when that leader is willing to challenge democratic values).Entities:
Keywords: anomie; authoritarianism; economic inequality; leadership; populism; preregistered; subjective and objective inequality
Year: 2019 PMID： 31566081 DOI： 10.1177/0956797619875472
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Psychol Sci ISSN： 0956-7976