Overview

The Psychology of Attack Politics explores the use of political attacks in election campaigns, and the way in which their, often deliberate, use impacts voters, and has wide reaching societal consequences. With most elections being fraught with tension, disrespectful treatment of political opponents, and political incivility, this timely book aims to disentangle the dynamics of how attack politics is perceived (e.g., whether citizens perceive a negative message to be, indeed, negative) and evaluated (that is, whether citizens like or dislike attack politics). The book looks also at the effects of attack politics, for instance, whether exposure to negative or uncivil messages alters attitudes and behaviours such as turnout, affective polarization, and support for political violence. The authors provide a systematic conceptualization of attack politics, made up of negativity, incivility, intolerance. Focusing on cutting-edge research in political psychology, political communication and electoral behaviour, the authors make the central argument that to understand the effects of different forms of attack politics, there should be a strong focus on individual differences in message perception and evaluation. Exploring what ultimately drives the effects of negative, uncivil, and intolerant rhetoric, and analysing phenomena at the centre of current scientific and public discourse, this is a fascinating reading for academics and students in psychology, political science, sociology, and communication, as well as anyone interested in political campaigning and elections.

Full Product Details

Author:   Alessandro Nai ,  Lukas P. Otto ,  Chiara Vargiu
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.453kg
ISBN:  

9781032283845

ISBN 10:   103228384
Pages:   276
Publication Date:   25 July 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgements List of tables and figures The authors Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1. Attack Politics is a Shady Business 1.1.1. Defining Attack Politics 1.1.2. All the Shades of Attack Politics: Negativity, Incivility, and Intolerance 1.1.3. Navigating the Spectrum of Attack Politics 1.2. A Constructivist Approach to Attack Politics 1.2.1. What is Constructivism? 1.2.2. Studying Attack Politics from a Constructivist Perspective 1.2.3. The Logic of Attack Politics: Perceptions, Evaluations, and their Effects 1.2.4. Message-, Person-, and Context-level Influences 1.3. The Structure of this Book Chapter 2. Perceptions: Attack politics in the eye of the beholder 2.1. Seeing attack politics for what it is 2.2. Experimental evidence of message perceptions and their drivers 2.2.1. A multi-country experiment 2.2.2. Perceptions of negativity, incivility, and intolerance 2.3. Candidate and message effects: an exploration via a conjoint experiment 2.3.1. A conjoint experiment 2.3.2. Message effects 2.3.3. Perceptual influences of partisanship and gender 2.3.4 Personality and message characteristics 2.4. Concluding remarks Chapter 3. Evaluations: Attack politics is a matter of taste 3.1. Evaluating political attacks: Commonality, moral legitimacy, and entertainment value 3.1.1. Political attacks as common 3.1.2. Political attacks as morally legitimate 3.1.3. Political attacks as entertaining 3.2. Message evaluations and their drivers: evidence from a multi-country experiment 3.2.1. Evaluations of negativity, incivility, intolerance 3.2.2. Perceptions and evaluations 3.2.3. Profile differences 3.2.4. Country differences 3.3. The role of message context: evidence from a conjoint experiment in the USA 3.2.1. Main effects of the message 3.2.2. Social acceptance and social control - legitimate when others support it? 3.2.3. The Dark Triad and negativity, incivility, and intolerance 3.4. Concluding remarks Chapter 4. Candidate likeability and backlash 4.1. Winning that damn' election 4.1.1. A large-scale dataset to measure negativity and incivility in elections worldwide 4.1.2. Negativity and incivility worldwide 4.1.3. Winning an election by going negative and uncivil? 4.2. Candidate likeability 4.2.1. Candidate likeability and ideology 4.2.2. Candidate likeability and populist attitudes 4.3. Experimental evidence 4.3.1. Direct effects 4.3.2. The mediating role of perceptions and evaluations 4.4. Concluding remarks Chapter 5. Demobilization and radicalization 5.1. A (de)mobilizing effect? 5.1.1. Attack politics and interest in the election 5.1.2. Attack politics and turnout 5.2. Attack politics and political violence 5.2.1. Negative attitudes towards the outgroup 5.2.2. Supporting political violence 5.3. Beyond politics 5.4. Concluding remarks Chapter 6. Conclusion 6.1. Main findings at a glance 6.1.2. Not all attacks are alike 6.1.2. We are not all equal before attack politics 6.1.3. Context matters 6.1.4. Perceptions and evaluations drive (some of) the effects of attack politics 6.2. What does this all mean? 6.2.1. For academics 6.2.2. For practitioners References Appendices: Appendix A. Additional materials for Chapter 2 Appendix B. Additional materials for Chapter 3 Appendix C. Additional materials for Chapter 4 Appendix D. Additional materials for Chapter 5

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Author Information

Alessandro Nai is Associate Professor of Political Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His work deals with the dark side of politics, radical partisanship, and political violence. Lukas P. Otto is a senior researcher and head of the team Designed Digital Data at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Science, Computational Social Science department, Cologne, Germany. His work focuses on effects of political communication, political trust and cynicism, as well as (mobile and computational) methods in the social sciences. Chiara Vargiu is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on the perceptions of elite incivility and their effects.

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