Search Results (8)

Zimbabwe’s 2008 electoral violence created lasting societal impacts, yet the psychological consequences for youth, particularly through intergenerational effects, remain under-explored. This study examines how memories of this violence are transmitted to contemporary youth, including those born after 2008, and influence their political attitudes and participation. The study employed a qualitative approach in Harare’s Mbare suburb, utilising 20 in-depth interviews and four (4) focus groups, which were analysed through a trauma-informed lens. Findings indicate that youth inherit ‘traumascapes’ from elders, which cultivate fear, silence, and political apathy. Parental warnings and experiences link activism directly to vulnerability, prompting youth to adopt disengagement or performative allegiance as survival strategies amidst structural impunity and socio-economic precarity. Unresolved, intergenerationally transmitted trauma perpetuates cycles of civic disempowerment. The study concludes that post-conflict recovery in Zimbabwe requires moving beyond institutional reforms to prioritise psychosocial healing and demands that transitional justice frameworks explicitly address these inherited psychological wounds. Full article

This study evaluates the link between economic voting and electoral behavior in the 2024 European Parliament (EP) elections. This study is grounded in both selective perception and economic voting theories, examining how different independent factors could interact with electoral behavior. In this regard, the research aims to achieve several research directions: (i) the evaluation of the statistical differences in voters’ turnout in 2024 EP elections by geographical regions; (ii) the analysis of the interaction between voters’ perceptions of the current or future economic situations and voter turnout; (iii) the analysis of the interaction between objective economic conditions and electoral behavior. Using both multiple linear regression and logistic models, the study highlights that voter turnout and incumbent party reelection are significantly related to voters’ perceptions of the current or future state of the national economy. The results reveal that regional differences in voter turnout are largely explained by significant differences in voters’ economic perceptions, while the decision to vote for the incumbent party is driven by future economic expectations. The empirical findings underscore the pivotal role played by subjective perceptions in shaping electoral behavior, illustrating that political attitudes and behaviors are derived from personal interpretation of the national economic situations. Beyond theoretical perspectives that highlight the link between psychological processes and voting, the paper might have several practical implications for academics or decision makers interested in the field of electoral behavior. Full article

In this article, we examine toxic masculinity, anti-feminist, anti-globalisation, and anti-military conscription positions in the narratives of what constitutes success and failure among young South Korean men during the COVID-19 pandemic. Misogynistic accounts attributed to the globalised effects of neoliberalism and its evolution through South Korean meritocratic competition, compounded by the social isolation of the pandemic, remain a puzzle psychologically, despite their toxic emotionality. We use the analytical framework of ressentiment to consolidate references to moral victimhood, indignation, a sense of destiny, powerlessness, and transvaluation, as components of a single emotional mechanism responsible for misogynistic accounts. In an empirical plausibility probe, we analyse qualitative surveys with young South Korean men and examine the content of the far-right social sharing site Ilbe (일베) which hosts conversations of young men about success and self-improvement. Our findings show envy, shame, and inefficacious anger transvaluated into to moral victimhood, misogynistic hatred, vindictiveness against women and feminists, and anti-globalisation stances. We discuss how the content of these narratives of success and failure in ressentiment relates to the electoral win of the right-wing People Power party in March 2022 which capitalised on anti-feminist grievances. We also consider the socio-political consequences of ressentiment narratives in the highly gendered and polarised South Korean society and expand the study of ressentiment outside the context of Western democracies where it has been most extensively elaborated. Full article

Like many societies, Poland seems to be increasingly split by the negative feelings many of its citizens feel towards one another because of the ways in which they vote. This phenomenon is known as electoral hostility. This paper sheds light on what it entails in political and psychological terms. A unique feature of this research is its methodological approach, combining family focus groups and individual interviews of up to 70 participants. This enables us to uncover critical insights into the perceptions and experiences of first-time voters and their families. It informs us of Poland’s fractious and emotional political atmosphere, but also on the way in which electoral hostility shapes lives in Poland. The findings highlight the importance of mirror perceptions (the perception that others’ hatred justifies our own) in shaping electoral hostility as an emotional sequence which makes many voters progressively see their emotions towards opposite voters deteriorate from misunderstanding to frustration, anger, disgust, and ultimately hatred. Finally, the analysis foregrounds the ways in which Polish voters adapt their behavior in accordance with their own preconceived notions of hostility. These preconceptions can manifest themselves via three possible routes: (1) avoidance, (2) aggression, and (3) a sense of doom, deterioration, and hopelessness. Full article

The latest IPCC report forcefully states that immediate, decisive, and large-scale actions are needed to avert climate catastrophe. This essay presumes that democratic governments are best and most desirably positioned to take these actions. Yet in the countries most pivotal to global climate change, significant voting blocs are uninterested in environmental issues. The essay urges adding bottom-up dialog between environmental and anti-environmental voters, to current and future top-down technocratic “solutions”. To make this combination result in a unified pro-environment electorate, we must understand: religious objections to environmentalism; the capital-vs.-knowledge strife that slows polluting corporations’ green transitions; and the psychological mechanisms that can make inter-group dialog fruitful. Full article

Electoral psychology is defined as any model based on human psychology that is used to explain any electoral experience or outcome at the individual or aggregate level. Electoral psychology can also be an interface with other crucial aspects of the vote. For example, the interface between electoral psychology and electoral organization constitutes electoral ergonomics. The very nature of the models tested in electoral psychology has also led scholars in the field to complement mainstream social science methodologies with their own specific methodological approaches in order to capture the subconscious component of the vote and the subtle nature of the psychological processes determining the electoral experience and the way in which it permeates citizens’ thoughts and lives. After defining electoral psychology, this introductory article scopes its analytical roots and contemporary relevance, focuses on the importance of switching from “institution-centric” to “people-centric” conceptions of electoral behavior, and notably how it redefines key concepts such as electoral identity and consistency, and approaches questions of personality, morality, memory, identity, and emotions in electoral psychological models. Then, it discusses some of the unique methodological challenges that the field faces, notably when it comes to analyzing largely subconscious phenomena, and addresses them, before explaining how the various contributions to this Special Issue give a flavor of the scope and approaches of electoral psychology contributions to electoral studies. Full article

Using insights from the psychology literature, this article introduces and operationalises the concept of ‘democratic frustration’ to shed new light on the pathologies of democratic crises. While political scientists have devoted ample attention to democratic crises and dissatisfaction, this article suggests that citizens’ frequent references to their “frustration” should be taken more literally. Specifically, it suggests that citizens become frustrated when a perceived democratic delivery deficit interacts with a strong democratic expectation or desire. The article tests this model using two original surveys run in the UK during the 2017 General Election and 2019 European Parliament elections. By measuring expectations and delivery deficit separately, the article maps democratic frustration vis-à-vis alternative concepts such as apathy, criticality, and cynicism, and shows that it is more widespread as an expectation–deficit combination than any of them. It suggests that democratic frustration comprises of three dimensions: ideological, institutional and political. Adapting insights from the psychology of frustration that show it usually results in expressions of withdrawal, anger, or aggression, the article then explores how the three dimensions of frustration typically result in different pathologies. Ideological frustration leads to abstention (withdrawal), institutional frustration to peaceful demonstrations or radical vote (anger) and to envisage leaving one’s country, whilst political and institutional frustrations combine and lead citizens to consider taking part in violent demonstrations or even joining a revolution (aggression). Full article

Electoral ergonomics pertains to the interface between electoral psychology and electoral design. It moves beyond traditional models of electoral organisation that often focus on mechanical effects or changes to who actually votes to investigate the ways in which different forms of electoral organisation will switch on and off various electoral psychology buttons (in terms of personality, memory, emotions and identity) so that the very same person’s electoral experience, thinking process, and ultimately electoral behaviour will change based on the design of electoral processes. This article illustrated this phenomenon based on two case studies, one which showed that young people seemed more likely to vote for radical right parties if they voted postally than in person at the polling station based on panel study evidence from the UK, and another which showed that the time citizens deliberate about their vote varied from 1 to 3 depending on whether they were asked to vote using materialised or dematerialised mono-papers or poly-paper ballots. The article suggested that electoral ergonomics, as the interface between electoral psychology and election design, exceeded the sum of its parts. Full article