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Young and Prone to Populist Ideas? ‐ Facets and Effects of Populist Attitudes in Middle Adolescence

Astrid Körner, University of Jena; Katharina Eckstein, University of Jena; Peter Noack, University of Jena

Reports about increasing levels of distrust in political institutions and actors as well as the susceptibility toward populist and anti-democratic sentiments are viewed with concern, not only in Germany. Focusing on young people in middle adolescence who will live in and contribute to the society of tomorrow, the present study aims at gaining a better understanding of what characterizes populist attitudes among youth. The study will present data from an ongoing research project (JUROP, "Jugendliche und Europa"). As part of the project, students from 31 schools in Thuringia and North Rhine Westphalia filled in a questionnaire on diverse political topics at the beginning and end of 9th grade (at T1 N 1,205, Mage 14.4, SDage .64; 52.0% female). Adopting an inventory originally developed for adult samples (Schulz et al., 2018) populist attitudes were assessed with nine items which allow differentiating the facets of anti-elitism, popular sovereignty, and homogeneity of people. The first set of analyses will test whether these three facets of populism - that have been previously established among adult samples - can also be reliably identified within middle adolescence. A second set of analyses will consider correlates of populist attitudes (e.g., socio-demographic variables, political trust, conspiracy believes) to gain a further understanding of their distribution and to test whether populist attitudes are distinct from theoretically strongly related constructs. Finally, the effects of populist attitudes on youth's political participation, intolerance toward immigrants, and acceptance of violence will be taken into account. In addition to concurrent associations, the study also aims to take advantage of the project's longitudinal format to examine to what extent populist attitudes also explain changes in adolescents' political attitudes and behaviors.

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