Psychology of Attack Politics : Perceptions, Evaluations and Effects

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 (i.e., whether citizens like or dislike attack politics). The book also looks at the effects of attack politics, for instance, whether exposure to negative or uncivil messages alters attitudes and behaviors, such as turnout, affective polarization, and support for political violence. The authors provide a systematic conceptualization of attack politics, made up of negativity, incivility, and intolerance. Focusing on cutting- edge research in political psychology, political communication, and electoral behavior, 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 analyzing the phenomena at the center 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.

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 political communication, 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 explores how citizens make sense of hostile behavior in politics, the psychological mechanisms that drive support for political violence, and how elite rhetoric shapes conflict in democratic societies.