Content uploaded by Agnieszka Golec de Zavala
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Agnieszka Golec de Zavala on Dec 22, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Received: 29 April 2021 Revised: 20 August 2021 Accepted: 27 August 2021
DOI: 10.1111/asap.12274
Special Issue
Collective narcissism and weakening of
American democracy
Oliver Keenan1Agnieszka Golec de Zavala1,2,3
1Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths,
University of London, United Kingdom
2Department of Psychology, SWPS
University of Social Sciences and
Humanities, Poznan, Poland
3ICSTE-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal
Correspondence
Oliver Keenan, Department of Psychol-
ogy,Goldsmiths, University of London, 8
Lewisham Way,New Cross, London SE14
6NW, UK.
Email: oliver.r.keenan@gmail.com
Funding information
Data collection was supported by
the National Science Centre (Grant
2017/26/A/HS6/00647) awarded to
Agnieszka Golec de Zavala
Abstract
The storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and
voter intimidation by Donald Trump’s supporters have
marked significant upheaval in American democracy. In
two cross-sectional studies and one experiment, we tested
the proposition that American collective narcissism is asso-
ciated with support for populist leadership (particular,
their message of renewed ingroup recognition) to the point
of disregard for democratic procedures. In Study 1, con-
ducted just before the 2020 presidential elections, we exam-
ined the association of American collective narcissism with
support for Trump’s re-election even if he was to violate the
democratic procedures while securing it. In pre-registered
Study 2, conducted just after the Capitol attack, we exam-
ined the association between American collective narcis-
sism and support for the attacks. In Study 3, we experi-
mentally examined a more general proposition that col-
lective narcissism is associated with support for populist
leaders and lack of support for democratic procedures,
in a minimal group setting deprived of any associations
with a particular political context. The results of the three
studies converge to indicate that collective narcissism is
most strongly (beyond variables commonly implicated in
support for right-wing populism) associated with populist
leadership to the extent of disregarding democratic norms.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduc-
tion in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2021 The Authors. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLCon behalf of Society for the Psychological
Study of Social Issues
Anal Soc Issues Public Policy 2021;1–22. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/asap 1
2KEENAN ET AL.
[T]he explicit focus of “hate rhetoric” is frequently on who “we” are and this leaves
implicit (but obvious) who is excluded. .. . once it is evident who “they” are and that
“they” endanger us, then a focus on ingroup vulnerability and ingroup virtue is suffi-
cient to legitimate intergroup violence.
—(Reicher et al., 2005,p.632)
... But those days are over. We will no longer tolerate such abuse. We will not allow our
workers to be victimized, our companies to be cheated, and our wealth to be plundered
and transferred. America will never apologize for protecting its citizens.
— (Donald Trump’s Address to United Nations, 2018)
America is fulfilling our destiny as peacemaker, but it is peace through strength.
— (Donald Trump’s Address to United Nations, 2020)
Since rioters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to challenge the certification of Electoral
College votes, Donald Trump has come under increased criticism and faced an impeachment trial
for his rhetoric inciting his followers toward violence (Connolly & Riotta, 2021). In particular,
Trump’s message since the election—an allegation that the presidency was unjustly stolen from
him in a fraudulent, irregular contest that should be reversed—has been identified as a major
factor in leading supporters to endorse his rejection of democratic procedures and results (Wood-
ward, 2021). Donald Trump is an accomplished populist leader (Reicher & Haslam, 2016), who
mobilizes his supporters by defining American national identity in terms of vulnerable greatness
and threatened entitlement (Hogg & Gøtzsche-Astrup, 2021; Kruglanski et al., 2021). He proposes
himself as a warrant of national renewal to re-establish the national superiority that is supposedly
threatened or lost (Federico & Golec de Zavala, 2018; Golec de Zavala & Federico, 2018).
Earlier work identified American collective narcissism—a belief that the national ingroup’s
exaggerated greatness is insufficiently recognized by others (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009, 2019;
Golec de Zavala & Lantos, 2020)—as a major predictor of support for Trump’s presidential can-
didacy in the 2016 elections (Federico & Golec de Zavala, 2018). Since then, national collective
narcissism has been linked to support for illiberal right-wing populist leaders, parties, and poli-
cies worldwide (for reviews, see Golec de Zavala & Keenan, 2021) and moral double standards in
evaluating such leaders (Bocian et al., 2021). As collective narcissism is associated with an exclu-
sive definition of the ingroup and readiness for intergroup hostility (for recent reviews see Golec
de Zavala et al., 2019; Golec de Zavala & Lantos, 2020), the previous studies predicted that Trump’s
presidency and an increased, mainstream presence of collective narcissism as a dominant narra-
tive about national identity would mobilize its adherents around the promise of renewed ingroup
recognition. The Capitol attack can be seen as an effect and illustration of such a construction
of national identity, particularly when this identity was threatened by its representative’s loss of
power. We claim that it happened because collective narcissism is associated with support for pop-
3
ulist leaders to the point of disregard for democratic procedures, seen as an obstacle to the shared
national identity.
In line with this prediction, studies show that national collective narcissism is robustly associ-
ated with right-wing authoritarianism (i.e., obedience to convention and authority and the rejec-
tion of deviants; Altemeyer, 1988) and thus, it is likely to predict support for undemocratic leader-
ship defined by strength and centralization of power (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009, 2019). Authors
also agree that the belief that others constantly threaten the ingroup’s exceptionality is used to jus-
tify group-centrism, that is, hierarchical organization of the group with tightly controlled norms
and authoritarian leadership defined by strength (Hogg & Gøtzsche-Astrup, 2021). In the present
research, we examine collective narcissism’s associations with support for Donald Trump using
undemocratic methods to stay in power before the elections, support for Capitol attacks after the
elections, and support for a generic political candidate advocating renewal of national greatness
even by means that may undermine the rule of law.
COLLECTIVE NARCISSISM AS BASIS OF POPULIST ATTITUDES
Collective narcissism forms the basis of populist attitudes as it puts the perceived needs (i.e.,
concerning proper recognition) of a narrowly construed national ingroup, over that of the wider
national membership or society (e.g., Brexit; Golec de Zavala et al., 2017). National collective nar-
cissism expresses concerns over the national ingroup losing (or having lost) what it was entitled to
have: the recognition of its supremacy and admiration of others (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009). Col-
lective narcissism is associated with negative, highly sensitive emotionality a, hypervigilance to
any threats to the group, and retaliatory aggression even to ambiguous or imagined (e.g., conspir-
atorial) threats (Golec de Zavala et al., 2016; Golec de Zavala & Lantos, 2020). This suggests that
the main concern associated with collective narcissism is the external perception of the national
image rather than the legal organization of the state that serves the nation. Indeed, democratic
organization may be seen as ineffective in preserving or renewing the allegedly undermined exter-
nal recognition of national greatness.
Democratic systems, which involve incremental change through diverse group decisions, are
likely to be seen as ineffective by those who perceive their ingroup’s privilege under threat.
Instead, a strong leader capable of doing what is needed to restore the nation’s proper place and
external recognition will be preferred (Sprong et al., 2019;Spruytetal.,2016). Populist leaders act
to represent this exclusive version of the group, coordinating and mobilizing its members around
renewing ingroup recognition; the bond that results for its members driving aggression against
those outside the “national community” (Kunst et al., 2019). Protecting the ingroup’s desired exter-
nal recognition can be used to harshly sanction excluded group members, for example, women
who do not conform to traditional gender roles (Golec de Zavala & Bierwiaczonek, 2021)andsex-
ual minorities (Mole et al., 2022).
A narrow and exclusive ingroup construal drives anti-democratic collective action in order to
protect and bolster traditional ingroup hierarchies (e.g., of race) through reactionary right-wing
movements (Capelos & Katsanidou, 2018; Selvanathan et al., 2021). Collective narcissism shares
with authoritarianism this narrow normative view of the group and with social dominance orien-
tation (a preference for maintaining group-based hierarchies; Pratto et al., 1994) its justification of
group inequality (Golec de Zavala et al., 2019), which are both associated with anti-democratic atti-
tudes. A group-centric definition of American identity predicts support for Donald Trump enact-
ing antidemocratic policies, such as the registering of all Muslim Americans under the pretext of
4KEENAN ET AL.
anti-terrorism (Dunwoody & Plane, 2019), and autocratic attitudes (e.g., abolishing elections so the
president can decide everything) allow for the subordinating of low-status groups so higher sta-
tus groups can maintain and further their position (Bartusevičius et al., 2020). Therefore, collec-
tive narcissism should be associated with action, which violates democratic procedures. Though,
when this action is seen to secure the ingroup’s recognition, as promised by the populist message,
we expect collective narcissism to be independently and more strongly associated with support
for populist leadership (over and above, right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance ori-
entation).
The message of the populist leader
The populist message should empower and mobilize those who hold the narcissistic belief about
the national ingroup, where individual group members can rally behind an identity leader and
forge a shared direction (Golec de Zavala & Keenan, 2021; Mols & Jetten, 2020), allowing for col-
lective action such as the Capitol Hill raid. In its content, the populist message constructs politics
as a conflict between the morally true “common people” and the morally corrupt politicians and
“elites” who only represent their own interests (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2018). The inclusion of con-
testing groups’ viewpoints and accountability of state power is an obstacle to populist leaders as
the direct embodiment of the will of the “people” (Kaltwasser, 2012). Reicher and Haslam (2016)
argue that Donald Trump uses the frame of the American Jeremiad to present his platform orga-
nized around “Make America Great Again.”
Jeremiad identifies a point in history from which the nation started to decline. The message
promises to remake the group’s significance and to make us special—people are drawn to the
cause of a renewed, exceptional group membership (see also Mols & Jetten, 2014;Wohl&Ste-
faniak, 2020). The message is based on a theme that others should be awed by the ingroup, but
not only are they falling short of being awed but are in fact disrespectful and constantly wrong-
ing the group. This messaging both validates and promises to rectify the narcissistic belief about
the group so that others will be made to recognize the group’s significance. As such, this message
may be convincing to people who endorse national collective narcissism. Indeed, studies show
that national collective narcissism predicts support for populist politicians, parties, and politics
worldwide (Golec de Zavala & Keenan, 2021; Golec de Zavala et al., 2017;2021; Marchlewska et al.,
2018). As populist leaders legitimize collective narcissism as a form of shared national identity,
hostile reactions (e.g., the Capitol Hill raid) to a perceived threat to this identity (e.g., through the
election loss of its empowering representative) become a matter of time.
Current research
In three cross-sectional studies, we tested whether collective narcissism predicts acceptance for
the violation of democratic procedures in support of populist leadership. With ecological valid-
ity in mind, we first tested this prediction using Donald Trump as an exemplar populist leader
(Reicher & Haslam, 2016). We collected data in two time points around the American presiden-
tial election: Study 1 just before in November 2020 and Study 2 several months after in March
2021. In Study 1, we tested whether American collective narcissism was positively associated with
support for Trump using undemocratic means to extend his presidency (Hypothesis 1). Given that
Trump is a prime representative of the populist message, this closely approximates how renewed
5
ingroup recognition is given precedence to the detriment of democratic procedures. In Study 2, we
tested whether American collective narcissism was positively associated with favorable attitudes
toward the Capitol Hill, a direct challenge to the results of the democratic election (Hypothesis
2). Given the raid was to protest the results of a democratic election, this captures the extent to
which violating democratic norms is justified if it is in the explicit interests of renewed ingroup
recognition. This hypothesis was pre-registered (see https://aspredicted.org/42665.pdf).1
Next, in Study 3, with external validity in mind, we tested whether collective narcissism pre-
dicted support for a leader expressing an undemocratic populist message in a minimal group
context (see e.g., Jetten et al., 2015) devoid of associations with any particular political context
including American politics. This allowed us to assess the relationship without the influence of
additional factors implicated in candidate support (i.e., politically motivated cognition; Leeper
& Slothuus, 2014), such as one’s party membership. We tested whether people who endorse col-
lective narcissism were attracted to the content of the populist leader’s message (i.e., regaining
collective significance is worth it by any means necessary) versus the messages of authoritarian
(emphasizing national security and control over norms), nationalistic (emphasizing international
supremacy), or democratic (emphasizing political inclusion and equality) leaders. We expected
collective narcissism to be related to the endorsement of the populist message (especially in com-
parison to the democratic message) even in this scant context (Hypothesis 3).
Across the three studies, we aimed at establishing that the hypothesized association is specific
to collective narcissism over and above relevant predictors of support for populist leaders iden-
tified by the literature. In Studies 1 and 2, we controlled for demographic variables, such as age,
gender, income, and ethnicity, education, and national identification (viewing oneself as a pro-
totypical of the national group), as these have been implicated in support for Trump’s candidacy
(Cook et al., 2017). We also controlled variables that are associated with a right-wing orientation
and have predicted support for Trump: racial resentment (Abramowitz & McCoy, 2019), politi-
cal conservatism, and Republican party identification (Sides et al., 2018). In Studies, 2 and 3 we
include measures of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation also associ-
ated with support for populism and Donald Trump in particular (e.g., Womick et al., 2019). In all
studies, we also controlled for ingroup positivity, measured using the national ingroup satisfaction
scale (positive feelings about one’s group membership; Leach et al., 2008) as American identity is
often defined by positive emotional attachment to the national group (Citrin et al., 2001), which
has been associated with support for Trump (Hanson & O’Dwyer, 2019).
The studies were reviewed and accepted by the Research Ethics Committee at Goldsmiths, Uni-
versity of London. All participants provided informed consent and were fully debriefed. A priori
sample size estimation was carried out using G*Power for multiple regression analysis with eleven
predictors. We conservatively assumed a medium effect size of f2=.19, based on the smallest
effects size for the association between collective narcissism and populism found in the litera-
ture: R2contribution to support for Brexit vote (Marchlewska et al., 2018). The sample estimate
(based 80% power at α=.05) was n=99 for Study 1, n=106 for Study 2 (with the inclusion of two
additional predictors). In Study 3, we set the α=.01 considering repeated comparisons across mul-
tiple outcome measures, the sample estimate was n=105, with five predictors. We oversampled in
each study following the suggestion that correlation sizes stabilize at around n=250 (Schönbrodt
& Perugini, 2013).
1The preregistration specified an additional study design and hypotheses, which was made impossible because of partic-
ipant attrition.
6KEENAN ET AL.
TABLE 1 Factor analysis for Trump election challenge measure
Items Factor loadings
1. President Trump expressed the will to stay in the Oval Office beyond his
constitutionally allotted two terms. He should be able to if he wants to
.913
2. If we have a good President, we should not hold presidential elections every 4 years .912
3. I would like President Trump to win the elections even if he had to compromise the
rule of law
.902
4. I would like my candidate to win the presidential election even if it meant he had to
bend the rules of democracy
.871
5. I would like President Trump to win the elections even if the Supreme Court had to
go against the popular vote
.758
STUDY 1
Participants and design
Participants (n=308; female =136, male =172; age: M =38.81, SD =12.57. range: 21–81) were Ama-
zon MTurk workers who were adult citizens of the United States who took part in a cross-sectional
survey programmed on Qualtrics. Participants who failed attention checks during participation
were redirected away from the survey to ensure only high-quality data was collected.
Measures
Unless otherwise indicated, the continuous variables were measured using a 7-point scale for each
item ranging from 1 (strongly disagree)to7(strongly agree).
Collective narcissism (α=.90, M =4.72, SD =1.45) was measured using a 5-item version of the
Collective Narcissism Scale (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009, used in previous studies, e.g., Golec de
Zavala et al., 2013), for example, “The United States deserves special treatment.”
A measure of support for Trump’s candidacy regardless of democratic procedures was con-
structed for the purpose of this study. A confirmatory factor analysis with robust maximum like-
lihood estimation validated a one-factor scale with good fit, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) =.996;
Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) =.05, 90% Confidence Intervals (CI) [0.00,
0.10], pclose =.447 (Table 1). The 5-item measure tapped support for Trump’s autocratic challenge
to 2020 US election scale (α=.94, M =4.35, SD =1.73). The full list of items can be found in the
Supplemental Materials, the items presented are those selected on face validity as most consistent
with the concept of interest.
Control variables
Following previous research (Federico & Golec de Zavala, 2018), we included as control variables:
age (rescaled to five ordered categories: (1) 18–24,n=5; (2) 25–35,n=153; 36–45,n=62; 46–55,
n=42; 56+,n=46), income (nine ordered categories: (1) less than $10,000,n=16; (2) $10,000–
$14,999,n=15; (3) $15,000–$24,999,n=28; (4) $25,000–$34,999,n=38; (5) $35,000–$49,999,n
=54; (6) $50,000–$74,999,n=92; (7) $75,000–$99,999,n=37; (8) $100,000–$149,999,n=18; (9)
7
TABLE 2 Multiple regression analysis of predictors on support for Trump election challenge
Predictors b 95%CI LL,UL p
(Intercept) −0.37 −0.66,−0.08 .460
Age −0.01 −0.08,0.06 .798
Male −0.00 −0.15,0.14 .975
Income −0.10 −0.17,−0.03 .005
College educated 0.32 0.09,0.55 .006
White ethnicity −0.04 −0.21,0.12 .618
National membership 0.23 0.00,0.45 .050
Racial resentment 0.04 −0.07,0.14 .507
Ingroup satisfaction −0.14 −0.22,−0.05 .001
National collective narcissism 0.73 0.62,0.84 <.001
Conservatism 0.14 0.06,0.22 .001
Republican −0.09 −0.23,0.05 .202
Observations 308
R2/R2adjusted 0.668/0.655
Note. The standardized regression coefficients presented are from robust estimation using heteroscedasticity-consistent standard
errors.
$150,000–$199,999,n=10), gender (0 =female, 1 =male), education (seven ordered categories:
(1) Less than high school,n=1; (2) High school diploma or equivalent,n=14; (3) Some college,n
=36; (4) Associate’s degree,n=24; (5) Bachelor’s degree,n=182; (6) Master’s degree,n=48; (7)
Advanced degree,n=3; recoded 1 for a bachelor’s degree and above, 0 for below), self-identified
race (Black,n=19; Asian,n=11; Native American,n=24; White,n=251; Other, n =3; coded as 1 =
White ethnicity, 0 =non-white), a binary measure of national identification (1 =viewing oneself
as a prototypical American), as well as a measure of national ingroup satisfaction measured by a
4-item scale (Leach et al., 2008;α=.89, M =5.62, SD =1.07) for example, “I am glad to be Amer-
ican” and “It is pleasant to be American.” We also controlled for two political predispositions:
7-point measure of conservative (vs. liberal) self-placement (M =4.36, SD =1.79) and partisan-
ship, which was binary coded (1) for Republican (including 11 republican leaners; n=146) and (0)
for Democrats (including 16 leaners and 11 who supported neither; n=161).
Results and discussion
Analyses were conducted in R v4.0.2 (R Core Team, 2013) with the use of the tidyverse (Wickham
et al., 2019) for data preparation and the sjPlot package (Lüdecke, 2021) for tables and figures. In
order to test Hypothesis 1, that collective narcissism would be associated with support for Donald
Trump staying in power even while illegally challenging the democratic election, over and above
related predictors, a multiple regression analysis was conducted including American collective
narcissism as a predictor, support for Trump as the outcome variable, and all other variables as
controls (Table 2). To account for heteroscedasticity and non-normality in the residuals, the mul-
tiple regression was adjusted to have robust standard errors through heteroscedasticity-consistent
covariance matrix estimation (MacKinnon & Whitehead, 1985), which produces reliable interval
estimates under non-normality (Pek et al., 2018). Partial correlation coefficients were also calcu-
8KEENAN ET AL.
FIGURE 1 Partial correlation coefficients for each variable with support for Trump election challenge
lated (Figure 1), providing a comparable effect size for the bivariate relationships of each variable
with the outcome measure, while accounting for the overlap between all other variables. Consis-
tent with Hypothesis 1, the results show that American collective narcissism is associated with
endorsing Trump extending his presidency using undemocratic means. Moreover, standardized
coefficients show that collective narcissism is by far the strongest predictor.
STUDY 2
Participants and design
Participants (N=302; male =182, female =119, other =1, age: M =38.53, SD =11.29, range =
19.00–73.00) were Amazon MTurk workers who were adult citizens of the United States, who took
part in a cross-sectional survey programmed on Qualtrics. As in Study 1, participants who failed
attention checks during participation were redirected away from the survey.
Measurements
Participants responded using a 7-point scale for each item ranging from strongly disagree (1) to
strongly agree (7).
Collective narcissism scale (α=.92, M =3.98, SD =1.62) was measured as in Study 1.
Ascale(α=.91, M =3.38, SD 1.90) measuring attitudes endorsing the US Capitol raid was
constructed for the purposes of this study. It was based on the populist rhetoric surrounding the
attack, regarding Trump’s claim that the election was stolen from him and that his presidency is
9
TABLE 3 Factor analysis for attitudes toward US Capitol raid
Items Factor loadings
1. Those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were true Americans .928
2. The breaking into the Capitol was motivated by the love of freedom .879
3. The breaking into the Capitol makes America great again .872
4. The breaking into the Capitol was the opposition to injustice .719
necessary for national renewal (Aggarwal, 2021). A confirmatory factor analysis with robust max-
imum likelihood estimation validated a one factor with good fit, CFI =.993, RMSEA =.09, 90%
CI [0.03, 0.15], pclose =.135 (Table 3). The full list of items can be found in the Supplemental Mate-
rials; the items presented are those selected on face validity as most consistent with the concept
of interest.
We included the following controls: age (rescaled to five ordered categories: (1) 18–24,n=11;
(2) 25–35,n=145; (3) 36–45,n=76; (4) 46–55,n=41; (5) 56+,n=29), income (nine ordered
categories: (1) less than $10,000,n=5; (2) $10,000–$14,999,n=12; (3) $15,000–$24,999,n=21;
(4) $25,000–$34,999,n=35; (5) $35,000–$49,999,n=43; (6) $50,000–$74,999,n=91; (7) $75,000–
$99,999,n=44; (8) $100,000–$149,999,n=33; (9) $150,000–$199,999,n=18), gender (0 =female,
1=male), education (seven ordered categories: (1) Less than high school,n=0; (2) High school
diploma or equivalent,n=22; (3) Some college,n=37; (4) Associate’s degree,n=20; (5) Bachelor’s
degree,n=159; (6) Master’s degree,n=57; (7) Advanced degree,n=7; recoded 1 for a bachelor’s
degree and above, 0 for below), self-identified race (Black,n=32; Asian,n=11; Native American,
n=9; White,n=247; Other,n=3; recoded as 1 =White ethnicity, 0 =non-White), a binary
measure of national identification (1 =viewing oneself as a prototypical American), and ingroup
satisfaction (α=.94 M =5.34 SD =1.33) measured as in Study 1.
We controlled for two political predispositions: 7-point measure of conservative (vs. liberal)
self-placement (M =3.94, SD =1.91) and partisanship, which was binary coded (1) for Republican
(including 11 republican leaners; n=104) and (0) for Democrats (including 23 leaners, and 22 who
supported neither; n=198). Furthermore, we controlled for authoritarianism (α=.86, M =5.59,
SD =1.05) measured with childrearing scale (Feldman & Stenner, 1997) where participants rated
their agreement for desirable qualities in children (e.g., respect for elders, obedience). We also con-
trolled for social dominance orientation (α=.80, M =2.82, SD =1.46) measured with the short 4-
item measure (Pratto et al., 2013), for example, “Superior groups should dominate inferior groups.”
Results and discussion
In order to test Hypothesis 2 that collective narcissism is associated with support for the Capitol
Hill raid, over and above control variables, we conducted a multiple regression analysis entering
American collective narcissism as a predictor, support for Capitol Hill raid as the outcome vari-
able, and all other variables as controls. Given heteroscedasticity and non-normality in the resid-
uals, adjustment for robust standard errors was made as in Study 1. Consistent with our predic-
tion, the analysis revealed a significant association between collective narcissism and support for
the Capitol Hill raid. Standardized regression coefficients and partial correlations again showed
collective narcissism to be the strongest predictor, ahead of the other two significant conceptual
predictors: social dominance orientation and conservatism (Table 4, Figure 2)
10 KEENAN ET AL.
TABLE 4 Multiple regression analysis of predictors on support for Capitol Hill raid
Predictors b 95% CI LL,UL p
(Intercept) −0.23 −0.58,0.12 0.311
Age −0.08 −0.15,−0.01 0.031
Male 0.03 −0.10,0.16 0.698
Income −0.08 −0.15,−0.01 0.026
College educated 0.15 −0.03,0.33 0.104
White ethnicity −0.10 −0.27,0.08 0.289
National membership 0.20 −0.05,0.45 0.121
Racial resentment −0.02 −0.11,0.07 0.710
Ingroup satisfaction −0.01 −0.13,0.11 0.855
Collective narcissism 0.47 0.34,0.60 <0.001
Conservatism 0.15 0.05,0.24 0.002
Republican 0.07 −0.11,0.25 0.456
Right-wing authoritarianism −0.06 −0.18,0.06 0.308
Social dominance orientation 0.34 0.22,0.45 <0.001
Observations 302
R2/R2adjusted 0.701/0.688
Note. The standardized regression coefficients presented are from robust estimation using heteroscedasticity-consistent standard
errors.
FIGURE 2 Partial correlation coefficients for each variable with support for Capitol breach
11
Results of Studies 1 and 2 are consistent with the expectations that people who endorse a narcis-
sistic belief about America support Donald Trump’s antidemocratic incitements and his staying
in power while violating democratic procedures. In Study 3, we test whether the link between col-
lective narcissism and support for populist leaders and their undemocratic message generalizes
beyond the particular political context.
STUDY 3
Method
Participants
Participants were Amazon MTurk workers with an additional convenience sample of 48 partici-
pants (N=217; female =93, male =121, other =3; age: M =31.49, SD =11, range: 18–86); the survey
was programmed using Qualtrics. The survey did not ask for details of participants’ nationality,
as it was focused on their fictional group membership. One hundred participants were excluded
on the basis of incomplete responses.
Design
A within-participants experimental design was used, with the leadership vignettes taken as the
experimental factor with four levels (populist, authoritarian, nationalist, democrat) across five
conceptually related covariates: ingroup satisfaction, conservatism, collective narcissism, social
dominance orientation, and right-wing authoritarianism. Age and gender were also included as
control variables. Leadership endorsement was taken as the dependent variable.
Procedure
Participants expressed informed consent to participate in the study that allegedly tested how
emotions influenced participation in a text-based role-playing game. As part of an alleged men-
tal visualization task, participants were introduced to a fantasy land that had two neighboring
countries—Bray and Minay. Participants then gave their preference for one of two abstract paint-
ings and responded to a bogus personality test, which allegedly helped to assign them as mem-
bers of Minay. Participants were then asked to give their opinion on being new members of Minay
and completed the collective narcissism and ingroup satisfaction measures with reference to the
nation of Minay. Next, participants took part in a naming ceremony, giving themselves a name
that they would use as a group member and “met” other members of Minay in narrative format.
This was followed by the completion of the right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance ori-
entation measures, having been told the “other members” were interested in their political views.
They were then told they would take part in the elections that were taking place. They viewed
the leadership profiles on a single page and provided the endorsement scores for all competing
leaders. Finally, they were probed for guessing (nobody guessed the hypothesis), thanked, and
debriefed.
12 KEENAN ET AL.
Measures
Covariates
We controlled for demographic variables: age and gender.
Conservatism (M=4.96, SD =2.95) measured on a 1–10 scale from very liberal to very conser-
vative.
Responses on all covariates below were coded on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree)to7(strongly
agree).
Ingroup satisfaction measured using the ingroup satisfaction scale (α=.84, M =5.69, SD =
0.99), e.g., “I think that the Minayzirith have a lot to be proud of,” “I am glad to be Minayzirith).
Right-wing authoritarianism (α=0.89, M =3.53, SD =1.08) was measured using an 18-item
scale (Duckitt et al., 2010), for example, “The ‘old-fashioned ways’ and ‘old-fashioned values’ still
show the best way to live.”
Social dominance orientation (α=0.83, M =3.11, SD =1.27) was measured using the 8-item
scale (Ho et al., 2015), for example, “An ideal society requires some groups to be on top and others
to be on the bottom.”
Collective narcissism (α=.92, M =4.30, SD =1.68) was measured on the 5-item collective narcis-
sism scale (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009) with reference to the make-believe ingroup, for example,
“The Minayzirith deserve special treatment,” “I will not be satisfied until Minay gets all that it
deserves.” Responses were coded on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree)to7(strongly agree).
Dependent variable
Leadership endorsement was measured on two separate ratings indexing “feelings of warmth” and
“likelihood to vote for” the respective leadership profiles. Participants responded on 0–100 visual
analogue scales for both ratings. These two scores were averaged to give a composite measure of
leader endorsement: populist (r=.83, p<.001; M =44.46, SD =28.57), authoritarian (r=.89, p<
.001; M =46.10, SD =28.73), nationalist (r=.88, p<.001; M =40.48, SD =30.64) ,and democratic
(r=.77, p<.001; M =70.10, SD =20.16). These measures was transformed into long format in
the dataset to create the four level within-factor and the single leadership endorsement outcome
measure.
Stimuli
Participants read profiles (for verbatim see Supplemental Material) for the different candidates.
The candidates emphasized political directions for the group of Minay, providing the gist of
its intended national and foreign policy. These different messages about the group follow from
research that shows that framing issues congruent with the worldviews of the audience lead
to a greater endorsement (Crawford et al., 2013). The profiles were provided on a single page,
which had the warmth and likelihood to vote measures under each vignette. This followed
on from being told that they had gained “full membership” as a “Minayzirith” (national citi-
zen), and it was now important to give their opinion on political candidates for an upcoming
election.
The populist candidate vignette emphasized the paramount importance of ingroup renewal so
that the ingroup would finally be seen as exceptional, and that this might require taking action
“by any means,” against those who do not recognize the ingroup’s uniqueness. The authoritarian
13
candidate vignette followed from the model of authoritarian governance emphasizing collective
security and tightly controlled group norms, suggesting the reasonableness of using force against
those who threaten the group’s safety and values (Harms et al., 2018). The nationalist candidate
vignette followed nationalist attitudes, which emphasize the importance of power and status and
suggests that military assertiveness over other nations was reasonable (Kosterman & Feshbach,
1989; Osborne et al., 2017). The democratic message followed a theoretical model of democratic
governance, focusing on political equality and national inclusion of diverse groups, where coop-
eration is an important value (Dahl, 2008).
RESULTS
Assumption checks indicated non-normality in the residuals2; standard errors were adjusted
through cluster-robust variance estimation with the clubSandwich R package (Pustejovsky & Tip-
ton, 2018). To test Hypothesis 3 that collective narcissism would be associated with support for
the populist message (vs. the other leader messages, especially the democratic message) about
the group, we ran a linear mixed model using the nlme R package (Pinheiro et al., 2017), which
included random intercepts across participants to account for the leadership vignette within-
factor. We dummy coded the factor variable so the populist leader was treated as the base level
across three pairwise comparisons with the other levels (i.e., vs. authoritarian, nationalist, and
democratic). We Bonferroni adjusted the alpha level to .01 to conservatively account for inflated
Type 1 errors from the repeated analyses. We included age and gender variables as controls, along
with the predictor variables and their interaction terms across the levels of the factor variable,
with leadership endorsement ratings taken as the dependent variable. The results for the interac-
tions are shown in Table 5, where negative coefficients indicate a positive rating of the populist
leader relative to the other leaders. Consistent with Hypothesis 3, collective narcissism signifi-
cantly favored the populist leader over the democratic leader, independently of the other covari-
ates. Right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation also significantly favored
the populist leader over the democratic leader, consistent with previous research. Ingroup sat-
isfaction was non-significantly associated with the democratic leader (vs. populist), though the
confidence intervals indicate a leaning toward the democratic leader. This is consistent with
our expectation that it is narcissistic group identification (vs. non-contingent forms of positive
identification) that predicts endorsement of populist leadership. Collective narcissism was non-
significantly associated with the populist leader, compared to either the authoritarian or the
nationalist leader; however, the confidence intervals indicate a strong leaning toward the populist
leader.
Conservatism and social dominance orientation significantly favored the nationalist leader over
the populist. This indicates that realistic group superiority is more important to self-rated conser-
vatives and social dominators than symbolic recognition of the group’s superiority. Right-wing
authoritarianism significantly favored the populist over the nationalist. It was positively, but non-
significantly, associated with the authoritarian leader. This suggests that both authoritarian lead-
ers and populist leaders are highly relatable for right-wing authoritarians and collective narcis-
sists.
2The same analysis was also ran excluding the single identified outlier, with no meaningful changes to the estimates. The
results of this analysis can be found in the Supplemental Materials.
14 KEENAN ET AL.
TABLE 5 Linear mixed model for within-participant interactions across the covariates on leadership
Interactions Leadership endorsement
Covariates Populist (−)vs.: b 95%CI LL,UL p
Ingroup satisfaction Authoritarian 0.05 −0.02,0.12 .141
Nationalist −0.03 −0.12,0.05 .473
Democrat 0.08 −0.02,0.17 .102
Conservatism Authoritarian 0.02 −0.06,0.11 .625
Nationalist 0.21 0.10,0.32 <.001
Democrat −0.14 −0.26,−0.02 .019
Authoritarianism Authoritarian 0.03 −0.12,0.17 .711
Nationalist −0.23 −0.35,−0.11 <.001
Democrat −0.54 −0.72,−0.37 <.001
Social dominance orientation Authoritarian 0.05 −0.07,0.16 .411
Nationalist 0.21 0.08,0.34 .002
Democrat −0.34 −0.52,−0.15 <.001
Collective narcissism Authoritarian −0.10 −0.21,0.01 .062
Nationalist −0.09 −0.20,0.01 .085
Democrat −0.25 −0.38,−0.11 <.001
Note. Estimates are standardized regression coefficients with associated confidence intervals and p-values, from robust standard
errors.
General discussion
The raid of the US Capitol Hill building on January 6, 2021, was an act of political violence that
sought to overturn the result of the democratic election. We suggested that this attack was jus-
tified by the endorsement of national narcissism, which had been mobilized by Donald Trump
during his presidency. The theme of the constant wrong done to the national ingroup (narrowed
down to Trump’s supporters) and the need to regain external recognition of national significance
continued with Trump’s incitement that his electoral loss to Joe Biden “the destroyer of American
greatness” was fraudulent (Riley-Smith, 2020).
Anti-democratic and illiberal right-wing populism has established its presence around the
globe. Some mainstream parties (e.g., the US Republican party and UK Conservatives; Bale, 2018;
Sides et al., 2018) have adopted populism, and countries in Eastern Europe have rejected liberal
democracy in favor of populist governments (e.g., Hungary or Poland; Forgas & Lantos, 2020;
Golec de Zavala et al., 2021). There is resurgent support for France’s populist party National Front
(Tidman, 2021), and Trump himself is running for re-election (Aggarwal, 2021). Central to pop-
ulists’ influence is their ability to successfully communicate to the collective narcissist belief about
the national group. This coordinates the group with a collective goal of regaining its public signif-
icance (Golec de Zavala & Keenan, 2021). Furthermore, this goal allows for preestablished demo-
cratic norms to be broken if perceived as an obstacle.
The results of the present studies converge to indicate that collective narcissism is associated
with support for populist leaders to the point of accepting violations to democracy to keep them
in power. In Study 1, conducted before the 2020 presidential elections, American collective nar-
cissism predicted support for Trump illegally challenging the election if the results were not in his
favor (e.g., did not win the popular vote) and extending his presidency even if it meant “bending
15
the rule of law.” Results of Study 2 affirmed this finding. They indicated that American collective
narcissism was most strongly associated with support for the Capitol Hill raid, viewing it as in
America’s interest, namely, in “making America great again” and not as an insurrection against
the result of a democratic election. In Study 3, this was further supported by the relationship
between collective narcissism and favoring populist leader over democratic leader. This relation-
ship was significantly different from another form of ingroup positivity (i.e., ingroup satisfaction),
which showed a leaning toward the democratic leader. This relationship was also independent of
the related predictors of conservatism, social dominance orientation, and right-wing authoritari-
anism.
This suggests that collective narcissism is a conception of the group that does not hold demo-
cratic norms as valuable. A key finding of this research is that collective narcissism is associated
with support for a populist leader who rejects (or holds as unimportant) established democratic
norms and enables polarization and political violence in the name of renewing the external recog-
nition of the national ingroup’s greatness. This shows that the potential for autocracy is not only
driven by the internal status pursuit of group members (i.e., as is associated with social dominance
orientation; Bartusevičius et al., 2020) but can be mobilized through the pursuit of the external
recognition of a shared vision of collective significance.
Furthermore, collective narcissism was the strongest predictor of support for populist leader-
ship across Studies 1 and 2, over and above all control variables: demographics, conservative polit-
ical orientation, and other forms of national identification, such as prototypical membership and
ingroup satisfaction. This attests to right-wing populism as predominantly a social identity-based
process revolving around a particular framing of the group as deprived and wronged by others
(Bos et al., 2020), which is clarified when collective narcissism is included as a predictor (e.g., in
its association over national identification). Collective narcissism may be a key “thickener” (e.g.,
over-conservatism) to populism as a “thin-centred ideology” (i.e., lacking ideological breadth or
development; Hawkins & Kaltwasser, 2017). When populism draws on a narcissistic story about
the national ingroup, it becomes configured (or thickened) to form a right-wing movement involv-
ing preference for inequality, tradition, and national superiority (Golec de Zavala et al., 2021). We
would therefore expect collective narcissism to be closely associated with other normative views
of the ingroup, which predict right-wing populism, such as collective psychological ownership
(i.e., the national ingroup as “belonging” to a certain set of group members; Selvanathan et al.,
2021), and antagonistic forms of collective nostalgia (e.g., a past time when the ingroup allowed
the verbal hurting of others; Lammers & Baldwin, 2020).
The findings from Studies 2 and (partially from) 3 corroborate the view that collective narcis-
sism underpins a unique feature of right-wing populism as it predicts support for the populist
message over and above (or more consistently than) right-wing authoritarianism and social dom-
inance orientation. In the dual-process account of ideology (Duckitt, 2001), right-wing authori-
tarianism and social dominance orientation distinguish different motivational underpinnings of
right-wing political orientation, respectively, ingroup security (from viewing the world as a dan-
gerous place) and realistic competition (from viewing the world as competitive jungle). Impor-
tantly, this model shows how distinct sets of motivational goals can are associated with different
(though related, e.g., as prejudicial attitudes) political outcomes (Duckitt & Sibley, 2010). Accord-
ingly, national collective narcissism expresses a motivation to regain national ingroup significance
(from the worldview of the group as constantly disrespected by others) with implications for right-
wing populist ideology, namely, that collective narcissism is most strongly responsive to a populist
framing of the group. The findings extend research where authoritarians and social dominators
more strongly endorse candidates that frame issues (e.g., abortion) in ways consistent with their
16 KEENAN ET AL.
beliefs (for instance, as a threat to religious values or to men’s group status, Crawford et al., 2013).
This taps the notion of “elective affinities” or relative strength of association between particular
motivations and political ideas (and their representatives; Jost et al., 2009). Specifically, results
from Study 3 that self-rated conservatism and social dominance orientation favor the national-
ist leader while right-wing authoritarianism and collective narcissism favor the populist, suggest
that populism is more ingroup-oriented (e.g., tight, conservative group boundaries), compared to
nationalism’s intergroup-orientation (e.g., competitive, expansionary; see Osborne et al., 2017).
Furthermore, collective narcissism, though ingroup-oriented, may explain why right-wing pop-
ulists become mobilized ostensibly as “anti-establishment” and against the mainstream of the
group (Mondon & Winter, 2020). This form of collective action is stimulated by reactionism or
“resentful affectivity with the forceful desire to return to the past” (Capelos & Katsanidou, 2018,
p. 1272). Indeed, collective narcissists are constantly resentful over their negative belief about how
others view the group and show negative emotional profiles (Golec de Zavala, 2019). This is unlike
authoritarianism, which can promote or buffer wellbeing through just-world beliefs (Napier et al.,
2020). We would expect collective narcissism to be associated with negative group-based emo-
tions, which predict right-wing populism (see e.g., Marchlewska et al., 2018), such as group rela-
tive deprivation (Sengupta et al., 2019) and “anomie” (i.e., pessimism about society; Sprong et al.,
2019).
Another approach involves a shift in perspective of collective narcissism as specific to individ-
ual differences in motivation, to being more broadly situated in social processes (Reynolds et al.,
2010). Collective narcissism indicates a certain subjectively held social identity (i.e., concerning
its unrecognized greatness), which can be shared across the societal context (Elcheroth et al.,
2011). Social identities vary in content, for instance, in the interpretation of the group’s history
and defining qualities (Ashmore et al., 2004; Pehrson et al., 2009), emotions (Smith & Mackie,
2015), values, and traits (Pagliaro et al., 2011; Turner-Zwinkels et al., 2015). It is expected that col-
lective narcissism would be associated with social identity content that serves to legitimize group
inequality, for example, a religious content, which motivates sexism against women perceived to
destabilize the group (Golec de Zavala & Bierwiaczonek, 2021).
Particularly, collective narcissism’s emphasis on the ingroup’s lack of recognition might serve
as a common rubric for experiences of loss of entitlement (e.g., from the expansion of rights for
minority groups; Golec de Zavala & Keenan, 2021) and facilitate the alignment of subgroup iden-
tities (i.e., social sorting; Mason & Wronski, 2018) within a simplified, highly exclusive national
identity. Identity alignment is used by identity entrepreneurs who broaden their appeal by increas-
ing perceptions of group coherence and hierarchical stability (Hogg & Gøtzsche-Astrup, 2021),
where populist leaders coordinate and represent particular subgroup norms as part of the national
identity (McCoy et al., 2018). For example, Republican identity alignment with the religious right-
wing by negotiation of “pro-life” as a value and policy (Williams, 2011) or the simplification of
class identity to the more exclusive “White working class” (i.e., denoting racial privilege; Mondon
&Winter,2019). This would appeal to collective narcissists, for instance, US collective narcissists
are likely to agree that historically dominant groups are most ingroup prototypical (and so most
deserving; see Golec de Zavala et al., 2019). The sharing of the narcissistic view of the group fosters
perceived loss of entitlements at the collective group level—what is deserved (but unmet) as the
“true” national group members—construed as lack of proper recognition for the national ingroup,
which can then be further mobilized with the populist message of renewed ingroup recognition.
This has its real “world-making” consequences through collective action and political support
(Elcheroth et al., 2011).
17
Limitations and future directions
Although the present results allow for important insights into the specific ideological predictors
of the Capitol attacks and into the role of national collective narcissism in inspiring support for
the populist leader to the point of acceptance of undemocratic procedures, the presented results
are correlational. As such they do not allow for any firm statements regarding the directional-
ity of the relationship between collective narcissism and support for populist leaders and their
undemocratic means.
Study 3 provides an indication of the relative impact of leaders’ messaging across variables that
have shown to motivate voting preferences, which was central to our hypothesis. However, the
design used only allowed us to assess these messages comparatively and allows for relatively uni-
form preferences across the leadership messages. Furthermore, assessing the differences between
predictors was exploratory; comparisons between collective narcissism, right-wing authoritarian-
ism, and social dominance orientation should be replicated and extended by future studies. Future
research could also use a categorical outcome measure (i.e., a ballot box) to distinguish the differ-
ent preferences.
Our data do not allow for any insight into the “chicken-and-egg” problem involved in the iden-
tity leadership dynamic (e.g., social identities considered both as cognitive representations as well
as social communication and practice; Elcheroth et al., 2011), with leaders both “reading” the
motivations involved in different social identities and “shaping” the content of those identities
(Mols & Jetten, 2020). The performative opportunities for social identity enactment have been
put forward to resolve this problem, for example, at Trump rallies where the conception of the
group is played out and shared (e.g., through violence to protestors, mocking the media), which
can then be expressed at the national level (Reicher et al., 2018). With this in mind, collective
narcissism research would profit from longitudinal studies conducted during populists’ election
campaigns (e.g., France’s upcoming election). It is expected that as populists foster threat to col-
lective significance, collective narcissism would increase alongside aggression toward minorities
and support for the populist party. This follows from research that shows collective narcissism
increases following social identity threat to ingroup distinctiveness (Guerra et al., 2020).
Last, further research is needed on the social conditions, which increase collective narcissism.
Research into the antecedents of populism indicates that it is more strongly endorsed by higher-
status groups who are threatened by a “fear of falling,” that is, by a loss of privilege through status
instability, such as increases in economic inequality (Jay et al., 2019;Jetten,2019). If this is the
case, we would expect collective narcissism to increase under these conditions. This effect might
be moderated by individual narcissism (a predictor of collective narcissism), with its emphasis on
self-enhancement and competitive social comparisons (Campbell et al., 2000).
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Study 3 was conducted as the fulfillment of the master’s degree by the first author. The paper
includes statements of sample size estimation and data exclusions, all data and materials for the
three studies can be found in the Supplemental Material: http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4PJCN
The preregistration of hypothesis and material for Study 2: https://aspredicted.org/42665.pdf
OPEN RESEARCH BADGES
This article has earned Open Data and Open Materials badges. The research in this paper
is not preregistered, but the authors have made available all data, analytic methods (e.g., code),
and study materials at the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/4pjcn/).
18 KEENAN ET AL.
REFERENCES
Abramowitz, A. & McCoy, J. (2019) United states: racial resentment, negative partisanship, and polarization in
Trump’s America. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 681(1), 137–156. https:
//doi.org/10.1177/0002716218811309
Aggarwal, M. (2021) Trump asks supporters for more money in CPAC speech after raising $250 million for his
Stop the Steal campaign. The Independent,5March.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/
us-politics/trump-supporters-money-cpac-speech-b1808998.html
Altemeyer, B. (1988) Enemies of freedom: understanding right-wing authoritarianism. London: Jossey-Bass.
Ashmore, R.D., Deaux, K. & McLaughlin-Volpe, T. (2004) An organizing framework for collective identity:
articulation and significance of multidimensionality. Psychological Bulletin, 130(1), 80. https://doi.org/10.1037/
0033-2909.130.1.80 PMID: 14717651
Bale, T. (2018) Who leads and who follows? The symbiotic relationship between UKIP and the Conservatives–and
populism and Euroscepticism. Politics,38(3),263–277.https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718754718
Bartusevičius, H., van Leeuwen, F. & Petersen, M.B. (2020) Dominance-driven autocratic political orientations
predict political violence in Western, Educated,Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) and non-WEIRD
samples. Psychological Science, 31(12), 0956797620922476. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620922476
Bocian, K., Cichocka, A. & Wojciszke, B. (2021) Moral tribalism: moral judgments of actions supporting ingroup
interests depend on collective narcissism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 93, 104098. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104098
Bos, L., Schemer, C., Corbu, N., Hameleers, M., Andreadis, I., Schulz, A., Schmuck, D., Reinemann, C. & Fawzi,
N. (2020) The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilisation: evidence from a 15-
country experiment. European Journal of Political Research, 59(1), 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12334
Campbell, W.K., Reeder, G.D., Sedikides, C. & Elliot, A.J. (2000) Narcissism and comparative self-enhancement
strategies. Journal of Research in Personality,34(3),329–347.https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.2000.2282
Capelos, T. & Katsanidou, A. (2018) Reactionary politics: explaining the psychological roots of anti preferences
in European integration and immigration debates. Political Psychology, 39(6), 1271–1288. https://doi.org/10.1111/
pops.12540
Citrin, J., Wong, C. & Shabo, J. (2001) The meaning of american national identity. In: Ashmore, R.D., Jussim, L.J.&
Wilder, D. (Eds.) Social identity, intergroup conflict, and conflict reduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.
71–100.
Connolly, G. & Riotta, C. (2021) House impeaches Donald Trump for inciting a bloody insurrection at the
US Capitol. The Independent,15January.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/
trump-impeachment-house-vote-capitol-b1786894.html
Cook, A.C., Hill, N.J., Trichka, M.I., Hwang, G.J. & Sommers, P.M. (2017) Who voted for Trump in 2016?. Open
JournalofSocialSciences, 05(07), 199. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2017.57013
Crawford, J., Brady, J., Pilanski, J. & Erny, H. (2013) Differential effects of right-wing authoritarianism and social
dominance orientation on political candidate support: the moderating role of message framing. Journal of Social
and Political Psychology, 1(1), 5–28. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v1i1.170
Dahl, R.A. (2008) Democracy and its critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Donald Trump’s address to United Nations. (2020) Donald Trump Speech 2020 UN General
Assembly Transcript. Retrieved March 10th, 2021, from https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/
donald-trump-speech-2020-un-general-assembly-transcript
Donald Trump’s address to United Nations. (2018) Full text: Trump’s 2018 UN speech transcript. POLITICO.
Retrieved March 10th, 2021, from https://politi.co/2NEe8Rh
Duckitt, J. (2001) A dual-process cognitive-motivational theoryof ideology and prejudice. Advances in Experimental
Social Psychology,33,41–113.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(01)80004-6
Duckitt, J., Bizumic, B., Krauss, S.W. & Heled, E. (2010) A tripartite approach to right-wing authoritarianism: the
authoritarianism-conservatism-traditionalism model. Political Psychology, 31(5), 685–715. https://doi.org/10.1111/
j.1467-9221.2010.00781.x
Duckitt, J. & Sibley, C.G. (2010) Personality, ideology, prejudice, and politics: a dual-process motivational model.
Journal of Personality, 78(6), 1861–1894. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00672.x PMID: 21039534
19
Dunwoody, P.T. & Plane, D.L. (2019) The influence of authoritarianism and outgroup threat on political affiliations
and support for antidemocratic policies. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology,25(3),198–210.https:
//doi.org/10.1037/pac0000397
Elcheroth, G., Doise, W. & Reicher, S. (2011) On the knowledge of politics and the politics of knowledge: how a
social representations approach helps us rethink the subject of political Psychology. Political Psychology,32(5),
729–758. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2011.00834.x
Federico, C.M. & Golec de Zavala, A. (2018) Collective narcissism and the 2016 US presidential vote. Public Opinion
Quarterly, 82(1), 110–121. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfx048
Feldman, S. & Stenner, K. (1997) Perceived threat and authoritarianism. Political Psychology,18(4),741–770.https:
//doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00077
Forgas, J.P. & Lantos, D. (2020) Understanding populism: collective narcissism and the collapse of democracy
in Hungary. In: Forgas, J.P., Crano, W.D. & Fiedler, K. (Eds.) Applications of social psychology: how social psy-
chology can contribute to the solution of real-world problems (pp. 267-291). New York: Routledge. http://www.
sydneysymposium.unsw.edu.au/2019/chapters/ForgasSSSP2019%20.pdf
Golec de Zavala, A. (2019) Collective narcissism and ingroup satisfaction are associated with different emotional
profiles and psychological wellbeing. Frontiers in Psychology,10,203.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00203
Golec de Zavala, A. & Bierwiaczonek, K. (2021) Male, national, and religious collective narcissism predict sexism.
Sex Roles, 84, 680–700. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01193-3
Golec de Zavala, A., Cichocka, A., Eidelson, R. & Jayawickreme, N. (2009) Collective narcissism and its social
consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(6), 1074–1096. PMID: 19968420
Golec de Zavala, A., Cichocka, A. & Iskra-Golec, I. (2013) Collective narcissism moderates the effect of in-group
image threat on intergroup hostility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(6), 1019. https://doi.org/
10.1037/a0032215 PMID: 23586408
Golec de Zavala, A., Dyduch-Hazar, K. & Lantos, D. (2019) Collective narcissism: political consequences of investing
self-worth in the ingroup’s image. Political Psychology, 40(S1), 37–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12569
Golec de Zavala, A. & Federico, C.M. (2018) Collective narcissism and the growth of conspiracy thinking over
the course of the 2016 United States presidential election: a longitudinal analysis. European Journal of Social
Psychology, 48(7), 1011–1018. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2496
Golec de Zavala, A., Guerra, R. & Simão, C. (2017) The relationship between the Brexit vote and individual predic-
tors of prejudice: collective narcissism, right wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation. Frontiers in
Psychology,8.2023.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02023
Golec de Zavala, A. & Keenan, O. (2021) Collective narcissism as a framework for understanding populism. Journal
of Theoretical Social Psychology, 5(2), 54–64. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts5.69
Golec de Zavala, A. & Lantos, D. (2020) Collective narcissism and its social consequences: the bad and the ugly.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3), 273–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420917703
Golec de Zavala, A., Lantos, D. & Keenan, O. (2021) Collective narcissism and the motivational underpinnings of
the populist backlash. In: Forgas, J.P., Crano, W.D. & Fiedler, K. (Eds.) The psychology of populism: the tribal
challenge to liberal democracy. New York: Routledge.
Golec de Zavala, A., Peker, M., Guerra, R. & Baran, T. (2016) Collective narcissism predicts hypersensitivity to
in–group insult and direct and indirect retaliatory intergroup hostility. European Journal of Personality, 30(6),
532–551. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2067
Guerra, R., Bierwiaczonek, K., Ferreira, M., Golec de Zavala, A., Abakoumkin, G., Wildschut, T. & Sedikides, C.
(2020) An intergroup approach to collective narcissism: intergroup threats and hostility in four European Union
countries. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 1368430220972178. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220972178
Hanson, K. & O’Dwyer, E. (2019) Patriotism and nationalism, left and right: a Q-methodology study of American
national identity. Political Psychology, 40(4), 777–795. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12561
Harms, P.D., Wood, D., Landay, K., Lester, P.B. & Vogelgesang, L.G. (2018) Autocratic leaders and authoritarian
followers revisited: a review and agenda for the future. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(1), 105–122. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.12.007
Hawkins, K.A. & Kaltwasser, C.R. (2017) The ideational approach to populism. Latin American Research Review,
52(4), 513–528. https://doi.org/10.25222/larr.85
Ho, A.K., Sidanius, J., Kteily, N., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Pratto, F., Henkel, K.E., Foels, R. & Stewart, A.L. (2015)
The nature of social dominance orientation: theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality
20 KEENAN ET AL.
using the new SDO7scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(6), 1003–1028. https://doi.org/10.
1037/pspi0000033
Hogg, M.A. & Gøtzsche-Astrup, O. (2021) Self-uncertainty and populism: why we endorse populist ideologies, iden-
tify with populist groups, and support populist leaders. In: Forgas, J.P., Crano, W.D. & Fiedler, K. (Eds.) The
psychology of populism: the tribal challenge to liberal democracy (pp. 197-218). New York: Routledge.
Jay, S., Batruch, A., Jetten, J., McGarty, C. & Muldoon, O.T. (2019) Economic inequality and the rise of far-right
populism: a social psychological analysis. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 29(5), 418–428.
https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2409
Jetten, J. (2019) The wealth paradox: prosperity and opposition to immigration. European Journal of Social Psychol-
ogy, 49(6), 1097–1113. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2552
Jetten, J., Mols, F. & Postmes, T. (2015) Relative deprivation and relative wealth enhances anti-immigrant sen-
timents: the V-curve re-examined. PLoS ONE, 10(10), e0139156. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139156
PMID: 26461497
Jost, J.T., Federico, C.M. & Napier, J.L. (2009) Political ideology: its structure, functions, and elective affinities.
Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 307–337. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163600
Kaltwasser, C.R. (2012) The ambivalence of populism: threat and corrective for democracy. Democratization, 19(2),
184–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2011.572619
Kosterman, R. & Feshbach, S. (1989) Toward a measure of patriotic and nationalistic attitudes. Political Psychology,
10(2), 257–274. https://doi.org/10.2307/3791647
Kruglanski, A.W., Molinario, E. & Sensales, G. (2021) Why populism attracts: on the allure of certainty and dig-
nity. In: Forgas, J. P., Crano, W.D. & Fiedler, K. (Eds.) The psychology of populism: the tribal challenge to liberal
democracy (pp. 158-173). New York: Routledge.
Kunst, J.R., Dovidio, J.F. & Thomsen, L. (2019) Fusion with political leaders predicts willingness to perse-
cute immigrants and political opponents. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(11), 1180–1189. https://doi.org/10.1038/
s41562-019-0708-1 PMID: 31477913
Lammers, J. & Baldwin, M. (2020) Make America gracious again: collective nostalgia can increase and decrease
support for right-wing populist rhetoric. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50(5), 943–954. https://doi.org/
10.1002/ejsp.2673
Leach, C.W., Zebel, S., Vliek, M.L.W., Pennekamp, S.F., Doosje, B., Ouwerkerk, J.W. & Russell, S. (2008) Group-level
self-definition and self-investment: a hierarchical (multicomponent) model of ingroup identification. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology,95(1),144–165.
Leeper, T.J. & Slothuus, R. (2014) Political parties, motivated reasoning, and public opinion formation. Political
Psychology, 35(S1), 129–156. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12164
Lüdecke, D. (2021) _sjPlot: data visualization for statistics in social science_. R package version 2.8.7. Retrieved July
20th, 2021, from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=sjPlot
MacKinnon, J.G. & White, H. (1985) Some heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimators with
improved finite sample properties. Journal of econometrics, 29(3), 305–325. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-4076(85)
90158-7
Marchlewska, M., Cichocka, A., Panayiotou, O., Castellanos, K. & Batayneh, J. (2018) Populism as identity poli-
tics: perceived ingroup disadvantage, collective narcissism, and support for populism. Social Psychological and
Personality Science, 9(2), 151–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617732393
Mason, L. & Wronski, J. (2018) One tribe to bind them all: how our social group attachments strengthen partisan-
ship. Political Psychology, 39, 257–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12485
McCoy, J., Rahman, T. & Somer, M. (2018) Polarization and the global crisis of democracy: common patterns,
dynamics, and pernicious consequences for democratic polities. American Behavioral Scientist,62(1),16–42.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764218759576
Mole, R.C.M., Golec de Zavala, A. & Ardag, M.M. (2021) Homophobia and national collective narcissism in
populist Poland. European Journal of Sociology.[Preprint].https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10122902/1/
Homophobia%20and%20collective%20narcissism%20in%20populist%20Poland%20%28final%29.pdf
Mols, F. & Jetten, J. (2014) No guts, no glory: how framing the collective past paves the way for anti-immigrant
sentiments. International Journal of Intercultural Relations,43,74–86.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2014.08.
014
21
Mols, F. & Jetten, J. (2020) Understanding support for populist radical right parties: toward a model that captures
both demand-and supply-side factors. Frontiers in Communication.5.83.https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.
557561
Mondon, A. & Winter, A. (2019) Whiteness, populism and the racialisation of the working class in the United
Kingdom and the United States. Identities, 26(5), 510–528. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2018.1552440
Mondon, A. & Winter, A. (2020) Reactionary democracy: how racism and the populist far right became mainstream.
London: Verso Books.
Mudde, C. & Kaltwasser, C.R. (2018) Studying populism in comparative perspective: reflections on the contem-
porary and future research agenda. Comparative Political Studies,51(13),1667–1693.https://doi.org/10.1177/
0010414018789490
Napier, J.L., Bettinsoli, M.L. & Suppes, A. (2020) The palliative function of system-justifying ideologies. Current
Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 34, 129–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.03.002
Osborne, D., Milojev, P. & Sibley, C.G. (2017) Authoritarianism and national identity: examining the longitudinal
effects of SDO and RWA on nationalism and patriotism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,43(8),1086–
1099. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217704196 PMID: 28903711
Pagliaro, S., Ellemers, N. & Barreto, M. (2011) Sharing moral values: anticipated ingroup respect as a determinant
of adherence to morality-based (but not competence-based) group norms. Personality and Social Psychology Bul-
letin, 37(8), 1117–1129. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211406906 PMID: 21540366
Pek, J., Wong, O. & Wong, A. (2018) How to address non-normality: a taxonomy of approaches, reviewed, and
illustrated. Frontiers in Psychology,9,2104.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02104 PMID: 30459683
Pehrson, S., Vignoles, V.L. & Brown, R. (2009) National identification and anti-immigrant prejudice: individual
and contextual effects of national definitions. Social Psychology Quarterly,72(1),24–38.https://doi.org/10.1177/
019027250907200104
Pinheiro, J., Bates, D., DebRoy, S., Sarkar, D., Heisterkamp, S., Van Willigen, B. & Ranke, J. (2017) Package
‘nlme’. Linear and nonlinear mixed effects models. Retrieved July 20th, 2021, from http://cran.rapporter.net/web/
packages/nlme/nlme.pdf
Pustejovsky, J.E. & Tipton, E. (2018) Small-sample methods for cluster-robust variance estimation and hypothesis
testing in fixed effects models. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 36(4), 672–683. https://doi.org/10.1080/
07350015.2016.1247004
Pratto, F., Çidam, A., Stewart, A.L., Zeineddine, F.B., Aranda, M., Aiello, A., et al. (2013) Social dominance in context
and in individuals: contextual moderation of robust effects of social dominance orientation in 15 languages and
20 countries. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(5), 587–599. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550612473663
Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L.M. & Malle, B.F. (1994) Social dominance orientation: a personality variable
predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(4), 741–763. https://doi.
org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.4.741
Core Team R. (2013) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical
Computing.
Reicher, S.D. & Haslam, S.A. (2016) The politics of hope: Donald Trump as an entrepreneur
of identity. Scientific American, 19 November. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/
the-politics-of-hope-donald-trump-as-an-entrepreneur-of -identity/
Reicher, S.D., Haslam, S.A. & Platow, M.J. (2018) Shared social identity in leadership. Current Opinion in Psychology,
23, 129–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.08.006 PMID: 30237055
Reicher, S.D., Hopkins, N., Levine, M. & Rath, R. (2005) Entrepreneurs of hate and entrepreneurs of solidarity:
social identity as a basis for mass communication Communication. International Review of the Red Cross, 87(860),
621–638.
Reynolds, K.J., Turner, J.C., Branscombe, N.R., Mavor, K.I., Bizumic, B. & Subašić, E. (2010) Interactionism in
personality and social psychology: an integrated approach to understanding the mind and behaviour. European
Journal of Personality, 24(5), 458–482. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.782
Riley-Smith, B. (2020) Donald Trump dubs Joe Biden ‘the destroyer of American greatness’ in 70-
minute convention speech. The Telegraph, 28 August. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/
donald-trump-speech-joe-biden-destroyer-america,n-greatness-says/
Schönbrodt, F.D. & Perugini, M. (2013) At what sample size do correlations stabilize? Journal of Research in Per-
sonality, 47(5), 609–612. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.05.009
22 KEENAN ET AL.
Selvanathan, H.P., Lickel, B. & Jetten, J. (2021) Collective psychological ownership and the rise of reactionary
counter-movements defending the status quo. British Journal of Social Psychology, 60(2), 587–609. https://doi.
org/10.1111/bjso.12418
Sengupta, N.K., Osborne, D. & Sibley, C.G. (2019) On the psychological function of nationalistic “whitelash”. Polit-
ical Psychology, 40(4), 759–775. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12563
Sides, J., Tesler, M. & Vavreck, L. (2018) Hunting where the ducks are: activating support for Donald Trump in
the 2016 Republican primary. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 28(2), 135–156. https://doi.org/10.
1080/17457289.2018.1441849
Smith, E.R. & Mackie, D.M. (2015) Dynamics of group-based emotions: insights from intergroup emotions theory.
Emotion Review, 7(4), 349–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073915590614
Sprong, S., Jetten, J., Wang, Z., Peters, K., Mols, F., Verkuyten, M., Bastian, B., Ariyanto, A., Autin, F., Ayub, N.,
Badea, C., Besta, T., Butera, F.G., Costa-Lopes, R., Cui, L., Fantini, C., Finchilescu, G., Gaertner, L., Gollwitzer,
M., .. . & Wohl, M.J.A. (2019) “Our country needs a strong leader right now”: economic inequality enhances the
wish for a strong leader. Psychological Science, 30(11), 1625–1637. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619875472 PMID:
31566081
Spruyt, B., Keppens, G. & Van Droogenbroeck, F. (2016) Who supports populism and what attracts people to it?
Political Research Quarterly, 69(2), 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912916639138
Tidman, Z. (2021) Far-right Le Pen could win French presidency in 2022, minister
warns. The Independent, 14 February. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/
marine-le-pen-2020-france-election-bruno-le-maire-b1801918.html
Turner-Zwinkels, F., van Zomeren, M. & Postmes, T. (2015) Politicization during the 2012 US presidential elections:
bridging the personal and the political through an identity content approach. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 41(3), 433–445. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215569494 PMID: 25630374
Wickham, H., Averick, M., Bryan, J., Chang, W., McGowan, L.D., François, R., Grolemund, G., Hayes, A., Henry,
L., Hester, J., Kuhn, M., Lin, T., Miller, P.E., Bache, S.M., Müller, K., Ooms, J., Robinson, D., Seidel, D.P., Spinu,
V., ... & Yutani, H. (2019) Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43), 1686. https://doi.
org/10.21105/joss.01686
Williams, D.K. (2011) The GOP’s abortion strategy: why pro-choice republicans became pro-life in the 1970s.Journal
of Policy History,23(4),513–539.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030611000285
Wohl, M.J.A. & Stefaniak, A. (2020) Collective nostalgia and the desire to make one’s group great again. In: Forgas,
J.P., Crano, W.D. & Fiedler, K. (Eds.) Applications of social psychology: how social psychology can contribute to the
solution of real-world problems (pp. 292-311). New York: Routledge.
Womick, J., Rothmund, T., Azevedo, F., King, L.A. & Jost, J.T. (2019) Group-based dominance and authoritarian
aggression predict support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Social Psychological and
Personality Science, 10(5), 643–652. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618778290
Woodward, A. (2021) Capitol police were ordered to hold back against rioters, watchdog report
finds. The Independent,14April.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/
congress-itself-is-the-target-b1831406.html
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Oliver Keenan is a doctoral student at the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, Univer-
sity of London, conducting research at Prejudice Lab.
Agnieszka Golec de Zavala is a senior lecturer at the Department of Psychology at Gold-
smiths. She is the lead investigator at Prejudice Lab, http://collectivenarcissism.com/.
How to cite this article: Keenan O. & de Zavala A.G. Collective narcissism and
weakening of American democracy. Anal Soc Issues Public Policy (2021) : 1–22.
https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12274
