Mind games: Populists' 'downward spiral' to unhappiness

If you were feeling unhappy, afraid or threatened by the changing reality of your life and surroundings — your neighborhood, work, grocery store — would your first instinct be to join a political party reinforcing those negative feelings?

You might if that very same party told you they — and only they — could fix things for you.

Two researchers found this when they examined voters who had turned to support the German far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The AfD is classified as a "suspected" far-right extremist organization and is alleged to have used Nazi-era sloganeering. However, there has also been a significant bump in support over the past decade. 

In Germany's 2017 election, the AfD became the third-strongest party with 12.6% of the vote. Though support dipped to 10.4% at the next election in 2021, the party received 15.9% of the vote in this year's European elections, a surge driven in part by enticing younger voters. The AfD is also expected to make major strides in upcoming state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia.

The rise of right-wing populism is not just a trend in Germany. Other European countries have seen similar developments.

At the 2024 UK general elections, when the Brexit Party of 2016 became Reform UK, it grew from zero to five parliamentary seats, with a 14.3% share of the total vote. Far-right populists in France and Italy can also boast successes.  

Right-wing voter happiness on a 'downward spiral'

The researchers, Maja Adena and Steffen Huck of the Berlin Social Science Center, were interested in AfD voters' sense of happiness, or what psychologists call subjective well-being (SWB). They wanted to discover the emotional impact of supporting a populist party.

And their findings were simple: AfD supporters started unhappy and became unhappier. It's like a "downward spiral," said Adena in an email to DW.

"There is a strong self-selection of unhappy or unsatisfied individuals [turning] to AfD. They're already unhappy. However, the novelty of our study is that we show [their] happiness deteriorate[s] once they're exposed to the AfD's negative rhetoric," said Adena.

The effect was apparently strongest among new AfD supporters, those whose identity as AfD supporters was "not yet fully formed."

In their paper, published in the journal Plos One, Adena and Huck infer that "the initial decision to support a right-wing party … has the most profound negative effect on well-being."

Adena and Huck wrote that they found "causal evidence" to suggest that while new supporters may experience a positive effect because of their "taking a stance," ultimately, the negative rhetoric of "blaming elites," a common theme among populist parties, wears people down.

But there is a silver lining: "While the well-being of long-term supporters stabilizes," Adena told DW. "Those who stop supporting the AfD partly recover" and get a bit happier again.

How political psychologists measure voter happiness

Adena and Huck took data from four surveys between 2017 and 2021, sampling about 4,000 people. 

Each time, the respondents were asked to measure their subjective perceptions of personal and financial well-being — how they felt about the past year and the year to come — on a scale.

This is what psychologists call internal referencing: there is no comparison with others; it's just your perception of yourself. The researchers said this would give them more precise data, but this may, in fact, be where the study comes unstuck.

"That part of the study is shaky, to be frank. I don't think you can make any kind of assessment of how you are without making social comparisons," said Fathali Moghaddam, a professor of psychology at Georgetown University's Berkely Center in Washington DC who was involved in the study.

Moghaddam said any sense of happiness or unhappiness must be discussed in relation to the threats people feel.

"And to understand populist movement[s], we have to take the larger, global context into account — the subjective [sense of] instability, the feeling that the world is unstable," said Moghaddam. "Particularly in Europe and in the United States … where white Christians are feeling the world is unstable, that they are being invaded and threatened."

That may indeed motivate one to join a populist movement. That feeling of "taking a stance" can lead to a positive sense of well-being — "I'm taking back control!"

Motivating and demotivating emotions in politics

If you are truly unhappy, however, perhaps even depressed, you may be less likely to "take a stance." Those existing negative emotions combined with negative populist rhetoric is likely to be a complete turn-off for some.

"I was surprised at the angle these authors took because we know that happiness is not a driver for political action, and unhappiness is even less of a driver. Unhappy, depressed people are much more likely to turn away from politics," said Anna Kende, director of the Department of Social Psychology at ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary.

Other studies have suggested that voting for populist parties increases discontent, but, said Kende, discontent is not the same as unhappiness.

On the other hand, the issue of negative rhetoric rang true for Kende. Hungary's populist leader Viktor Orban , and his Fidesz party have been in power for 14 years. Their negative rhetoric never lets up, said Kende. "It's paradoxical because they should have solved all ‘our problems,' but that's not in their interest."

Kende said populists seldom campaign on their success, only on new threats. This can affect voters and their future voting behavior.

"The real seasoned supporters are okay with [this] not delivering, but the new ones, the less strong supporters who maybe at one point in their life feel like, 'OK, the AfD could offer me something,'" said Kende. "For them, this negative repertoire may have a stronger impact, and they may be more likely to turn away at the failure because they were not committed to the start."

The far left are no better off

None of this means that voters on the left of politics are necessarily happier than those on the right.

Research out of Columbia University New York in 2023 suggested that "American adults who identify as politically liberal have long reported lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being than conservatives."

Researchers are unsure why this is, but it may be that people of any political standpoint feel unhappy if their views aren't reflected by governing institutions.

"[From our study], we are far from pinning down the mechanism, unfortunately: whether the observed deterioration in well-being is due to the negative rhetoric of the AfD or rather due to feeling marginalized and non-mainstream. We actually point to both possibilities," said Adena.  

Edited by: Fred Schwaller

Primary source:

Support for a right-wing populist party and subjective well-being: Experimental and survey evidence from Germany, published by Maja Adena and Steffen Huck in PLOS ONE (June 2024) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303133