In 148 words:
This dissertation promotes the relevance of identities and emotions in explaining individuals’ engagement in radical right support and affective polarization. I advance previous evidence on how identities and emotions drive political behavior into specifying that these factors shape individuals’ perception of and reaction to societal developments. The five papers constituting this dissertation develop and examine novel theories of how identities and emotions alter and amplify the perceived meaning of current societal developments, motivating radical right support and affective polarization. I treat these two behaviors as manifestations of radical political behavior, which I conceptualize as a larger trend in individual-level political behavior that risks undermining social cohesion and democratic norms. Understanding radical political behavior as the result of individuals’ identity- and emotion-shaped perceptions of societal developments implies thatpurely rational approaches to understanding this phenomenon are limited. Moreover, identity or emotion-based interventions may be more effective in reducing it.
In longer:
The document below is the introductory chapter of my dissertation (“Kappa” at Swedish universities). It includes the dissertation’s argument, its theoretical and conceptual contributions, and a longer discussion of the dissertation’s implications. It’s a longer read and may work well as a Christmas present…
In very long:
I still have some printed copies and I expect them to be moved around wherever I go. So, if you’re interested or a fan, please email me and you’ll get a printed copy for free.