Populist Attitudes in Adolescence are Measurable, Stable, and Linked to Political Trust: A Longitudinal Analysis of German High-School Students

Across the globe, populism has become a substantial challenge for democracies and educational settings alike. Populist attitudes include the belief that society can be sorted into two groups: The virtuous people and a corrupt elite. The study utilizes a sample of 1,206 German high-school students (52% female; MAge, T1=14.39; SDAge, T1=0.64) from two federal states (North Rhine-Westphalia & Thuringia). The stability of populist attitudes as well as their association with political trust over one school year are analyzed. Furthermore, connections to political efficacy, collective efficacy, and status anxiety in their role as potential precursors of populist attitudes are investigated. The results show that populist attitudes are cross-sectionally related to higher levels of status anxiety and internal political efficacy, but not to students’ collective efficacy. Longitudinal analyses further indicate that both populist attitudes and political trust remained generally stable over the course of a school year. Reciprocal effects linked higher levels of populist attitudes at T1 to lower political trust at T2 and vice versa, none of the other political attitudes (i.e., status anxiety, political efficacy, collective efficacy) predicted a change in either variable over time. Overall, the results indicate that populist attitudes are already conceptually distinct from (a lack of) political trust in mid-adolescence. The stability of these attitudes and their negative longitudinal links highlight the need to investigate populist attitudes early in life to better understand their development and to identify ways to reduce them.