Labelling affects agreement with political statements of right-wing populist parties

Abstract

In light of the recent rise of right-wing populist parties across Europe, it is an intriguing question under which conditions people agree with right-wing political statements. The present study investigates whether mere labelling of political statements as endorsed by a right-wing populist party influences people’s agreement with such statements. In the study (pre-registered; N = 221 German voters), it is shown than that supporters of the right-wing populist party indicated higher agreement with the statements when they were labelled as being endorsed by the party (vs. not labelled), whereas non-supporters indicated lower agreement with the labelled than with the non-labelled statements. We conclude that labelling of the very same political statements changes voters’ agreement with these statements. The results imply that rather than (dis)agreeing with the content of the statements per se, people may (dis)agree with right-wing populist statements because they come from a specific source (i.e., the right-wing populist party).