‘This country is OURS’: The exclusionary potential of collective psychological ownership

Tom Nijs; Borja Martinovic; Maykel Verkuyten; Constantine Sedikides

doi:10.1111/bjso.12386

‘This country is OURS’: The exclusionary potential of collective psychological ownership

Tom Nijs^*, Borja Martinovic, Maykel Verkuyten, Constantine Sedikides

^*Corresponding author for this work

University of Southampton

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Political campaign slogans, such as ‘Take back control of our country’ (United Kingdom Independence Party) and ‘The Netherlands ours again’ (Dutch Party for Freedom), indicate that right-wing populism appeals to the belief that the country is ‘ours’, and therefore, ‘we’ have the exclusive right to determine what happens. We examined this sense of ownership of the country (i.e. collective psychological ownership [CPO]) with the related determination right in relation to exclusionary attitudes and voting behaviour. Among Dutch (Study 1, N = 572) and British (Study 2, N = 495) participants, we found that CPO explained anti-immigrant and anti-EU attitudes, and these attitudes in turn accounted for voting ‘leave’ in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the British sample (Study 2). Additionally, CPO was more strongly related to negative immigrant attitudes among right-wing Dutch participants, whereas it was more strongly related to negative EU attitudes and voting ‘leave’ among left-wing British participants. CPO contributes to the understanding of critical contemporary social attitudes and political behaviour.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	171-195
Number of pages	25
Journal	British Journal of Social Psychology
Volume	60
Issue number	1
Early online date	7 Jun 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12386
Publication status	Published - Jan 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 715842) awarded to the second author.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. British Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society

Keywords

anti-EU attitudes
anti-immigrant attitudes
Brexit referendum
collective psychological ownership
exclusive determination right

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British J Social Psychol - 2020 - Nijs - This country is OURS The exclusionary potential of collective psychologicalFinal published version, 448 KBLicence: CC BY

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abstract = "Political campaign slogans, such as {\textquoteleft}Take back control of our country{\textquoteright} (United Kingdom Independence Party) and {\textquoteleft}The Netherlands ours again{\textquoteright} (Dutch Party for Freedom), indicate that right-wing populism appeals to the belief that the country is {\textquoteleft}ours{\textquoteright}, and therefore, {\textquoteleft}we{\textquoteright} have the exclusive right to determine what happens. We examined this sense of ownership of the country (i.e. collective psychological ownership [CPO]) with the related determination right in relation to exclusionary attitudes and voting behaviour. Among Dutch (Study 1, N = 572) and British (Study 2, N = 495) participants, we found that CPO explained anti-immigrant and anti-EU attitudes, and these attitudes in turn accounted for voting {\textquoteleft}leave{\textquoteright} in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the British sample (Study 2). Additionally, CPO was more strongly related to negative immigrant attitudes among right-wing Dutch participants, whereas it was more strongly related to negative EU attitudes and voting {\textquoteleft}leave{\textquoteright} among left-wing British participants. CPO contributes to the understanding of critical contemporary social attitudes and political behaviour.",

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‘This country is OURS’: The exclusionary potential of collective psychological ownership

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