Translational Issues in Psychological Science, Vol 10(1), Mar 2024, 7-20; doi:10.1037/tps0000381
National elections heighten the risk for political violence. Using the U.S. 2022 midterm election and the Brazilian 2022 runoff presidential election as a context, the research presented here implicates the role of leadership in constructing a sense of group cohesion for which constituents may be willing to violently defend from their political rivals. Specifically, that feeling represented by one’s political leader (i.e., that one’s political leader is prototypical) enhances perceptions of political group entitativity, which in turn predicts willingness to fight or die to defend the in-group against a political out-group. This relationship is strengthened by the perception that constituents are unjustly deprived of societal wealth and resources compared to other groups in their respective society. These findings are consistent across two correlational samples (total N = 680) during the heated 2022 U.S. midterm elections and the runoff vote for Brazil’s 2022 presidential election. Our findings add to a social identity-based analysis of leadership, particularly how prototypical leaders may engage in identity entrepreneurship to enhance group cohesion by uniting group members with a collective narrative of deprivation which may ultimately motivate political violence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)