Can Democracies Inoculate Against Populist Manipulation?

Leaders who present politics as a moral battle of ‘the people’ versus ‘the elites’ rely on anger, fear, and pride to rally supporters. This is not accidental: emotional communication is central to the strategy of populist leaders such as US president Donald Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Our research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, part of the MORES project, asks a critical question: how do emotions mobilise citizens, and how can they be protected from emotional manipulation that sows division and undermines democracy? While emotions may generate short-term support, they can also corrode trust in political institutions, polarise communities, and push people away from politics altogether.

Survey experiments we conducted in Israel, a country led by a populist government, tested whether people can be inoculated against the emotional pull of populist messaging. We exposed participants to populist social media posts and measured their reactions—anger, resentment, fear, contempt, and giving likes—while testing interventions designed to blunt these effects.

Populists thrive on strong negative emotions because they mobilise quickly, but our preliminary evidence suggests this influence is not inevitable. When participants learned to recognise their own emotional responses (mentalising) or spot manipulative social cues (claims that ‘everyone agrees’ or ‘the people demand’ something), they became less likely to engage with populist content online.

This research, an innovation from MORES, also has practical applications. Populist rhetoric relies on emotional language at higher levels than mainstream political discourse. Its emotional charge is deliberate. Empirical research shows that emotional language is highly persuasive.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regularly offers examples of this practice. A few months ago, he posted—then deleted—an attack on a supposed ‘leftist deep state’ working to subvert the people’s will (see image below). The post distilled several hallmarks of populist logic. It combined claims of strong majority support with an insistence that unseen forces were obstructing it. Populists often face this bind: if they embody the will of the people, how can they fail to deliver? Conspiracy theories supply the answer, reframing institutional resistance or policy failure as sabotage.

Such rhetoric also shifts politics from debate to identity. Citizens who disagree are not only wrong but also cast as betraying the nation. This binary ‘we’ versus ‘them’ framing exploits a deep human need for belonging, making opposition fear its exclusion from the moral community.

Why does this matter? Because these aspects (associated with populist leadership) have been linked to democratic backsliding. Conspiratorial claims undermine trust in institutions such as courts, electoral commissions, academia, and the press. Identity polarisation and emotional manipulation fracture the civic community. Together, these forces undercut the very foundations of democratic resilience.

Academia has long debated populist politics and its meaning. Scholars describe populism itself as a ‘thin ideology’—lacking the substantive content found in ‘thick’ ideologies like liberalism or socialism (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013). From this perspective, it merely articulates a view of society divided into two antagonistic groups: the virtuous people and a corrupt elite, along with claims that politics should express the will of the people (Mudde, 2004).

Understanding when populism becomes a threat to democratic norms and how to counter its negative effects is essential for formulating effective ‘vaccines’ against it.

Conventional explanations suggest that populism becomes dangerous mainly when paired with extremist ideologies: right-wing populism may advance right-wing extremism. Similarly, left-wing populism may foster left-wing extremism. In other words, populism functions as the ‘how,’ while extremist ‘thick’ ideologies represent the ‘what’—and it is the ‘what’ that we should worry about. According to this, populism is not inherently bad, as it can yield democratic benefits when it challenges entrenched elites, empowers marginalised voices, and emphasises popular sovereignty.

We are particularly interested in examining when and how populism—and populist rhetoric specifically—becomes corrosive to democratic institutions. Rather than viewing populism merely as a neutral vehicle for other ideologies, we believe that the ‘how’ itself can be problematic, not just the ‘what.’ This occurs when populist discourse operates through conspiracy theories, identity-based exclusion, and emotional mobilisation, as exemplified in Netanyahu's post. In these instances, the populist methods themselves become democratically destructive, independent of any underlying extremist ideology.

That is why the scientific work of MORES matters. Understanding when populism becomes a threat to democratic norms and how to counter its negative effects is essential for formulating effective ‘vaccines’ against it. The psychological factors at play mean that simply fact-checking populist rhetoric, while helpful and available, is not enough. Citizens need resources to resist emotional persuasion and identity-based division.

Our research, which tested whether citizens can be equipped with psychological immunity, shows promise—and suggests that populism is not invincible. While the effects of our interventions on broad political attitudes were small, these behavioural shifts matter in an era where engagement drives visibility.

A third study is now underway. It will test whether these interventions reduce willingness to support anti-democratic politicians, prevent radicalising effects of populist messaging, and work as ‘antibodies’ to emotional exploitation. The challenge, then, is not to eliminate emotion from politics, but to shield citizens from its weaponisation.

Meet the Experts

Adva Gruenwald is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the supervision of Prof. Eran Halperin. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics (PPE) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was previously a young research fellow at the Molad Institute – Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy. Adva’s research explores the psychological processes that underlie support for radical and anti-democratic attitudes and behaviors. She is particularly interested in the psychological drivers of populist attitudes, as well as individuals’ susceptibility to misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Eran Halperin, an award-winning researcher of emotional processes and field experimentalist, is a Professor at the Psychology Department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and MORES Team Leader. Learn more about Halperin in the Database of Experts.

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Post References

Mudde, C. (2004). The Populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x

Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2013). Populism. In M. Freeden & M. Stears (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0026