Fusion with political leaders predicts willingness to persecute immigrants and political opponents
People whose identity fuses with a political leader — not merely support, but felt oneness — are more willing to personally persecute immigrants and political opponents.
The paper, in plain language
Beyond support, to oneness
Political science measures approval; identity-fusion theory points at something more visceral — the sense that a group, or here a leader, is part of one's own self. With John Dovidio and Lotte Thomsen, I tested what that fusion with a sitting political leader licenses: not what people think of the leader, but what they would be willing to do to others on the leader's behalf.
What we found
Fusion predicted willingness to personally persecute outgroups — immigrants and political opponents — beyond what agreement with the leader's positions explained. That gap between support and fusion is the finding: two people can hold identical policy views while only one of them, the fused one, is disposed to punish the leader's targets.
Why it matters
Published in 2019, the study has not become less relevant. It suggests that the danger point in personalistic politics is not the popularity of a leader but the fraction of followers whose selves have merged with them — a variable polls do not track. Our subsequent meta-analytic work on identity fusion establishes the breadth of the fusion-to-extremity link across contexts.
Kunst, J.R., Dovidio, J.F., & Thomsen, L. (2019). Fusion with political leaders predicts willingness to persecute immigrants and political opponents. Nature Human Behaviour 3, 1180-1189. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0708-1