Matteo Cavallaro (Economie, UP8) “It isn’t for the few to tell the many what is true” Understanding the relationship between commonsensical thinking and populism

TITRE :
 “It isn’t for the few to tell the many what is true” Understanding the relationship between commonsensical thinking and populism
RESUME :
Populist objections to science are under increasing scrutiny by academic research. Different authors (Mede and Schäfer, 2020; Bellolio, 2022) suggest that the populist hostility to science is multidimensional phenomenon encompassing both moral (i.e., scientists form a untrustworthy corrupt elite trusted) and epistemological elements (i.e., the everyday knowledge of the people is the main way to understand the world). So far, the research has been focusing on moral criticisms and the relationship between populism and conspiracy thinking (Mancosu et al. 2017; Giorgi and Eslen-Ziya, 2022). While the epistemic component and notably commonsensical thinking (Saurette and Gunster, 2011), that is an epistemology that values popular and practical knowledge as a legitimate (and often superior) form of epistemic cognition, is less studied. In this paper we rely on original data from a survey conducted in five countries (Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Spain, the UK) to analyze the antecedents of commonsensical thinking and its relationship with two different subdimensions of populist attitudes (anti-elitism and people sovereignty). Our results show that 'common sense' is consistently associated with people sovereignty while its relationship with anti-elitism varies across countries.
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Matteo, dont les travaux sont au croisement entre l'économie politique et la psychologie sociale, vient de commencer son poste de MCF en économie au sein de Paris 8.
Avant cela, il a effectué un post-doc en Psychologie Sociale au sein de l'Université de Lausanne avec Christian Staerklé, où il a travaillé sur le populisme, à partir des grandes bases de données et d'une grille de lecture socio-représentationnelle.
Sa présentation portera en particulier sur une modélisation psychosociale du populisme dans différents pays (voir l'abstract de l'article avec Christian Staerklé ci-dessous). 

Dimitrios Lampropoulos
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