About

Christopher Federico is a Professor of Political Science and Psychology at the University of Minnesota, holding the title of Arleen C. Carlson Professor of American Government and Politics. His research interests cross disciplinary boundaries and focus on the nature of ideology and belief systems, the psychological foundations of political preferences, and intergroup attitudes. Federico has served as President of the International Society of Political Psychology and as a former Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Political Psychology. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001, after completing his M.A. in Social Psychology at UCLA and his B.A. in Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. His scholarly work includes numerous articles, books, and edited volumes that explore political knowledge, race and politics, ideology, and social cognition. Federico has received several awards for his contributions, including the Erik Erikson Award for Early Career Achievements, the Morton Deutsch Award, the Roberta Sigel Junior Scholar Paper Award, and the David O. Sears Book Award. His research emphasizes understanding the psychological underpinnings of political attitudes, the structure and expression of ideology, and the social psychology of democratic citizenship.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Medicine
• Law
• Demography

Selected publications

• Political Attitudes and Behavior 

  2025-05-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Political psychology attempts to understand the psychological underpinnings of political attitudes and behavior and the ways in which individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by politics ... citizen competence, core political orientations and belief systems, political cognition, emotion and politics, and polarization in the mass electorate.

  PublisherDOI

• The Authoritarian Belief System

  2025-12-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 4 documents the emergence of a broader “authoritarian belief system” in the White public. It demonstrates that authoritarianism now constrains a wide range of sociocultural attitudes. Moral traditionalism, racial conservatism, hostility to immigration, concern for social order, and defense attitudes are (as of 2020) tightly correlated with one another and with authoritarianism among White Americans. Analyses covering the 1992–2020 period indicate that authoritarianism-based attitude consistency increased considerably from 1992 to 2020 among White Americans. The chapter also shows that authoritarianism-based attitude consistency is greater among college-educated White respondents in all periods, but that it has increased more among non-college Whites. Importantly, it finds pronounced effects of the 2016 and 2020 elections on authoritarianism-based constraint among both college and non-college Whites, reinforcing the argument that elections in which sociocultural divisions are salient—such as the 2016 and 2020 Trump elections—can increase the impact of the authoritarian predisposition.

  PublisherDOI

• A New Measure of Affective Polarization

  American Political Science Review · 2025-05-15 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Affective polarization has emerged as an important construct in the literature on partisanship. However, most efforts to measure it have relied on simple preexisting indices, potentially missing the complexity of affective polarization. In this article, we address these concerns by reconceptualizing and deriving a new measure of affective polarization. Drawing on the notion of political sectarianism and other lines of research in political behavior and social psychology, we develop and validate a novel multidimensional measure of affective polarization consisting of three parts: othering, aversion, and moralization. Our analyses yield a valid and reliable nine-item measure with three subdimensions. These subdimensions and the full scale broadly correlate with various measures of political identity, anti-democratic elite action, and political violence. Importantly, we find that the subdimensions have different patterns of correlation with key criterion variables, suggesting that othering, aversion, and moralization are distinct components of affective polarization.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Needs for Security and Certainty Relate Differently to Support for Universal Basic Income Versus Other Social Safety Net Programs Across European Nations

  2025-08-17

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Needs for security and certainty (NSC) vary in their relationship with economic preferences as a function of political engagement. Among those low in engagement, NSC is directly related to left-leaning economic preferences, since social welfare can be regarded as insurance. Among those high in engagement, NSC predicts right-wing economic preferences, since engaged individuals high in NSC take cues from right-leaning elites suggesting that support for redistribution is inconsistent with conservative political identities. Examining comparative European public opinion, we argue that this ‘reversal’ is less applicable to universal basic income (UBI), since the latter is an unconditional benefit that detaches welfare provision from specific situations of risk (e.g., unemployment insurance). This should shift individuals to think of provision in terms of moral hazard (e.g., work avoidance) in the context of UBI. Using Round 8 of the European Social Survey, we test and find support for several hypotheses based on this argument.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rebels Without a Cause: Collective Narcissism and Political Contrarianism

  2025-01-16 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this paper, we examine the relationship between collective and individual forms of narcissism and two contrarian political orientations that are oppositional, suspicious, and purposefully destructive—need for chaos and anti-establishment orientation. In three studies (total N=4144), we demonstrate that (1) national collective narcissism predicts higher levels of need for chaos and anti-establishment orientation, after accounting for non-narcissistic ingroup satisfaction (which is inversely related to both contrarian orientations after accounting for collective narcissism), (2) grandiose narcissism predicts need for chaos but not anti-establishment orientation, whereas vulnerable narcissism predicts both outcomes; (3) initial levels of national collective narcissism predict greater over-time increases in need for chaos and anti-establishment orientation, after accounting for initial ingroup satisfaction (which predicts smaller over-time increases in contrarian orientations after accounting for initial collective narcissism). Together, these findings suggest contrarian orientations may reflect a (frustrated) narcissistic demand to be recognized as better than others, both collectively and individually.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Needs for Security and Certainty Relate Differently to Support for Universal Basic Income Versus Other Social Safety Net Programs Across European Nations

  2025-08-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Needs for security and certainty (NSC) vary in their relationship with economic preferences as a function of political engagement. Among those low in engagement, NSC is directly related to left-leaning economic preferences, since social welfare can be regarded as insurance. Among those high in engagement, NSC predicts right-wing economic preferences, since engaged individuals high in NSC take cues from right-leaning elites suggesting that support for redistribution is inconsistent with conservative political identities. Examining comparative European public opinion, we argue that this ‘reversal’ is less applicable to universal basic income (UBI), since the latter is an unconditional benefit that detaches welfare provision from specific situations of risk (e.g., unemployment insurance). This should shift individuals to think of provision in terms of moral hazard (e.g., work avoidance) in the context of UBI. Using Round 8 of the European Social Survey, we test and find support for several hypotheses based on this argument.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• From “what” and “when” to “how” and “why”: Moving the study of psychological dispositions and political preferences forward

  Political Psychology · 2025-06-22 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Polarized Attitudes and Anti-Democratic Orientation: Robust Evidence for Paradoxical Relationships Among American Partisans

  2025-05-30

  preprintOpen access

  Influential perspectives on polarization in the United States imply that partisans will be more willing to degrade democracy when they are ideologically aligned with their own party and feel negatively about the opposing party. But psychological accounts of political ideology suggest that conservatives will be especially anti-democratic regardless of partisanship. Integrating insights from these areas, we argue that there are reasons to expect paradoxical partisan asymmetries in the ideological correlates of democratic attitudes. Across numerous surveys we find consistent evidence that cultural conservatism and out-party favorability are reliably associated with anti-democratic orientation among Democrats (but not Republicans), while left-leaning economic attitudes are reliably associated with anti-democratic orientation among Republicans (but not Democrats). These findings provide context for understanding how polarization might impact American democracy. They also suggest that increased centrality of sociocultural conflict and Republican cultivation of a right-wing populist reputation might sort anti-democratic Americans into the Republican Party.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Polarized Attitudes and Anti-Democratic Orientation: Robust Evidence for Paradoxical Relationships Among American Partisans

  Political Studies · 2025-08-20

  article

  Influential perspectives on polarization in the United States imply that partisans will be more willing to degrade democracy when they are ideologically aligned with their own party and negatively oriented toward the opposing party. But psychological accounts of political ideology suggest that conservatives will be especially anti-democratic regardless of partisanship. Integrating insights from these areas, we argue that there are reasons to expect paradoxical partisan asymmetries in the ideological correlates of democratic attitudes. Across numerous surveys we find that cultural conservatism and out-party favorability are reliably associated with anti-democratic orientation among Democrats (but not Republicans), while left-leaning economic attitudes are reliably associated with anti-democratic orientation among Republicans (but not Democrats). These findings provide context for understanding how polarization might impact American democracy. They also suggest that increased centrality of sociocultural conflict and Republican cultivation of a right-wing populist reputation might sort anti-democratic Americans into the Republican Party.

  PublisherDOI

• Needs for Security and Certainty Relate Differently to Support for Universal Basic Income Versus Other Social Safety Net Programs Across European Nations

  Political Behavior · 2025-10-10

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Needs for security and certainty (NSC) vary in their relationship with economic preferences as a function of political engagement. Among those low in engagement, NSC is directly related to left-leaning economic preferences, since social welfare can be regarded as insurance. Among those high in engagement, NSC predicts right-wing economic preferences, since engaged individuals high in NSC take cues from right-leaning elites suggesting that support for redistribution is inconsistent with conservative ideological and partisan identities. In this study, we argue that this ‘reversal’ is less applicable to universal basic income (UBI), since the latter is an unconditional benefit that detaches welfare provision from specific situations of risk (e.g., unemployment insurance). This should shift individuals to think of provision in terms of moral hazard (e.g., work avoidance) in the context of UBI. Using Round 8 of the European Social Survey, we test and find support for several hypotheses based on this argument.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Ability, Motivation, and the Use of Ideology

  NSF · $130k · 2008–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Agnieszka Golec de Zavala

  Goldsmiths University of London

  100 shared

• Hui Bai

  Impact

  52 shared

• Tomasz Baran

  Polish Stem Cell Bank

  36 shared

• Jim Sidanius

  Harvard University

  26 shared

• Joseph A. Vitriol

  Harvard University

  26 shared

• Jeremy C. Simon

  Museum of Science

  25 shared

• Howard Lavine

  University of Minnesota

  22 shared

• Shana Levin

  21 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2001

Awards & honors

• 2007 International Society of Political Psychology Erik Erik…
• 2007 International Society of Political Psychology Roberta S…
• 2009 Morton Deutsch Award from the International Society for…
• 2018 International Society of Political Psychology David O.…
• 2007 Roberta Sigel Award from the International Society of P…