This study is the first to explore the effect of political socialization in the workplace on populist attitudes. We investigate the effect of workplace voice suppression on employees' populist attitudes and voting. We expect employees who were suppressed by supervisors to hold more populist attitudes and to be more likely to vote for a populist party than employees who were not. We argue that some employees experience voice suppression by supervisors as stressful, so splitting is likely to be employed as a defense mechanism. Splitting is achieved through cognitive distinction and antagonism between “the good workers” and “the crooked bosses.” Such a split mental framework can generalize into a worldview that contrasts “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite,” a core characteristic of populism. We predict that the extent to which suppression triggers splitting and consequentially incites populist attitudes and voting depends on employees' acceptance of power distance. We test our hypotheses using SEM on survey data from 2990 members of the Dutch labor force. Our results show that experiences of voice suppression are positively related to populist attitudes and populist voting. As expected, this effect is stronger for employees who are less accepting of power distance.

This study examines the relationship between employee voice suppression by workplace authorities (i.e. supervisors) and the formation of employees' attitudes towards political authority. We test whether the effect of experienced voice suppression by supervisors on employees' preference for authoritarian governance is positive, negative or nonlinear. The hypotheses are tested on original data gathered within the Dutch Work and Politics Survey 2017 (N = 7599), which allows for a wide range of demographic and organisational control variables. The results favour a nonlinear effect of suppression on employees' authoritarianism. These results support the notion that political attitudes are dynamic and that the workplace plays a role in shaping them.

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