Crises like the current coronavirus pandemic evoke negative emotions in the general public. To date, however, little research has been conducted on the influence of these mental states on trust in the government – the uncontested key player in times of crises. Drawing on the appraisal and affective intelligence theories of emotions, we argue that fear and anger as the two crucial negative emotions in times of crises have divergent effects on trust in the government: Whereas fear leads to a rally‐‘round‐the‐flag effect increasing trust in the government, anger attributes blame for the adverse circumstances to the government. We present empirical evidence for our arguments with an original three‐wave online panel survey of 1’600 Swiss residents during the unprecedented times of the coronavirus pandemic. Our analysis provides empirical support for our arguments and further shows that the relationship is strongest for right‐wing respondents.

Conventional wisdom argues that national identity and populism go hand in hand. We disentangle this relationship by examining how populist attitudes relate to two distinct conceptions of nationhood: civic and ethnic national identity.We argue that a civic conception of nationhood is negatively related to populism, while an ethnic conception of nationhood is positively related. Additionally, we expect these relationships to be moderated by socio-economic status. Using data from the German Longitudinal Election Study from 2017, our analyses show that, on average, both civic and ethnic conceptions of nationhood relate positively to populist attitudes. This finding, however, changes substantially once we account for socio-economic status: For respondents with higher levels of education and/or a more positive evaluation of the state of the economy, the relationship between civic national identity and populism turns negative, which is more in line with our expectations. We find no moderation for an ethnic national identity.

The internet plays an important part in our daily lives. In this paper, we ask whether internet use is negatively related to civic life when focusing specifically on formal volunteering. Furthermore, we account for groupspecific and activity-specific internet effects. Using a representative population sample of Switzerland, we show that internet use decreases the probability of undertaking voluntary work. This result is qualified in two respects: First, we find that the negative relationship between internet use and volunteering is more powerful among young people than older adults who are more likely to volunteer when they use the internet. Second, the use of social networking sites seems to mitigate the negative influence of internet use on volunteering.

While analysis of the impact of threatening events has moved from bit player to center stage in political science in recent decades, the phenomenon of pandemic threat is widely neglected in terms of a systematic research agenda. Tying together insights from the behavioral immune system hypothesis and standard political science models of emotional processing, we evaluate whether exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic threat is related to authoritarian attitudes and which emotions do the work. Using 12 samples with over 12,000 respondents from six European countries at two time points (2020 and 2021), we argue that pandemic threats can generate disgust, anger, and fear. Our analyses indicate that exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic threat particularly activates fear, which in turn is linked to authoritarian attitudes.