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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 article aims to study to what extent the share of immigrants in a country influences individuals' perceptions of ethnic threat and how this can be explained by theories of economic and cultural threat. Following an economic logic, people with a weak socio-economic position should have a greater perception of ethnic threat. This would be more so if the share of low-educated immigrants in a country was relatively high. Following a cultural logic, greater perceptions of ethnic threat should be found among individuals with a weak cultural position, which would apply more strongly if the share of non-Western immigrants in a country was relatively high. Both theories are studied using data from the first round of the European Social Survey, enriched with country-specific variables. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the theories under scrutiny and in the light of current scientific debates about the influence of immigration on Western societies.

The finding that ethnic prejudice is particularly weakly developed among those with interethnic friendships is often construed as confirming the so-called ‘contact theory,’ which holds that interethnic contact reduces racial prejudice. This theory raises cultural–sociological suspicions, however, because of its tendency to reduce culture to an allegedly ‘more fundamental’ realm of social interaction. Analyzing data from the first wave of the European Social Survey, we therefore test the theory alongside an alternative cultural–sociological theory about culturally driven processes of contact selection. We find that whereas interethnic friendships are indeed culturally driven, which confirms our cultural–sociological theory, contacts with neighbors and colleagues do indeed affect ethnic prejudice. They do so in a manner that is more complex and more culturally sensitive than contact theory suggests, however: while positive cultural stances vis-à-vis ethnic diversity lead interethnic contact to decrease ethnic prejudice, negative ones rather lead the former to increase the latter.

The finding that ethnic prejudice is particularly weakly developed among those with interethnic friendships is often construed as confirming the so-called ‘contact theory’, which holds that interethnic contact reduces racial prejudice. This theory raises cultural-sociological suspicions, however, because of its tendency to reduce culture to an allegedly ‘more fundamental’ realm of social interaction. Analysing data from the first wave of the European Social Survey, we therefore test the theory alongside an alternative cultural-sociological theory about culturally driven processes of contact selection. We find that whereas interethnic friendships are indeed culturally driven, which confirms our cultural-sociological theory, contacts with neighbours and colleagues do indeed affect ethnic prejudice. They moreover do so in a manner that is more complex and culturally sensitive than contact theory suggests: while positive cultural stances vis-à-vis ethnic diversity lead interethnic contact to decrease ethnic prejudice, negative ones rather lead the former to increase the latter.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260952.].

The finding that ethnic prejudice is particularly weakly developed among those with interethnic friendships is often construed as confirming the so-called ‘contact theory’, which holds that interethnic contact reduces racial prejudice. This theory raises cultural-sociological suspicions, however, because of its tendency to reduce culture to an allegedly ‘more fundamental’ realm of social interaction. Analysing data from the first wave of the European Social Survey, we therefore test the theory alongside an alternative cultural-sociological theory about culturally driven processes of contact selection. We find that whereas interethnic friendships are indeed culturally driven, which confirms our cultural-sociological theory, contacts with neighbours and colleagues do indeed affect ethnic prejudice. They moreover do so in a manner that is more complex and culturally sensitive than contact theory suggests: while positive cultural stances vis-à-vis ethnic diversity lead interethnic contact to decrease ethnic prejudice, negative ones rather lead the former to increase the latter.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260952.].