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In this paper, we document changes in political trust in the UK throughout 2020 so as to consider wider implications for the ongoing handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analysed data from 18 survey organisations with measures on political trust (general, leadership, and COVID-19-related) spanning the period December 2019–October 2020. We examined the percentage of trust and distrust across time, identifying where significant changes coincide with national events. Levels of political trust were low following the 2019 UK General Election. They rose at the onset of UK lockdown imposed in March 2020 but showed persistent gradual decline throughout the remainder of the year, falling to pre-COVID levels by October 2020. Inability to sustain the elevated political trust achieved at the onset of the pandemic is likely to have made the management of public confidence and behaviour increasingly challenging, pointing to the need for strategies to sustain trust levels when handling future crises.

Existing research highlights the roles of group identities and concerns about mass migration in explaining attitudes towards the European Union (EU). However, studies have been largely silent on whether EU attitudes are also shaped by people's attitudes towards the principles and practices of supranational governance. This research provides a first test of the nature and role of supranational attitudes. We introduce a new measure of supranationalism and, in two studies using samples drawn from the British population, test the psychometric properties of the supranationalism scale. We then identify the socioideological correlates (right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation) of supranationalism, along with its effects in predicting EU attitudes and post-Brexit preferences. Our core finding is that supranationalism predicts attitudes towards the EU over and above establishedfactors such as national identity and immigrant threat. Our study thus shows the existence of supranational attitudes among individuals and the relevance of such attitudes to people's opinions about international organizations like the EU.

As incarceration rates rise globally, the need to reduce re-offending grows increasingly urgent. We investigate whether positive group bonds can improve behaviours among incarcerated people via a unique soccer-based prison intervention, the Twinning Project. We analyse effects of participation compared to a control group (study 1, n  = 676, n  = 1,874 control cases) and longitudinal patterns of social cohesion underlying these effects (study 2, n  = 388) in the United Kingdom. We also explore desistance from crime after release (study 3, n  = 249) in the United Kingdom and the United States. As law-abiding behaviour also requires a supportive receiving community, we assessed factors influencing willingness to employ formerly incarcerated people in online samples in the United Kingdom and the United States (studies 4–9, n  = 1,797). Results indicate that social bonding relates to both improved behaviour within prison and increased willingness of receiving communities to support re-integration efforts. Harnessing the power of group identities both within prison and receiving communities can help to address the global incarceration crisis. The Twinning Project, a soccer-based prison intervention, reduced prison adjudications by 50%. Following release, social bonding was related to desistance and community attitudes, highlighting the need to connect incarcerated people with law-abiding groups.

Discussions about supporting vs. rejecting European supranational governance (i.e., Euroscepticism) have been dominating national conversations for several years in Europe. Although political scientists have written extensively about Euroscepticism, surprisingly little is known about citizens' attitudes towards the general political principles of supranational governance (i.e., supranationalism) that underpin institutions such as the European Union (EU). Addressing this gap, this thesis focusses on the psychology of supranationalism and the psychological implications of events such as Brexit. Specifically, this thesis investigated the psychological factors that relate to opposition to supranational governance, and how it contributes to Euroscepticism and Brexit preferences. Furthermore, this thesis investigated how the unprecedented rejection of European supranational governance (i.e., Brexit) related to British voters' national identities. Chapter 2 reports two cross-sectional studies conducted in the UK that introduced a novel measure of supranationalism and established its psychometric properties and ideological correlates (right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation). Furthermore, supranationalism significantly predicted voters' EU attitudes and Brexit preferences, while controlling for established factors such as national identification and immigration concerns. A third study, reported in chapter 3, replicated these results with samples from the UK, Germany, and Belgium, and showed that supranationalism is relevant to Euroscepticism in- and outside of the UK. Chapter 4 turns attention to the implications of Euroscepticism in the UK and investigated the impact of two anti-EU elections on voters' national identities in three longitudinal studies. Specifically, Studies 4 and 5 showed that electoral losers dis-identified and became more estranged from their country after Brexit in 2016. Study 6 replicated these findings during the Brexit-election in 2019, and further showed that the looming threat of Brexit and voters' inability to influence the political course, were key factors explaining dis-identification and estrangement effects which were stronger among political liberals across all three studies. Overall, this thesis illustrates how Euroscepticism draws on right-wing social attitudes and represents a particular challenge to people on the political left.