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ABSTRACT Research on ideological attitudes has identified two main dimensions that refer to two fundamental features of group organization: social solidarity and social control. In response to prior research that has studied their relationship mainly from a correlational perspective, this paper introduces a social reality model based on psychological functionality of ideological attitudes. Social position variables (education, income and material vulnerability) and insecurity variables (fear of crime and distrust) are used to predict the interplay between ideological attitudes towards social solidarity and social control. Using K-means cluster analysis, a typology with four patterns of support for solidarity and control ('socials', 'repressives', 'minimalists' and 'social-repressives') was created, on the basis of representative survey data for the UK, France and Germany ( N = 7034). Results from logistic regression analyses show that the proposed social reality model explains membership in typology categories, with similar results across the three countries. Overall, the model underscores the social origins of ideological attitudes as functional responses to perceived social reality. The paper illustrates how the social psychological study of ideological attitudes may be enriched by a typological approach that examines patterns of attitudes rather than single dimensions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of right‐wing populist parties has been widely discussed across the social sciences during the last decade. Taking a social representational approach, we analyse organising principles and anchoring of right‐wing populist thinking across four European countries (France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom). Using European Social Survey data (Round 7), we compare political attitudes and self‐appraisals of citizens identifying with right‐wing populist, conservative right‐wing, and traditional left‐wing parties. The findings converge across the four countries to show that right‐wing populist identifiers diverge from both left‐ and right‐wing identifiers on vertical (between the "people" and the "elite") and horizontal (between nationals and immigrants) dimensions of differentiation. Depending on the context, right‐wing populist identification was fuelled by material and physical insecurity, low political efficacy, and distrust of fellow citizens. We conclude that right‐wing populism requires multiple strategies of differentiation within and between groups to justify and sustain itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]