The “Big Bang” of the populist parties in the European Union: The 2014 European Parliament election

A significant number of voters are turning their backs on traditional parties. The stability of European party systems is being defied by a growing number of (new) radical parties, whose presence in the European Parliament has never been as strong as it is now. Faced with the worst global economic crisis of the last 80 years and with growing socio-economic inequalities, a series of political groups, referred to as populists, have secured almost a quarter of the seats in the European Parliament. This paper aims to highlight some of the reasons why these parties attract so much support and to reach a better understanding, from a comparative perspective, of the profile of these electorates as well as their motivations and aspirations. The analysis is based on the study of microdata (N?=?30,064) from the European Election Study 2014 conducted in the EU after the European elections of 2014.     

Bidirectional relations among empathy‐related traits,prosocial moral reasoning,and prosocial behaviors

This study examined the longitudinal links among empathic concern, perspective taking, prosocial moral reasoning, and prosocial behaviors. Four hundred and seventeen adolescents (225 girls; M_age = 14.70 years) from public schools in Spain completed measures of those constructs in three successive years. Path analyses showed support for the notion that empathic concern and prosocial moral reasoning accounted for the relations between perspective taking in earlier adolescence and later altruistic and public forms of helping. Moreover, there was support for a reverse causal model such that empathic concern and prosocial moral reasoning mediated the relations between altruistic (but not public) helping behaviors in earlier adolescence and later perspective taking. The implications for cognitive developmental and social cognitive theories of prosocial development were discussed.