In recent years, democracies worldwide have faced a growing phenomenon: leaders who rise to power and promote extreme policies, sometimes while undermining basic democratic values

.A new research of PhD candidate Shira Hebel-Sela and others, we examines how this phenomenon affects the attitudes and beliefs of voters who supported these leaders. While the literature suggests that voters typically "align" with the positions of the political elite, the research wanted to examine the opposite possibility - that leadership supporters would actually moderate their positions.

We relied on paradoxical thinking theory, which suggests that people exposed to an extreme version of their beliefs tend to moderate them in response. The judicial reform promoted by Israel's government in early 2023 provided a unique opportunity to examine this question in the real world.

Through a longitudinal study conducted as a registered report, we examined how political attitudes presented by government supporters before the elections (589 participants) changed following the promotion of legislation and policies of the judicial reform. Three measurements conducted after the elections allowed us to identify an interesting pattern: moderation in participants' political attitudes. Surprisingly, and even paradoxically, we found that the leaders' extremism actually contributed to moderation among the supporting public. These findings may shed new light on how processes of political extremism affect broader society and perhaps provide a glimmer of optimism for the future of democracies in crisis

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