I’m starting to notice a trend in the polling data… —Top Public Worry: Corruption —Biggest problem in Fed Gov: Corruption —Top fear: Corruption —What one word would you use to describe American government?: “Corrupt” It’s almost like voters are trying to tell us something.

New in PNAS with @seanjwestwood.bsky.social and @ylelkes.bsky.social: Why depolarization is hard: Evaluating attempts to decrease partisan animosity in America @prl.bsky.social @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Finding the fingerprints of generative AI in psychology publications: https://osf.io/3hx76

Researchers asked AI to generate 100 short stories from the same prompt and found the same plot elements showing up again like echoes, even across different LLMs. The collective creativity of online content is at risk, the authors say. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Just out at JOP (www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....) : Why do so few working-class people hold office? It's not lack of interest. Noam Lupu and I ran 10 surveys in 8 countries and found no evidence of a social class gap in how often qualified people consider running.

"Unsuccessful Candidates Are More Concerned About Electoral Fairness than Election Winners" by Roman Senninger, Martin Baekgaard, and Henrik Seeberg. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Do high workloads force bureaucrats to discriminate? In a published paper at the @thejop.bsky.social, I challenge the dominant explanation of discrimination in public service delivery. Surprisingly, I find that bureaucrats are able to handle substantial workloads without discriminating.

Brextinction! From our student @fresejoris.bsky.social and colleagues @juhoharkonen.bsky.social @simonhix.bsky.social ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Is the world turning conspiracist? Contrary to this widespread belief, research by Uscinski et al in the US and Europe, approaching the question in different ways, fails to observe systematic evidence for an increase in conspiracism: buff.ly/hFQ31qu

Republican Members of Congress are no longer coming from elite institutions of higher education. Elite-educated legislators are more liberal. Important manifestation of the education divide between the parties & context for the current higher ed wars www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨 Recognize these symptoms of democratic backsliding before it's too late: 1) Extreme polarization 2) Executive control of legislature 3) Quiet incremental tests of democratic norms and limits muse.jhu.edu/article...

Old-fashioned military coups and blatant election-day fraud are becoming mercifully rarer these days, but other, subtler forms of democratic regression are a growing problem that demands more attention. muse.jhu.edu/article...

1/ How does migration affect political attitudes? Using 380k obs from 104 sending & 28 receiving countries, @filipkostelka.bsky.social, Nicolas Sauger & I find some migrants’ attitudes align with locals, while others exceed origin-host context, reshaping ideological space. 👉 doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

💥Online first: "The sound of party competition: how applause reflects unity, disagreement, and the electoral cycle in parliaments" by @ankuepfer.bsky.social @jocmuel.bsky.social & @pluggedchris.bsky.social doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Incredible parallels in this Berinsky & @gabelenz.bsky.social paper. Politicians didn't stand up to Joe McCarthy in large part because they incorrectly inferred McCarthy/ism was extremely popular. Not standing up to McCarthy was a kind of 1950s Popularism gated academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

🇺🇸 Can watching dialogue across party lines reduce polarisation? ➡️ L-O Ankori-Karlinsky, @robert_a_blair, J. Gottlieb & @smooreberg show that a documentary of an intergroup workshop reduces polarisation and boosts faith in democracy www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

Economic crises tend to favour the right. Voters tend to assign greater importance to issues owned by the right. When center-right parties preside over a crisis, voters often drift further rightward to nationalist parties rather than defect to the left onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

"the financial advantage enjoyed by incumbents at all levels of government has declined 25-50% over the last decade. This decline, however, is driven entirely by individual donors, & esp. small-dollar donors; in contrast, the advantage among corporate PACs has remained stable—or even increased."

1/4 My first dissertation paper is now out with @bnbakker.bsky.social & @gijsschumacher.bsky.social! Do our brains quickly encode partisan bias when simply viewing politicians’ faces? The paper: doi.org/10.1080/1747... Journalistic article by Psypost: www.psypost.org/early-brain-...

Now on FirstView! "Our study is divided into detailed examinations of the utility of GPT for various datacollection tasks. In these examples, GPT’s applications demonstrate its versatility in handling increasingly complex information tasks" doi.org/10.1017/S104... #polisky #AI #academisky

It's challenging to motivate young adult civic engagement. William O'Brochta uses experimental and qualitative evidence to show that emphasizing social benefits of engagement can help. Check it out! doi.org/10.1017/S104... #polisky #academisky

Check out this recent article in @cpsjournal.bsky.social‬:“How Great is the Current Danger to Democracy? Assessing the Risk With Historical Data” by Daniel Treisman: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #polisky

Undermining the Fourth Estate: Elite Attacks on Media Credibility https://dx.doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2025-hvrpr?rft_dat=source%3Ddrss #polisky

🚨New Publication🚨 Using the entire #Canadian Election Study (1965–2021), I examine voter turnout by class, education, & income over time & test whether the offerings of political parties impact these relationships. Available #OpenAccess in @cjps-rcsp.bsky.social #polisky doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Is there an echo in here? Is the echo damaging? The causes and effects of political homogeneity in online networks: https://osf.io/qy63c

The public becomes more supportive of multiple types of social spending when the economy grows, when spending overall declines, & under Republican presidents, explaining why the public tends to simultaneously grow more liberal or conservative across issues www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Do men see gender parity in representation as detrimental to their interests? What about when women’s representation exceeds parity? And how do such shifts affect men’s fairness perceptions? I address these questions in my article, now published in PRQ. 1/9 
doi.org/10.1177/1065...

📢 Glad to share my new publication in @polbehavior.bsky.social 📢 In this paper, I study whether authoritarians’ electoral success abroad can change citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD). link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Wilful ignorance is a widespread phenomenon. Doug Youvan explores its roots in cognitive biases, and how both social media echo chambers and ‘conspiracy theory’ labels conspire (!) to perpetuate them: buff.ly/VTE2drt

🌅📙 64.3 Are poor people poorly heard?👂 These authors (🧵⬇️) use citizen surveys in 🇧🇪🇨🇭🇨🇦 & 🇩🇪 to claim that politicians hold biased views of what citizens want & shows that politicians perceptions parallel the rich for the most pressing economic issues. buff.ly/5UlH75b

If you work in message testing or persuasive communication, this may be the most importantly paper you will read this month, perhaps all year. From @carnes.bsky.social and Henderson in @bjpols.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

NEW - Cleaning up Politics: Anti-Corruption Appeals in Electoral Campaigns - cup.org/4msGB8X "Surprisingly, a clean disciplinary record does not substantively enhance a candidate’s anticorruption appeal..." - Sofia Vera #OpenAccess

🚨NEW STUDY: Do Americans support a woman president? Our list experiment during the 2024 election, when @kamalaharris.com was on the ballot, reveals hidden bias, and it's more widespread than you'd expect. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Now out open access in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. @laurensukin.bsky.social, @lanoszka.bsky.social, & I investigate US reassurance efforts in 2023 during Russia's war on Ukraine. We conducted public opinion surveys in 24 countries on 6 continents. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Paper on the problems of using LLMs as replacements for human participants journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

In direct democracy elections, citizens often choose ballot alternatives closest to their ideological positions—political information further strengthens this alignment. Boudreau & MacKenzie show voters can advance their policy interests. #Elections Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

"Republican [legislators] have a higher within-party facial resemblance than Democrats, holding constant gender and race."

🌅📙 64.3 As you wish? 🧞 Looking at 13 countries P.Mongrain, N.Junius & @nathaliebrack.bsky.social ask who calls the shots, with most citizens preferring delegate-style reps who follow #PublicOpinion. But how do MP's see themselves? #Democracy 🔗

For example, we've recently learned that virtually all state-level DiD's are probably incredibly underpowered.

NEW - Media Platforming and the Normalisation of Extreme Right Views - cup.org/4mmVIAL "exposure to uncritical interviews increases agreement with extreme statements and perceptions of broader support in the population" - @dianebolet.bsky.social & @florianfoos.bsky.social #OpenAccess

Reminder: The last time Donald Trump deployed troops to an American city, his poll numbers on the relevant issue (in this case, immigration) instantly cratered and still haven't recovered. Data from @gelliottmorris.com www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data?open=...

NEW - How Mainstream Politicians Erode Norms - cup.org/4lfeHvD "we find that statements by mainstream politicians lead to more norm erosion than similar statements by radical-right politicians" - @valentimvicente.bsky.social, Elias Dinas & @dziblatt.bsky.social #OpenAccess

📣Out on #FirstView 📣 In "When Does Fame Not Matter?" @maarja.bsky.social, Stiene Praet, Sebastian Adrian Popa, @yannistheocharis.bsky.social, Pablo Barberá, @zoltanfazekas.bsky.social & @jatucker.bsky.social conduct a cross-national study on online incivility. polisky gendersky buff.ly/vkcPI2Y

We know that a consensus of opinions is persuasive, but how reliable is this effect across people and types of consensus, and are there any kinds of claims where people care less about what other people think? This is what we tested in our new(ish) paper in @psychscience.bsky.social

"Importantly, both transmitted and evoked culture can arise from changes in either material or informational environments."

Did you know that your neighbors influence your political party? New in The Journal of Politics: Panel data on 41M voters show that people are more likely to switch political parties to match their neighbors.

Look at the distribution of wealth among politicians around the world relative to the people they represent! The median politician in South Africa's has 200x the wealth of the typical household in that country.

Paper drop, for anyone interested in #metascience, #statistics, or #metaanalysis! @clintin.bsky.social and I show in a new paper in JASA that the P-curve, a popular forensic meta-analysis method, has deeply undesirable statistical properties. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/?