People favour politicians from modest backgrounds and perceive them to be better representatives of citizens' interests, more accessible, and more trustworthy www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This sort of facile populism is really damaging to trust in politics. Most British MPs are highly attuned to the cost of living crisis and challenges faced by their constituents.

🌀 🚨 Terrorist attacks rarely increase trust in political leaders 🧠 Christof Nägel, @nivette.bsky.social & @christian.czymara.com show that, contrary to common assumptions, terrorist attacks don’t generally boost public trust in political leaders.

Political Trust Network: Call for papers (Barcelona, October 2026) The young and fast growing academic 'Political Trust Network' organizes yearly workshops, where scholars of trust can meet up, present papers, and exchange ideas. These workshop have been brilliant, socially and professionally!

Really happy this work with @fraraffaelli.bsky.social found a home at EJPR. We show that growing up at times of high salience of immigration produces cohorts of voters who are more likely to vote for parties that they agree with specifically on immigration. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

In the midst of chaos, excited to share a new publication with @aeggers.bsky.social and Marko Klašnja, dx.doi.org/10.1111/lsq..... As usual, I write an embarrassing thread about my wonderful coauthors-- 🧵 (1/)

For the historical polling nerds out there, an article about our project with @ropercenter.bsky.social that digitised ~800 surveys by Gallup poll in Britain between 1955 and 1991 has been published in JEPOP. The merged dataset contains over three-quarters of a million respondents.

1/ Does growing up poor always lead to political apathy? Very happy to share my first paper published (open access) in @electoralstudies.bsky.social, where I show that parents' influence mitigates the poverty gap in participation, while economic mobility does not. 🔗 shorturl.at/p5Bac

Fascinating paper by @grattonecon.bsky.social, @bartonelee2.bsky.social, and Hasin Yousaf! The paper addresses a fundamental question: Why do some democracies chronically avoid ambitious, long-term reforms even when they have decent institutions? They argue that what matters is not only

Although not yet available to read (January 2026!), very happy to see our book on political trust online. Co-edited with @mfair.bsky.social and available open access, we think it'll be a useful addition to the field. www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/a-r...

How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality? Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):

Let me add this forthcoming paper by Besley et al (in the @qjeharvard.bsky.social), which, I think, provides a nice micro-foundation for between-cohort variation in zero-sum attitudes. They define “growth experience” as the average GDP growth an individual has lived through since birth, weighted by

Very pleased to say my new article is out @polstudies.bsky.social ! In it I compare single individuals to those with partners with different past vote choices/party identifications and demonstrate that this is associated with an individual's own vote choice. doi.org/10.1177/0032...

🤔 Do surveys exaggerate democratic support due to social desirability bias (SDB)? ➡️ Using survey-mode variation & list experiments in 24 countries, @pcmagalhaes.bsky.social & @aarslew.bsky.social find no evidence that SDB inflates democratic attitudes www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

Oh look, Labour has spent months targeting the wrong voters.

Imagine asking people two questions -- whether each of these is a good or bad way to run a govt: 1) having a democratic political system 2) having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections What percent says *both* are good? 44%!

✨Very happy to see my paper "Attitudinal ambivalence toward multiculturalism" out on @jeppjournal.bsky.social ! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/8 🧵

I'm recruiting 2 PhD researchers to work with me on a project studying how social groups influence vote choices! Info on the position and how to apply 👉 www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo... Please share with interested students who would like to move to beautiful Leuven!

New preprint w/ @grahn.bsky.social & @joenoonan.se What happens when the world's most powerful democracy rolls back core liberal values? 🇺🇸 In this paper, we show how US liberal retrenchment, especially on women’s rights & LGBTQ+ equality, damages US global standing. 📄 doi.org/10.31219/osf...

This is a very interesting observational paper for those working on gendered dynamics of far-right, descriptive rep & femonationalism Does women's descriptive rep. lower anti-gender discourse among far-right? No, it *increases* it (according to parl speech data 2009-2023) doi.org/10.1177/1465...

🚨 working paper (w. @morganlcj.bsky.social @markuswagner.bsky.social): Protesters are not judged equally - even if tactics of groups are similar. We ran an experiment in 🇩🇪 testing how people react to farmers vs. climate activists blocking roads. What we find is disturbing: osf.io/preprints/os...

What an extremely relevant graph for what happened yesterday

Does political trust cause political participation? In this paper, James Tilley, Sven Oskarsson and I use twin data to argue that the correlation is largely explained by confounding with family background. Just accepted @thejop.bsky.social: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Moving right on immigration: no evidence that it weakens the far right Cutting social and public spending: solid evidence that it strengthens the far right So what does the Labour party - obsessing over the threat by Reform - do? Moves right on immigration and cuts social spending

New research alert! Our study investigates the effectiveness of human-only, AI-assisted, and AI-led teams in assessing the reproducibility of quantitative social science research. We've got some surprising findings!

Happy to share that my paper (w/ James Tilley) is now out in @bjpols.bsky.social We show that expenses misconduct by British MPs was not associated with political distrust among their constituents. Open access here: doi.org/10.1017/S000...

I'm assisting @robfordmancs.bsky.social in organising this ECR event for UK in a Changing Europe. Get your papers in, come to Manchester, enjoy the rain, have a drink, go home, tell your mates how good it was.

We are hiring a Postdoctoral student for our AI program. 15-month position to start Spring 2024 – 75 000 USD per year. The work can be done remotely or in Ottawa, Canada. Travel funding will also be provided. Applications to be submitted to Abel Brodeur [email protected]

What else can you call this but fascism? What would you say if you saw it in another country? www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/p...

An interesting paper on support for long-term policy making (journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....), with evidence that political trust matters for boosting support. Alternative evidence to a recent paper of mine (osf.io/7hazf) that finds a null effect. 🌐

Very pleased to see our work on social values published as part of UK in a Changing Europe's new public opinion report (ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/u...). Here's a thread from @leonardocarella.bsky.social summarizing our main findings:

🚨Do echo chambers polarize? Yes! 🚨Very excited that our paper “The Polarizing Effect of Partisan Echo Chambers” w @sarahobolt.bsky.social and James Tilley has been published FirstView at APSR! Link: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Thread 👇1/n

New sociogenomics WP! Does family SES moderate the impact of children’s genetic predisposition for (non)cognitive skills on educational outcomes? 2nd WP of my thesis by a strong interdisciplinary team: Gil-Hernández, @fabriberna.bsky.social, van Bergen @perlinedemange.bsky.social! ✨

Interested in climate policy and/or political trust? Especially in Germany? Then I've a paper for you, accepted at Journal of Public Policy. 🌐 ⁉️We ask why people support particular climate policies. The literature on (political) trust shows that trust increases support for costly policy. Nope.

Last time I'll bother people with this, but you've a few hours to submit a paper for this joint sessions on all things trust, democracy, and trustworthiness. The lineup is looking like you'd get great feedback👇🌐

Three days until the deadline (23rd Nov) for anyone interested in putting in a paper for our workshop 👇 polisky

Interested in a PhD, or have students who you think might be? Especially keen to hear from those in political behaviour, public opinion, political psychology, or any plausible variant thereof 👇🌐

Proposals due on the 23rd November 👇

🚨Blog post alert! In the latest @thejop.bsky.social blog piece, Satoshi Kasamatsu & Daiki Kishishita show that an endogenous change in political trust lowers and destabilizes the performance of democracy. Learn more ⬇️ jop.blogs.uni-hamburg.de/endogenous-p...

Politicians will discount constituent letters if they disagree with the letters. But providing strong, unambiguous evidence of expertise in the policy area can reduce this discounting, finds Bergan et al. When writing legislators, provide a link or cite to your expertise doi.org/10.1093/hcr/...

Applications for *fully-funded* PhDs (inc. Masters if reqd) are open at Southampton. Behaviour, attitudes, specifically on trust, legitimacy, or class especially welcome. Join a growing Department with the resources and time to support your research & career 👇 southcoastdtp.ac.uk/apply2324/ 🌐

Growing up in a partisan area, particularly in your teenage years, influences partisanship later in life. This effect persists but decays after the first election, contributing to our understanding of the effects and limits of political socialization www.nber.org/papers/w31759

'Institutions, parties and the evolution of electoral preferences' by Chris Wlezien and me is published in the November volume of the European Journal of Political Research. I think it's the most important yet of our work on how voters' choices come into focus over the electoral cycle.

Out in @bjpols.bsky.social & Open Access: Amanda Clayton, Diana O'Brien & I show that explosure to civics lessons about U.S. Founding Father's accomplishments increases men's political ambition. 'Great men' narratives affect ♀️'s underrepresentation in politics. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Is political trust really the outcome of an evaluation? Theoretically, people's normative expectations are crucial to the trust-as-evaluation model. But empirically, norms of trustworthiness are not consistent and do not systematically function as benchmarks of trust academic.oup.com/ijpor/articl...

Discussing policy with like-minded partisans increases affective & policy polarization compared to mixed-partisan discussions; UK ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid...

Thanks to the @zacdgreene.bsky.social & the great folks at Strathclyde for inviting me to present my paper with @markuswagner.bsky.social on political projections. Not every day you get to talk about (and get quizzed on) partisan identities & superheroes Great discussion & even better company 🍻

Zero-sum thinking is associated with support for redistributive policies but more restrictive immigration finds @sahilchinoy.bsky.social, Nunn, Sequeira, & Stantcheva. It is tied to ancestral outcomes and may explain within-party policy disagreements scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantc...

Media trust declines as Democrats lose their increased trust from the Trump era news.gallup.com/poll/512861/...