A new study provides causal evidence from 9 countries where they experimentally manipulated intergroup polarization: When polarization decreases people discriminate less, while support for democratic principles increases & willingness to engage in compromise grows phys.org/news/2026-06...

Har bidratt med kapittelet "Høyreekstrem ideologi – sentrale strømninger i dagens Norge" sammen med @jacravn.bsky.social i boken "Høyreekstremisme i Norge etter 22. juli", redigert av @arjupskas.bsky.social @crexuio.bsky.social

@newsweek.com report on our comparative study of the impact of affective polarization

Out in POQ -- Mind the Gap: Partisan Bias in Justifying Political Violence in the United States academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

New interactive blog! "Why Adjusted Regression Coefficients Are Less Descriptive Than They Look" rpsychologist.com/descriptive-...

The most unrealistic assumption in social science is that respondents read survey questions the way researchers do

Powerful argument for vibe coding your website

Faculty are forever making fun of students for asking questions that are answered on the syllabus but if you’ve ever been to a faculty meeting you know that faculty constantly ask questions that are answered by the program handbook or departmental bylaws. Constantly (me included).

NOW OUT ON FIRSTVIEW!! Citizen–Elite #Toxicity & #Political #Equality Online By @janabelschner.bsky.social & Linn Sandberg doi.org/10.1017/S153...

I år er det 15 år siden 22. juli-terrorangrepet. I den anledning har vi skrevet bok om høyreekstremisme i Norge etter 22. juli. Boka oppsummerer 10 år med forkning ved @crexuio.bsky.social og er åpent tilgjengelig for alle her: www.scup.com/doi/book/10....

Yet again www.nber.org/papers/w3535...

How many Iranians support the Islamic Republic? In a new working paper, we answer this using a nationally representative survey of 2,000 adults in Iran—and the list experiment, a method for measuring sensitive attitudes.

If you work on public opinion and/or political behaviour you might want to consider submitting your abstract(s) to JCPOP 2026 in Barcelona - All the info 👇

Out in POQ -- Mind the Gap: Partisan Bias in Justifying Political Violence in the United States academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

In June, Switzerland will vote on what is so far the most radical far-right popular initiative launched by the Swiss People‘s Party SVP: capping the population at 10M (currently ≈9.1M). In this thread, I’ll break down what it’s about and how it fits into broader findings on Swiss direct democracy

Taking a stand ✋️🧍 These authors 🧵 use survey data across 9 countries to assess the downstreams consequences of #AffectivePolarization & intervene to successfully reduce participants #AffectivePolarization in 6 of the 9, improving interpersonal relations and social norms buff.ly/tHRWa65

Does affective polarization itself actually threaten democracy? Recent experiments from the US suggest maybe not. In our new @ejprjournal.bsky.social paper, we revisit this question comparatively with a survey experiment in 9 democracies (18,000 respondents). #polisky

1/ Happy to share that "Factorial Difference-in-Differences" (FDID), with Anqi Zhao and @pengding00 , is out in JASA - ACS. doi.org/10.1080/0162... It has been a truly thrilling experience working with Anqi and Peng.

Frustrating that AI has sullied the em-dash. It's just so versatile! I haven't been able to come up with a good replacement, so am going to reclaim it despite the risks its use now carries.

#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social - The (alleged) consequences of affective polarization: A survey experiment in nine democracies - https://cup.org/43vEJV0 - @eelcoharteveld.bsky.social, @leberntzen.bsky.social, @andrejkokkonen.bsky.social, @hayleekelsall.bsky.social#OpenAccess et al #FirstView

🌟 New article 👥 Eelco Harteveld, Lars Erik Berntzen, Andrej Kokkonen, Haylee Kelsall, Jonas Linde & Stefan Dahlberg 👉 The (alleged) consequences of affective polarization: A survey experiment in nine democracies 📗 European Journal of Political Research 🔗 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

LLM-sycophancy is a major concern across a whole range of domains. But as ⬇️ points out, worth thinking about what a meaningful control group is here

Does affective polarization itself actually threaten democracy? Recent experiments from the US suggest maybe not. In our new @ejprjournal.bsky.social paper, we revisit this question comparatively with a survey experiment in 9 democracies (18,000 respondents). #polisky

As I have been arguing for almost a decade, populism is a secondary feature for most populist actors. Moreover, the main current threat to liberal democracy comes from the far right, which at least in Europe and U.S., is primarily nativist. In fact, some are barely populist anymore.

What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

In the interest of not thinking about the Virginia Supreme Court decision, I wrote a blog post. The Schizophrenogenic Mother: Behavior Genetics' Origin Story Misses the Point open.substack.com/pub/ericturk...

Are you interested in conjoint experiments? Wrote about my new R package *cjdiag* on my website. Feedback welcome! dkarpa.github.io/blog/2026/be...

1/ We've been measuring intellectual humility wrong. Most scales ask "are you intellectually humble?" but the people least humble are the most miscalibrated about it. They overclaim. The #humilityparadox. Out today in Behavior Research Methods. Here's what we did instead. 🧵

LLMs have been widely reported as left-wing biased. The finding has shaped policy and debate — with Trump banning "Woke AI". Our new paper challenges this story. It's not that the models are biased. It's that they think the auditor is. 🧵 w/ michelleschimmel.bsky.social‬arxiv.org/pdf/2604.27633

Does partisanship affect justifications of political violence? Berntzen et al. find that both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to justify identical acts of political violence when the victims are from the opposing party. Read now: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers

Contrary to common wisdom, open-mindedness predicts *support* for public health measures and *disbelief* in conspiracy theories, research by Pärnamets et al, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 68 countries, suggests: buff.ly/XqbAbM0 HT @jayvanbavel.bsky.social

It's @professormusgrave.bsky.social o'clock again, alas

From Roger Scruton cafes to paying Matt Goodwin $10k a month, Viktor Orban has built a network of populist right think tanks, journalists and activists Today Democracy for Sale delves into Orban’s allies on the British right Well worth a read democracyforsale.substack.com/p/orbans-brits

Egon Schiele (1907)

What really drives someone to support violent extremism? I am thrilled to share our new article published today in PNAS. Together with an incredible team of collaborators, we conducted a preregistered study across 58 countries with over 18,000 participants. This is what we found.

GB News is platforming an extremist narrative that is central to the socialisation of violence, including to the terrorist rampages in Europe and New Zealand & the USA www.reuters.com/world/europe... www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/3/...

🚨 Job alert! 🚨 We are looking for a PhD candidate for my Vidi project on factual belief polarization and its attitudinal consequences. The position will be at the Department of Political Science of Radboud University (Netherlands). Check out the full job profile below! www.ru.nl/en/working-a...

Why do some people want to migrate while others don’t—even in similar conditions?🌍 My new #openaccess article in IMR shows how psychology🧠—notably values, risk tolerance, and personality—predict both aspiration and irregularity willingness.🔎🔓 journals.sagepub.com/eprint/XEJZT...

Much research concludes that partisans tolerate anti-democratic behavior, such as electoral subversion, because they rarely punish it at the ballot box. But refusing to vote against your party and actively supporting democratic subversion are not the same thing. My new paper in @bjpols.bsky.social:

Citizens tend to lose faith in meritocracy as inequality rises within their country over time. #SocialPsyc

Are we underestimating popular discontent with welfare state change, and the damage done to political-institutional trust? New measures of "welfare state emotions" suggest as much. With Tor Syrstad and Atle Haugsgjerd. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Tajfel et al. (1971) is the go to source in political behavior when introducing social identity theory (SIT). One of the main contributions of that text is that mere artificial group categorization results in discrimination. This is mostly ignored in political behavior research using SIT.

Fontana thinking his 6000+ experiments may not have been enough to feel confident in his conclusions in the 18th century while we expect our singular experiments and their standalone replications to do wonders some 250 years later... (excerpt from the intro of Jutta Schickore's About Experiment)

Meet your greens. Fascinating read worksinprogress.co/issue/sculpt...

What happens when politicians pivot during a crisis? I examine Trump’s July 2020 mask pivot. It increased Republican mask use, closing 40% of the partisan gap. But paradoxically, beliefs about masks' efficacy didn’t change. doi.org/10.1177/0003... @asanews.bsky.social #Trump #PublicHealth

This is a truly exceptional analysis of British parliamentary speeches on immigration by @theguardian.com showing we are living in a uniquely nativist era.

If you are teaching any kind of statistics, probability or modeling classes, you'll love this website. Contains dozens of interactive simulations of random processes, with sliders, different visualizat options, and full numeric log ouput: www.randomservices.org/random/apps/...

Our article with @honoratam.bsky.social on ✨motivated causal judgements✨ is out in @polpsyispp.bsky.social! When something bad happens, whose actions produced the outcome and who bears responsibility? It depends much more on the identity of the actors than on the details of the situation.