So much of the absurdity in how some elites talk about Charlie Kirk—or navigate the authoritarian politics of this regime—stems from political science’s and the elite class’s fixation on polarization, and the misguided belief that it’s inherently bad and that the “remedy” is civil submission.

Here, @aarslew.bsky.social and I use the well-demonstrated fact that, in issues where people have incentives to withhold socially undesirable behaviours or opinions, the absence of an interviewer facilitates their expression. (4) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Love it when you 1) do a proper preregistration, 2) find an unexpected finding in the course of examining your preregistered hypotheses, 3) present the unexpected finding as exploratory, and 4) a reviewer HAMMERS you for "undermining the integrity of the preregistration process?" 🫠

Glad to see that our work comparing national stereotypes across 45 non-Western countries is now out in SPPS! See Vukašin’s post below for the highlights. 👇👇👇

In a new paper, my colleagues and I set out to demonstrate how method biases can create spurious findings in relationship science, by using a seemingly meaningless scale (e.g., "My relationship has very good Saturn") to predict relationship outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We cannot allow this to stand anymore! We have prepared a petition calling for a boycott of the next ISPP 2026 conference in Newcastle, UK, unless the Executive Committee resigns or responds to our concerns. Please read and sign the petition here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Proud to announce that our paper with Mortada Al-Amine, “Who holds the banner ‘Never Again’? The effects of protesters’ identity and audiences’ ideology on perceived unfairness of police treatment”, has been published in the International Journal of Social Psychology. Link: doi.org/10.1177/0213...

New pub! 📝 Solidarity with refugees depends on refugee‘s origin and gender. Partly explained through a similarity->threat link. We discuss this as a psychological expression of neocolonial geopolitics. spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @tijana-et-al.bsky.social @arothers.bsky.social

Great piece by Maja Kutlaca, Helena Radke & Melis Uluğ on moving psychology beyond selective allyship toward consistent global action. Well worth a read. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Perspectives on Preregistration Nice review of the different perspectives on preregistration by Yke Bauke Eisma and Joost de Winter. Preprint: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Cannot even tire myself by using elegant words — complete BS and shameless puke.

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/?

If researchers find Cohen’s d = 8, no they didn’t. (probably.) Thoughts on the distribution of Cohen's d values in psychology and why we should think about their plausibility when reading articles.

“Neither theoretical framework consistently accounted for all patterns in our meta-analytic findings. This highlights the need for both SJT and SIMSA to evolve—through refinement and integration.” Open Access: doi.org/10.1002/ejsp... #SocialPsyc PoliSky @chuma73.bsky.social

New paper finds a ‘climate activist’s dilemma’: “study participants perceived climate activists engaging in extreme protests to be more immoral and supported movement less. However, extreme protests also heightened climate concern and intention to take action.” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Join us!

Cool field experiments. It might surprise people how much of our politics depends on expressive behavior. (he types into the expressive behavior machine)

Each time a remotely progressive candidate wins office in the US, the rich declare they're going to leave town. What do they actually do? Nothing. A 2016 study found only 0.04% of millionaires move in a given year due to tax increases. Rich people talk to feel important. Please properly tax them.

Last week, we had annual Heymans Symposium at our faculty. My two brilliant PhD students got one award each. @hakancakmak.bsky.social got the best paper published in 2024 and @aycaaksu.bsky.social got the best poster award. I am a proud supervisor and I thank them for their brilliant work.

New by Glasford & Brown in JSPP, on the inequalities in academia & imagining ways out of them: "Systemic Hierarchy Within Academic Disciplines: How Resource Capital and Social Capital Stratify Academics and Form the Basis of Disciplinary Group-Based Inequality" OA: jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/js...

Pleased to share our latest research, "Addressing Policy Support Through Intergroup Helping and Similarity-Based Contact in Türkiye", co-authored with my dear friend and colleague Sami Çoksan (@samicoksan.bsky.social): 📌 Now published in Current Psychology 🔗 doi.org/10.1007/s121...

Only 10 days left to apply for this phd position on education-based identities, status, and political attitudes! Open to those interested in sociology, social psychology, political science, communication science or indeed a combination of all. jobs.vub.be/job/Elsene-P...

I’ve been studying civil rights protests for 20 years. With new mobilization against Trump’s agenda, I’m sharing a thread summarizing my research on how nonviolent & violent actions by 1960s activists and police influenced media, elites, public opinion & voters. 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

"The finding of statistical significance is perhaps the least important attribute of a good experiment...." David Lykken (1968). Statistical significance in psychological research. Psychological Bulletin. doi.org/10.1037/h002...

ever grow frustrated when academic colleagues suggest that studying issues with clear implications for society is not "good" research? or that studying "real world" issues means not doing "real science"? if so, you may be interested in this article: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #academicsky

Thanks I hate it. This "let's settle things in the ring once and for all" approach to science is weird as hell. There are no easy formulas, no promised answers, and science isn't to be determined by an agreement between two parties.

Our Annual Review of Sociology article on conceptualizing and measuring structural racism is now available. Get it while studying racism is still legal. @tyson-brown.bsky.social @pahoman.bsky.social (also, lots of great articles are in this volume). www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

New paper, "Elegant theories and the problems of social psychology," in which I argue that social psych suffers from large inference gaps, or the distance between theoretical model and statistical tests, with some suggestions for how to improve things doi.org/10.1080/1046...

Happy to share we were awarded a Collaborative grant by the EASP to study the transformative effects of prefigurative politics in the context of the anti-corruption protests in Serbia! 😍 SO MUCH looking forward to this research with the most amazing people 👇

One thing I wish people understood about authoritarianism is life often looks more or less the same. Troops aren’t marching down the street every day; people go to restaurants, have their office jobs. But everyone knows that stepping out of line, even slightly, can derail your life with no recourse

A respondent from the paper "Between two worlds: the scientist’s dilemma in climate activism" by @samuelfinnerty.bsky.social & colleagues. Horrendous acts are done in our name, funded by our taxes. Our silence—our cowardice—doesn’t even protect our grants. This speaks beyond climate change, IMO.

There is a PhD position on Mediatizing the Homeland: Diasporic Imaginaries of #Palestine (1.0 FTE) Deadline: 30 April www.rug.nl/about-ug/wor...

New study looks at protests against far right in 2002 French elections. Finds “larger protests reduced number of votes for Le Pen and abstention, while increasing number of votes for the incumbent president, Chirac.” Also finds “effect worked through media exposure.” nicolas-lagios.com/files/fn.pdf

NEW ARTICLE alert! “Re-examining Büchel et al.’s (2021) Test of the Status Legitimacy Hypothesis” tinyurl.com/35hcfva2 (#PsychSciSky #socialpsyc #PsycSci #politicalpsychology) (a thread to background below) 1/n @markrubin.bsky.social @hakancakmak.bsky.social Please RT!

It is finally out. Here is the link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Chuffed to announce that my second PhD paper, titled "Who Sees Our Mistreatments? The Impact of Ingroup Transgression Visibility on Solidarity with Outgroup Victims," was accepted for publication in JCASP! The original idea came from my brilliant master's student, Merel van der Ham—shoutout to her!

New paper asks us to thank those who misunderstand our work... "An individual’s misunderstanding is valuable when her peers’ response to it improves the community’s understanding." doi.org/10.1007/s110...

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

As someone who thinks about and studies political norms, this to me is an example of how "moderates" facilitate authoritarian backsliding B/c it was the Biden admin, and Uni admins, not Trump, who accepted the premise that anti-war protesters are dangerous and in need of state-sanctioned punishment

A friend included this anti-acknowledgement section on her PhD thesis. She also added the proposition: “Systematic bullying and undermining of girls and women in STEM starts early on and is the reason why they do not stay in science and related fields.” Absurd we still need to go through this 🧪👩‍🔬

✏️ New Paper: Prejudice towards (Black/Muslim) refugees predicts fear of crime more strongly than vice versa. Recent debates about increasing deportation are therefore likely to increase fear of crime, not lower it. bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

📖 New open access paper 📖 "The poles in polarization: Social categorization and affective polarization in multiparty systems", now published in Electoral Studies. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #polpsy #socialpsyc #GermanPoliticSky #polisci

New in JSPP, on the often ignored difference b/w leftists & liberals: "Understanding Committed Leftists in the U.S. Right Before the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election"(Flores-Robles @gfloresrob.bsky.social, Alto, Anderson, Wylie @jowylie.bsky.social, Satter, & Gantman @anagantman.bsky.social. Link in🧵

🚨New paper alert🚨 How do different "Great Replacement" conspiracy narratives (blaming relatively powerful left-wing elites or relatively powerless Muslim communities) affect radical collective action intentions against different targets across the political spectrum? A 🧵 about what we found:

Our registered report with @valentinmang.bsky.social and @feitenglong.bsky.social has now been published in BJSP! We examined the radicalizing effects of different Great Replacement conspiracy narratives (Muslim vs. left-wing conspirators). See the link for the paper: doi.org/10.1111/bjso...

What do populist voters want from their government? In this research note, I found some interesting answers to this question. The TL;DR is that they want more democracy, not less democracy, but they are willing to achieve in paradoxically illiberal ways (or what seem illiberal to us scholars).

Labour seems set on making the same mistakes as other parties dealing with the far right. Such strategies will only normalize and empower the far right. It also ignores the consequences that this will have on progressives. All of this is well-documented. 1/ www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

5-year environmental psychology PhD opening here at the UvA on the NWA project "ChangeAble; Accelerating Climate Action by Leveraging Behavioural Change" werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

I'm thrilled to join the EJSP editorial board as a Junior Consulting Editor. I'd like to thank Kim Peters, Kai Epstude (@kaiepstude.bsky.social), and Marco Brambilla for their trust. I’m excited to work with the team and grow in this role by learning from leading experts in our field.