And that’s a wrap for my #SPSP2026 talk summaries this year. Thanks for sharing all that neat work, y’all! ☺️

@icedteas.bsky.social presented interesting work at #SPSP2026 suggesting that (political) moral conviction seems to have three distinct facets, focused on: inparty moralization, moralized disagreement, and moralized character judgment (for being a member of the outparty).

@diegoreinero.bsky.social presented some thought-provoking work at #SPSP2026 showing that American partisans seem to be most attitudinally polarized on climate issues, in particular.

@jakewomick.bsky.social presented interesting work at #SPSP2026 investigating the prejudices of extreme leftists, finding that they were negatively prejudiced against men and Jewish people; prejudices associated with (and mediated by) perceptions that these groups are harmful and powerful.

In the #SPSP2026 symposium she chaired, @abbycassario.bsky.social presented work investigating how attitudes get pulled into the moral domain; while prior explanations have focused on emotions and intra-attitudinal features, she suggested researchers should also consider *inter*-attitude structures.

In an interesting #SPSP2026 talk, @abdoe.bsky.social presented data showing that assigning participants to watch a debate (versus an informational video, or no video) on rent control made them significantly more intellectually humble.

Interesting research presented by Zarnab Zahoor at #SPSP2026 found that across 9 democracies (7 Christian-majority, 1 Hindu-majority, and 1 Jewish-majority), all samples showed a positive association between religious nationalism and conservatism (this effect was especially pronounced in the U.S.).

In an interesting #SPSP2026 talk, @asmiley.bsky.social presented work suggesting that the proportion of out-partisans at one’s church had a curvilinear association with affective polarization—politically balanced churches showed the lowest rates of affective polarization.

Also at #SPSP2026, Jan Voelkel used data from a mega-study testing the impact of 25 interventions on over 32,000 Americans’ democratic attitudes to show only a small correlation between affective and attitudinal polarization.

And, quick plug for Elon University undergraduate student Dani Rudd’s poster on a theoretical approach to thinking about authenticity in human-AI relations. This is Dani’s first #SPSP2026. She was in my Careers in Psychology class last Fall and is looking at PhD programs and lab manager positions!

Giovanina Kelly presented cool work on the average daily trajectories of activists age 18-24 before, during, & after the 2024 US elections, finding that activism decreased after elections, but was not further moderated by participant race, sex, sexual orientation, or political affiliation. #SPSP2026

Kayley Okst presented a mega-study testing the efficacy of 10 expert-crowdsourced behavioral interventions for increasing voter registration. Although many interventions increased intentions, trust, efficacy, & registration website visits, none actually increased registration or turnout. #SPSP2026

Our #SPSP2026 symposium organizer, Kristina Wald, also presented some interesting work on people’s evaluations of maturity and preferences for maturity in leaders, finding that (1) maturity seems to have two dimensions: socio-emotional (e.g., emotion regulation) and cognitive (e.g., wise judgment).

During our “what do we value in leaders” symposium at #SPSP2026, Danbee Chon presented interesting results suggesting that liberals underestimate the success/electability of dominant leaders, a result that held across organizational & political primary (i.e., same/in-party evaluation) contexts.

A day 2 presentation at #SPSP by @jules-oberschulte.bsky.social suggested that both in pilot studies covering fictitious political scenarios an in the 2024 US elections, participants were less likely to share in-party criticism.

In an interesting Day 2 talk at #SPSP, Michalis Mamakos showed data suggesting that across 250 million comments from over 10,000 subreddits, of those covering political topics, about 13% could be coded as “closed-minded”, but only 3% covering non-political topics could be coded as “closed-minded.”

Day 2 of #SPSP also featured an interesting talk by Jordan Thompson, finding that participants with high levels of outparty animosity were more engaged with online political memes than those with lower levels of outparty animosity, including in terms of the intent to like and share those memes.

During Day 2 of #SPSP, @crobertson500.bsky.social presented interesting work suggesting that although people overwhelmingly think (blue dots) that negative content (seen in red rows) goes viral online, they actually *want* (orange dots) positive content (seen in green rows) to go viral online.

Samuel Arnold presented interesting data at the #SPSP polipsy precon showing that U.S. Prolific participants overestimate past prejudice against Black Americans relative to actual levels of historical prejudice per ANES data; discrepancies increased as participants estimated further back in time.

Another impressive data blitz at the #SPSP political psychology preconference came from @hwaldfogel.bsky.social who investigated how Democrats and Republicans define what “we” means in campaign messaging.

An interesting data blitz by Noah Laskey at the #SPSP political psychology preconference investigated the role of context in the moral foundations, questioning some of the classic work highlighting the differences in moral judgments between liberals and conservatives…

Another interesting #SPSP political psychology preconference data blitz by @trevorslies.bsky.social investigated the association between conservatism and different types of environmentalism—complicating prior work suggesting conservatism might be uniformly related to anti-environmental sentiment.

Another cool data blitz from #SPSP political psych precon. People asume there are two large coalitions in the U.S.: liberals & conservatives. But, work by @isaiasghezae.bsky.social suggests there are instead 3: (1) conservatives, (2) ideological liberals, and (3) a liberal demographic group.

Second, during the #SPSP political psychology data blitzes, Sanaz Talaifar presented some fascinating analyses of smartphone data among German users to investigate the everyday behaviors of people with greater authoritarian tendencies. These behaviors were better than chance at predicting high…

Some particularly impressive data blitzes @ the #SPSP political psych precon. First, Opeyemi Adeojo presented a look at how different facets of tendency toward interpersonal victimhood are associated with support for violence in an active conflict between indigenous groups & the Fulani in Nigeria.

Some interesting talks this morning at the #SPSP political psychology preconference! First up, Beth Anne Helgasom discussed work across five studies (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, and 3) that found that partisans are more lenient in judging the falsehoods said by politicians they support versus oppose, because

Elon University folks, I’d love your help spreading the word! Next Wed., March 4th at 6 pm we’ll be organizing a 90-min, evidence-based dialogue workshop for students at Elon University in partnership with Kernodle Center for Civic Life, and the nonpartisan non-profit Environmental Defense Fund.

Headed to #SPSP? I’ll be presenting Saturday (9:30–10:40am, E258) in the symposium “What Do We Value in Leaders?” I’ll share some of our work on gender and dominance- vs. prestige-based stereotypes vs. preferences for leaders. Would love to see you there!

Delighted to see this paper—for which I collected data in the US—on the relation between intergroup conflict & preferences for dominant leaders across 25 countries is now out in EHB. Great job to Lasse Laustsen & colleagues for getting this cool paper out there! authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

This past Saturday, I was asked to facilitate a session on revisiting stereotypes (versus preferences) at my university’s “WE LEAD” program, a cohort experience for alumnae of Elon University who are now successful executives. (1/2)

Looking forward to hosting this interactive session @ my university tomorrow. It'll focus on distinguishing between 2 kinds of political polarization, when and why we should care about (affective) polarization, & the science behind some of the causes of--and interventions for reducing--polarization.

Putting the finishing touches on the BORG lab’s new research space, while campus looks about as eager as I do to welcome back three returning student researchers—and one new one—this semester. awiezel.wixsite.com/wiezelborgla...

Friendly reminder from your resident political psychologist that contemporary election polling results tend to have larger error margins than the actual margins between candidates; they're not necessarily great indicators of who's going to win, especially in a close race. (1/3)

Doug Kenrick and I recently wrote a Psychology Today blog post about leader sex in the context of the current U.S. presidential race, given some of our recent work with @mbarlev.bsky.social on leadership stereotypes and preferences. You can check it out here: www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/se...

First Behavior, Opinions, and Relations between Groups (BORG) lab meeting down, and we're already getting featured our on our department's Instagram. Very excited to be working with these three great undergrad students!☺️ www.instagram.com/p/C_TOZB3ugx0/

Excited to announce that I'll be launching my undergraduate research lab--the (Wiezel) Behavior, Opinions, and Relations between Groups (BORG) Lab-- at Elon University this Fall! (1/2)

It was very cool to see Patrick Grzanka give the presidential keynote at #SPSSICon2024 yesterday. I still remember some 14 years ago, when I was a wide-eyed political science undergrad taking his human event course. (1/4)

Terrific Kurt Lewin Keynote Address by Linda Tropp, using examples from decades of work on intergroup relations to illustrate "Socially Relevant Research" as an alternative to a tight dichotomy between "scientific/basic" research and "useful"/"applied" research (1/4)

Do differences in climate beliefs between liberals & conservatives translate into differences in climate action? Interesting work by @mikeberkwein.bsky.social and his team, who looked at a global mega-study investigating the effectiveness of 11 climate interventions, found that (1/6)

Are sustainable behaviors better adopted socially or alone? Janet Lopez & her team first had participants describe behavior change goals, and then write a letter regulating their goals to either themselves (individual regulation) or to another person (social regulation). (1/2)

Is starting sustainable behaviors seen as more impactful than stopping *un*sustainable ones? @rrrianabrown.bsky.social finds that when participants evaluate a person that either starts or stops using products which are described as either sustainable or unsustainable, (1/4)

Much of the work on cross-race relationships and interactions focus on the benefits for members of dominant groups. Régine Debrosse & colleagues' work considers the impact on people of color. (1/4)

Very interesting mega-study on stereotype variability (among US participants) by Selin Toprakkiran. Using data from Project Implicit, and targets from 28 nationality groups and 6 racial/ethnic groups to delve into the nature of stereotype variability, her team found that … (1/4)

Bookmarking a number of symposia to sit in on at #SPSSICon24. Please feel free to reach out if you'd like to meet up and join me! ☺️

Thanks to Michael Abernethy for highlighting our recent work (with Douglas T. Kenrick and @mbarlev.bsky.social) on leadership stereotypes versus preferences in Today at Elon! www.elon.edu/u/news/2024/...

Do people really prefer dominant male leaders? A series of studies led by @awiezel.bsky.social & Doug Kenrick suggest people in fact would rather have prestige-based and female leaders in a variety of leadership roles, including political office. www.hbes.com/is-it-time-t...

Thanks to Eric Dolan and @psypost.bsky.social for this neat write-up of our recent work on leadership stereotypes versus preferences with Douglas T. Kenrick and @mbarlev.bsky.social!

We’re delighted that our paper, “Stereotypes versus preferences: Revisiting the role of alpha males in leadership” (doi.org/10.1016/j.ev...) with @mbarlev.bsky.social and Douglas T. Kenrick received seven thoughtful commentaries from prominent scholars in the field (1/3)

Very much looking forward to co-hosting the interactive online session, "The Social Psychology of Bridging Political Divides in Your Own Backyard" with Braver Angels of North Carolina, next Thursday, 4/11 at 7:30 PM EST. (1/3)