🚨New Working Paper!🚨 How do Americans mentally map political coalitions? We often talk as if U.S. politics is just two sorted camps. But when people think about which groups go with which, the picture is more complicated. 🧵👇

📣 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS Join us at the 2026 Summer Institute in Computational Social Science at Penn, from June 15–26! ℹ️ More info: sicss.io/2026/penn . ⏳ Deadline: Friday, March 6, 2026, at 11:59 pm EST. #SICSS #ComputationalSocialScience

a @github.com actions script that consults the retraction watch database and opens a PR if it sees a retracted article in .bib @ylelkes.bsky.social etc. github.com/recite/retra...

In our PNAS we don't necessarily find a negative relationship between affpol and antidemocratic norm support, but certainly a non-linear one (appendix fig. below). Personally, I think FT measures have some pretty major empirical oddities we're still evaluating 🔗 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Can’t believe this isn’t satire

I definitely assumed the weapons the cops "took off the streets" were being destroyed, not returned to the streets for profit. I don't know WHY I assumed harm was actually being reduced, but I know better now!

this dude is basically the nation’s leading expert on legal ethics, we are so cooked.

This concern is not *why* I adopted quizzes this year, but I can report: I said explicitly that lectures were meant to help students do and understand the reading, not to substitute for it, and that quizzes would be be about the reading, not about the lectures. On the first quiz of the term...

Here’s what the national guard bullshit is really about. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Luskin's "Robert's Rules: Suggestions for Writing" has some excellent, pithy advice for academic writers. #polisky PDF: github.com/soodoku/on-w...

At NPR... "I and a couple of other editorial leaders were encouraged to make sure that any coverage of a Trump lie was matched with a story about a lie from Hillary Clinton. Another colleague asked what to do if one candidate just lied more than the other." Silence. slate.com/business/202...

americans (reps+dems) dislike norm violations. but some (reps) still vote for norm-breakers. so we're back at vote choice. again. not public opinion abt norm-violations. vote choice. back-sliding is an elite-constraint problem; cant public opinion way out of it. paper: tinyurl.com/normviopubop...

Learned about this history of the ANES W. Miller wrote from @ylelkes.bsky.social yesterday. So many fascinating bits in here, including the ANES existing in part b/c it got the 1948 margin ~right, and due to chance inclusion of a vote choice item. ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

So happy to see this now published at PNAS! This paper, coauthored with Shanto Iyengar, @ylelkes.bsky.social, and Sean Westwood, was my first project for @prl.bsky.social, and there will be many more coming soon! 🥳 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We're looking for candidates who hold or are close to getting a PhD in political science, psychology, communication, cognitive science or similar Please get in touch if interested!   Team @leneaaroe.bsky.social @boralexander.bsky.social @mattlevendusky.bsky.social @ylelkes.bsky.social Vin Arceneaux

🚨JOB ALERT🚨 I'm hiring two postdocs (2-3 years) for a research project on political polarization hosted at @aarhusuni.bsky.social Application deadline August 15, starting date October 1 or later. Please help share widely! polisky #AcademicSky #PhDChat international.au.dk/about/profil...

Cheers to Vin, @bnbakker.bsky.social, Neil, and @ylelkes.bsky.social for this. Much needed. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Why have the @nytimes.com & others covered the tumult at Harvard & Penn so much? @ylelkes.bsky.social, Sam Wolken & I provide an answer in a new @ajpseditor.bsky.social "The Rise of and Demand for Identity-Oriented Media Coverage": papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/u...

#OpenAccess from our new issue - Ancestral Kinship and the Origins of Ideology - cup.org/3vctG5k - Neil Fasching & @ylelkes.bsky.social

Solow "rarely used email. He offered this “economist’s explanation” of his distaste for electronic correspondence in the 2014 interview for this obituary: “If you make communications costless, you will get messages of zero value.” www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

Our paper introducing the "American Local Government Elections Database" is online at Scientific Data. The data includes 78,000 candidates in 57,000 electoral contests in races for seven distinct local political offices in most medium and large cities and counties over the last three decades.

last day to apply for the PRL meeting in NOLA. We welcome work in the areas of partisan animosity and democratic attitudes, broadly defined, and from any discipline. We cover flight and accomodations for accepted papers.

"Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time" www.nature.com/artic...

A few days left to apply to the conference in NOLA. We take an expansive view of the topic, and are interested in things related to Democratic attitudes, perceptions, beliefs etc, from any discipline.

Seyla Benhabib. medium.com/amor-mundi/a...

Public support for democracy is crucial to prevent backsliding. But existing survey questions focusing on “democracy” may not measure the concept well, as the term “democracy” varies in meaning and may prompt social desirability. polisky 1/3

Can think of at least one confound that increased news interest around 2016 and no longer commanded attention post 2020.

In general a good approach to block copy-paste for open questions in surveys. I have used this for pretty much all open questions in my surveys.

Cross posting this from the other site, before a reviewer points to that paper in an experiment. The 40% number comes from low paying annotation tasks

The right kind of mask worn, and worn the right way works as a matter of physics. But this gets lost in the conflation with what policy and individual choices do with masks, which is more complicated.

plus, there IS an RCT on this! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I am pro masking but this isn’t convincing evidence

📜 Understanding and combatting misinformation across 16 countries on six continents 🧑‍🔬 Antonio A. Arechar, Gordon Pennycook & David G. Rand et al. 📔 Nature Human Behaviour 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #️⃣ (Feeds) #SciComm #ScienceCommunication

Our paper on the effect of fiscal austerity on political polarization is now officially published in the current issue of @bjpols.bsky.social: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... With @evehubscher.bsky.social and @markuswagner.bsky.social

PRL is excited to announce our 2nd Annual Meeting in New Orleans on March 21-22! Applications to present will open on our website on Nov 1. Hint: strong submissions will include a draft paper. We hope you'll apply! PS it's fully funded ✈️ polarizationresearchlab.org/annual-meeti...

Polisky -- New working paper! Patrolling the Police: Experimental Evidence on Police Executives' Support for Oversight with Ian Adams, Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Daniell Schiff and Scott Mourtgos www.crimrxiv.com/pub/6jei4ux6...

NYT: "Other studies have found that any effects from the indictments dissipated quickly, and that there is little evidence of any increase in the numbers of Americans supportive of a violent response." That's us! We're the linked other studies (w/ @ylelkes.bsky.social and Sean Westwood)!

New work from Hopkins, @ylelkes.bsky.social & Wolken finds that identity-oriented media coverage is on the rise. Why? Audience demand for such content. Really cool paper that looks at many datasets and places media consumers as empowered actors in changing media papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....