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Voters generally value competence in politicians. Four studies, all conducted in Germany, show that this is especially pronounced in people of higher compared with lower social class. The first study, with a representative sample (N 1 = 2239), found that the reported importance of competence in politicians increased with increasing socioeconomic status (SES). This was mediated by self-perceived competence which was higher in participants of higher SES. In three further studies (two preregistered, N 2a&2b = 396, N 3 = 400) participants merely saw pictures of politicians' faces. Perceived competence based on facial appearance increased the likelihood of voting for a politician. Again, this effect was stronger among participants of higher compared with lower SES. This moderation persisted after controlling for participants' political orientation and politicians' perceived warmth and dominance. We discuss implications for future research on the psychological underpinnings of social class as well as appearance effects in the political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: At the turn of the 21st century, concerns emerged regarding whether research at the intersection of psychology and political science should be regarded as a multidisciplinary subfield within political science or an independent, interdisciplinary field that contributes to both disciplines. More than twenty years later, how does the literature on political decision-making approach this issue? Should this application of political cognition research be viewed as a multidisciplinary subfield within political science, or as an independent interdisciplinary field contributing to both political science and psychology? This study examines the organizational framework of research and the trends in publications within the literature on political decision-making. Methods: Through a bibliometric analysis, this study aims to enhance readers' understanding of the disciplinary characteristics of research in political decision-making. The analysis examines how publications are distributed across various disciplines and among different researchers contributing to the study of political decision-making, as well as the most frequently used methodologies in this field. Results: The findings suggest that research tends to be more multidisciplinary than strictly interdisciplinary. This conclusion is based on three observations: (i) most publications are in political science journals; (ii) much of the research is conducted by political scientists; and (iii) the research mainly uses political science frameworks and observational designs despite political scientists' familiarity with experimental designs. Departmental affiliation is the key factor in predicting cited literature, with political scientists favoring political science research and psychologists leaning towards psychology research. Discussion: The results of this study suggest that while political decision-making research draws on expertise from both disciplines, it remains fundamentally anchored in political science. Recommendations include attending conferences outside the researcher's primary discipline, provided they are relevant to their research agenda. Researchers should explore the various specialized grants and funding opportunities that aim to promote the development of new research questions and testing new methods, theoretical approaches, and innovative ideas. Faculty should integrate various disciplines into the curriculum to offer valuable and broadly applicable knowledge. By promoting open interdisciplinary dialogue, political scientists and psychology researchers can work together more effectively to tackle the challenges of political decision-making research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating a shared group identification has been theorized as one pathway for overcoming intergroup divides within larger, superordinate contexts. Although self‐identification with superordinate groups has been extensively studied in political psychology, less attention has been paid to how others' recognition of our belonging shapes this process. The present paper examines the role of such perceived recognition for European identification across three countries ‐ Romania, Serbia, and Türkiye ‐ using data from three studies. We find support for a hierarchical framing of a superordinate group (Study 1, N = 374), where the perspective of more prototypical subgroups come to act as gatekeepers, impacting the identities of less prototypical members (Study 2, N = 1255). Through an experimental design (Study 3, N = 573), we find that exposure to more positive perspectives of prototypical subgroups can increase identification, superordinate–subordinate identity compatibility and political support for group membership. Significant differences emerge between the countries, highlighting the importance of socio‐political and historical context, which we consider in the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Epistemic and Moral Agency in a Crisis of Trust?" provides a critical review of Tillmann Vierkant's book "The Tinkering Mind," which explores the interplay between intentional control, evaluative processes, and the extended mind thesis in cognitive science and philosophy. Vierkant argues that beliefs are shaped by both internal and external mechanisms, challenging traditional views on belief acquisition and agency. The article highlights the importance of understanding how external tools and social institutions influence epistemic and moral agency, raising questions about trust in social structures and the need for ethical infrastructure to support diachronic agency. [Extracted from the article]

This article suggests that since people who believe in magic and those who believe in conspiracy theories produce meaning and make sense of the world by engaging in the same process of signification, they should be more likely to have one such belief if they hold the other. To test this proposition, we perform both macro‐ and micro‐level analyses using, respectively, cross‐national datasets and an original set of Tanzanian data. Our findings from both sets of analyses reveal a strong association between witchcraft beliefs and the belief in conspiracy theories. Related Articles: Gainous, Jason, and Bill Radunovich. 2008. "Religion and Core Values: A Reformulation of the Funnel of Causality." Politics & Policy 33(1): 154–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2005.tb00213.x. Richey, Sean. 2017. "A Birther and a Truther: The Influence of the Authoritarian Personality on Conspiracy Beliefs." Politics & Policy 45(3): 465–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12206. Tubadji, Annie. 2023. "You'll Never Walk Alone: Loneliness, Religion, and Politico‐economic Transformation." Politics & Policy 51(4): 661–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12538. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Donald Trump's presidency (2016–2020), political observers have rushed to explain why some Latinos support nativist policies that harm members of their own ethnic group. One hypothesis predicts that Latinos who value their American identity endorse policies that denigrate non-Americans, such as unauthorized immigrants. We propose system justification as an additional motive. Study 1 draws on a representative Latino oversample (N = 3,950) in the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS). We show that higher system justification levels are substantively associated with support for harsher policies toward unauthorized immigrants, independently of American identity, partisanship, and other key covariates. Study 2 refines these results through a preregistered experiment with Latino adults (N = 1,230). We evaluated system justification and American identity as mediators of support for anti-Latino policies in the domains of unauthorized immigration and affirmative action. Assignment to read about the vibrancy of the American dream (versus control) increased system justification motives, which then strongly boosted support for nativist policies. American identity played no meaningful role. Moreover, the mediated results for nativist policies were large and robust, but small and brittle for affirmative action. We discuss our results' implications for the political psychology of Latinos—America's largest ethnic group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, the Gulf crisis led to a blockade that severely restricted Qatar's air, land, and sea access. This political crisis had far-reaching consequences, particularly affecting cross-national families and children. This qualitative analysis explores the effects of the blockade's political instability on individuals and families, specifically for Qatari citizens married to non-Qatari spouses and their cross-national children. Applying the General Aggression Model and Social Learning Theory, we interviewed 24 individuals residing in Qatar from nations directly affected by the crisis (Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). Two main themes emerged: first, the characteristics of aggressive and bullying behaviour, and second, the impacts on the well-being of cross-national families. The results showed that Qatari women and their children suffered disproportionately due to gender-based citizenship rights issues. The impacts on their well-being included heightened anxiety, depression, feelings of danger, uncertainty, and division within individuals, families, and communities. Recommendations include increasing collaborative efforts between governments, educational institutions, and community-based organizations, which are crucial to addressing aggressive and bullying behaviour across all age groups fostering a more harmonious and resilient society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from democracies shows that making laws more egalitarian can increase individuals' perceptions that others hold egalitarian views. How do citizens in authoritarian regimes that promote women's rights perceive public opinion on gender issues? While regime actions and narratives could increase perceptions that egalitarian attitudes are widespread, the disconnect between policy and public preferences could inhibit the expressive power of law to alter perceived norms. Drawing on original surveys and qualitative evidence from Morocco, an important case of de jure advances in women's rights, I find that Moroccans tend to overestimate others' embrace of patriarchal attitudes on gender issues. The tendency to misperceive conservatism spans demographic categories and is especially pronounced among men. I argue that citizens' awareness that policy processes are divorced from electoral accountability and the raised salience of conservative opposition during reform processes can reinforce perceived conservatism, even as women's rights advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide the first account of the culture wars in the political psychology and public opinion literature based on a theory of culture. Using innovative measures of grid‐group cultural theory (CT), we identify the cultures associated with ideological and partisan identifications in annual U.S. national surveys from 2011 to 2022, a unique data set of 24,870 respondents. As hypothesized, we find that the culture wars occur not just between ideologues and partisans but among them as they draw support from distinct, relatively stable yet shifting cultural coalitions. Egalitarian and, less often, fatalistic liberals and Democrats battle against individualistic and, less often, hierarchical, conservatives and Republicans. As hypothesized, fatalists are the least reliable coalition partners, and, as expected, they gravitate Republican and conservative in 2017, after Trump's election. However, fatalists who are strong partisan identifiers never defect. Moreover, our hypothesis that fatalist attraction to Trump would drive defections in their political identification is largely invalidated. Instead, fatalists mostly flee Trump in our aggregate analysis as well as in subanalyses of strong and weak ideological and partisan identifiers. In 2016 and 2018–2022, it appears that independent fatalists cause fatalists to gravitate liberal and Democrat. Unexpectedly, hierarchists also go liberal and Democrat in 2022, in apparent reaction to Trump's multifront attacks on the 2020 election that he lost. We identify the basis for cultural coalitions that can end particular culture wars, including the most significant one now occurring between egalitarians and individualists, and conclude with suggestions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some studies show ideological asymmetry in outgroup bias between rightists and leftists, those studies often target an ideologically biased outgroup. Here, we bypass this issue by targeting the ideological outgroups (rightists for leftists, and leftists for rightists). We rely on a magnetoencephalography‐based approach delineating function‐specific neural mechanisms to test for ideological asymmetries at multiple levels: explicit psychological self‐reports, implicit behavioral bias, and neural oscillations. Using a computational model balancing the stimuli and screening 81 rightists and leftist Israeli individuals, we find ideological asymmetry with rightists being more biased at all three levels. Furthermore, the neural results add important insights by uncovering two underlying mechanisms: The first (late beta‐band motor activity) is strongly associated with implicit behavior, while the second (early alpha‐band dorsal anterior cingulate activity) reveal an antileftist bias for both groups. We discuss implications of the findings on bias, ideological asymmetry, their neural underpinnings, and social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Cancel culture" has become a prominent phrase in US political commentary, with supporters and opponents relying on different value-based arguments to express their views. At the same time, these camps often fall along predictable partisan political lines. What, then, are the real motivations for promoting and opposing behaviors sometimes labeled as "canceling" in contemporary American politics? We explore this question through survey data from Pew in 2020 and two original survey experiments, conducted on the 2021 CES and a 2023 online sample. We examine how Americans define the term "cancel culture," to what extent cancel culture is linked to both a range of core democratic values, and the role of partisanship in shaping support or opposition to specific behaviors. We observe a significant range of views about cancel culture and document connections to various political values. From our experiments, we find that partisanship is a potent driver of support for and understanding of cancel culture and that value-based framing has a weaker impact as compared to partisanship. Cancel culture provides an important case study of how Americans process conflicting norms and values, including free speech and political accountability, beyond the typical constraints of the formal political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To mark the 30th anniversary of the Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA), 11 of PsySSA's past presidents, along with two facilitators, gathered in early 2024 for a roundtable discussion on psychology in South Africa. This article represents an edited transcript of that conversation. The guiding motif of the discussion – looking backwards, looking forwards – led discussants through the historical temporalities, institutional, professional and disciplinary debates, as well as the political concerns that face and have forged South African psychology. The discussants were specifically concerned with the challenges of unifying organised psychology; the generative forces, conflicts and antagonisms within psychology; psychology's pedagogical and intellectual developments; and what it means to politicise psychology in and beyond South Africa. In looking ahead, the discussion concluded with an internationalist reflection on how psychology in South Africa contributes to global knowledges and praxes. The conversation was characterised by epistemic, sectoral and political tensions, as well as ambivalences and shifting centres of gravity, all of which reflect the accomplishments made within South African psychology, as well as psychology's status as a strongly contested and patently unfinished organisational, disciplinary, professional, service and knowledge project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editorial "Towards new horizons: Welcome to the future" reflects on the 30-year history of the journal Culture & Psychology, highlighting its commitment to transdisciplinary and international scholarly exchanges on culture in psychology. The editor emphasizes the importance of intellectual freedom in academia and expresses concerns about the commoditization of journal articles and the trivialization of cultural psychology. The editorial also discusses potential obstacles facing the field, such as the danger of becoming extinct by losing intellectual substance. The editor expresses confidence in the future of the journal under the new Editor-in-Chief, Kevin Carriere, who is expected to bring innovative perspectives to the field. [Extracted from the article]

The theory of normative social behavior (TNSB) postulates that people are influenced by others' behaviors, which they observe from messages and experience. In addition to focusing on perceived (i.e., descriptive and injunctive) norms, the TNSB was expanded to include collective norms, which represent what people actually do. Testing this expanded theoretical model, the current study examined whether two types of collective norms – collective political norms and collective regional norms – interacted with descriptive norms to influence pandemic mask wearing behavior expectations among U.S. adults (N = 444). The interaction was statistically significant for collective political norms (β = -.74, p =.009) but not collective regional norms (β = -.16, p =.85). Specifically, descriptive norms were related to increased mask wearing expectation for all values of political party collective norms, but the effects were stronger when political party collective norms were low (i.e., low mask wearing behavior was normative). The findings support the inclusion of collective norms in the TNSB, clarify the relationships among different types of norms, and provide insights for norms-based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political polarization is one of the most discussed challenges facing contemporary democracies and is often associated with a broader epistemic crisis. While inspiring a large literature in political science, polarization's epistemic problems also have significance for normative democratic theory, and this study develops a new approach aimed at understanding them. In contrast to prominent accounts from political psychology—group polarization theory and cultural cognition theory—which argue that polarization leads individuals to form unreliable political beliefs, this study focuses on system-level diversity. It argues that polarization's epistemic harms are best located in its tendency to reduce the diversity of perspectives utilized in a democratic system and in how this weakens the system's ability to identify and address problems of public concern. Understanding such harms is also argued to require a greater consideration of the political dynamics of polarization and issues of elite discourse, alongside political psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Policy Studies Journal's latest issue, PSJ 52(4), features 12 articles covering diverse policy theories, topics, and research methodologies, highlighting the journal's commitment to interdisciplinary dialogues. The issue introduces four short articles alongside regular research articles, offering valuable insights into policy scholarship. Notable updates include changes in the editorial team, recognitions received at the APSA meeting, the availability of a Virtual Special Issue on Policing, and the journal's increased submission volume and improved CiteScore. The articles in this issue explore various aspects of policy actors, dynamics, and developments, shedding light on key policy processes and practical applications. [Extracted from the article]

Emotions are central to human behavior and, consequently, play a significant role in policymaking. While the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) incorporates the notion of "public mood" into the political stream, this concept primarily focuses on a fleeting, less intense, and diffuse emotional state that is not necessarily linked to a specific triggering event or policy‐related object. To address this limitation, the current article draws on robust findings from political psychology, viewing and interpreting the MSF through an emotional lens. It investigates the intersections between emotions, on the one hand, and the assumptions and structural elements of the MSF, on the other, by sharpening existing concepts—such as the emotional agenda (policy) window, emotional decision window, and emotional policy entrepreneurs—to examine emotionality in policy dynamics. It concludes by discussing how an emotional perspective on the MSF can help scholars generate nuanced hypotheses, overcome the MSF's metaphorical language, and gauge when policy may be in search of a rationale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted a preregistered field experiment examining racial discrimination in tie formation on social media. We randomly assigned research accounts varying on race (Black, White) and politics (liberal/Democrat, conservative/Republican, neutral) to follow a politically balanced sample of Twitter (i.e., X) users (N = 5,951) who were unaware they were in a research study. We examined three predictions from the social and political psychology literatures: i) individuals favor White over Black targets, ii) this tendency is stronger for conservatives/Republicans than for liberals/Democrats, and iii) greater discrimination by conservatives/Republicans is explained by the assumption that racial minorities are liberal/Democrat. We found evidence that individuals were less likely to reciprocate social ties with Black accounts than White accounts. However, this tendency was not moderated by individuals' political orientation, shared partisanship, or partisan mismatch. In sum, this work provides field experimental evidence for racial discrimination in tie formation on social media by individuals across political backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prominent theory in political psychology contends that individual differences in negativity bias explain political ideology: people who are more sensitive to negative stimuli find solace and comfort in conservative approaches to politics. Using self‐reported measures of negativity bias, the evidence is relatively consistent. Yet, using physiological indicators of the negativity bias, the results are, across the board, inconsistent with the negativity bias argument. Building on recent neuroscience work, we propose and test two innovations. First, unconscious and conscious processes are not necessarily aligned. Therefore, we propose that there are different – conscious and unconscious – paths that could link ideology with the negativity bias. Second, individuals vary in their ability and motivation to down‐regulate arousal and reflect on their emotions. As such, the ideology‐negativity bias may emerge in some individuals but not in others. In two preregistered laboratory studies (US and the Netherlands), we find limited evidence for these claims. In a subsequent registered report, we replicate some inconsistent patterns that emerged in study 1. We confirm that self‐reported social conservatism and implicit social conservatism (measured with an IAT) are positively correlated. We also establish that negativity bias is unrelated to social conservatism (both explicit and implicit). We conclude that negativity bias is most likely not the answer to why people on the left and right differ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prefigurative politics and social movement strategy: The roles of prefiguration in the reproduction, mobilisation and coordination of movements. Rethinking prefiguration: Alternatives, micropolitics and goals in social movements. The concept captures a variety of social experiments which critique the status quo (Cornish et al., [7]) whilst constructing 'alternative or utopian social relations in the present either in parallel with or in the course of, adversarial social movement protest' (L. S. Yates, [41], p. 236). [Extracted from the article]

Abstract: Do advisers affect foreign policy and, if so, how? Recent scholarship on elite decision making prioritizes leaders and the institutions that surround them, rather than the dispositions of advisers themselves. We argue that despite the hierarchical nature of foreign policy decision making, advisers’ predispositions regarding the use of force shape state behavior through the counsel advisers provide in deliberations. To test our argument, we introduce an original data set of 2,685 foreign policy deliberations between US presidents and their advisers from 1947 to 1988. Applying a novel machine learning approach to estimate the hawkishness of 1,134 Cold War–era foreign policy decision makers, we show that adviser-level hawkishness affects both the counsel that advisers provide in deliberations and the decisions leaders make: conflictual policy choices grow more likely as hawks increasingly dominate the debate, even when accounting for leader dispositions. The theory and findings enrich our understanding of international conflict by demonstrating how advisers’ dispositions, which aggregate through the counsel advisers provide, systematically shape foreign policy behavior.