Blog Category

The current consensus in psychology is that political conservatives are uniquely simple-minded. Indeed, even the famous critic of political bias and Heterodox contributor Jonathan Haidt (and colleagues) suggested that there is a “consistent difference between liberals and conservatives” on several...

Are voters rational? There is, unfortunately, no easy answer to the question. Social psychological science, like all science, is a quest for knowledge in a complicated world. However, research helps us advance closer to a genuine understanding of voter rationality – or irrationality, as the case may...

In the first part of this three part series, my colleague Ellie Shockley described how rational thinking may drive political attitudes and voting behavior. In the second part of the series, Matt Moytl described how emotion may drive political attitudes and voting behavior. In the final part of this...

My previous blog post covered new research showing that liberals and conservatives are prejudiced against one another to an equal degree. In this post, I will review evidence that liberals’ and conservatives’ prejudices lead them to dehumanize their political opponents—that is, to see them as less...

In this blog post, I discuss how people respond to information about their implicit racial bias—automatic attitudes and beliefs that favor one ethnic group over another. Although people can be defensive, emerging research suggests there are benefits to accepting implicit racial bias and being aware...

My first blog post tells the story of my discovery of the conditions that reveal the political biases of liberals and conservatives. It’s also a story of coming to terms with my own biases. I was liberal before I knew what being liberal meant—for example, I supported same-sex marriage before I knew...

In this blog post, I will discuss new research in political psychology that is changing our understanding of what prejudice is, and who is prejudiced. When you think of victims of prejudice and discrimination, what groups come to mind? In all likelihood, a social group that is disadvantaged in one...

Recently celebrity activists such as Beyoncé, Jennifer Garner, and Sheryl Sandberg have thrown their weight behind a campaign to ban the term “bossy” to describe women (banbossy.com, #banbossy). The goal of the campaign is to encourage young women to step into leadership roles and to assert...

Politicians, corporations, journalists and even scientists sometimes do it – they tell people things that later on turn out to be incorrect. Yet, getting rid of this so-called misinformation is often easier said than done as false beliefs are particularly sticky. In this blog, I zoom in on the...

In the first part of this three part series, my colleague Ellie Shockley described how rational thinking may drive political attitudes and voting behavior. In this second part of the series, I describe how emotion may drive political attitudes and voting behavior. In the final part of this series...