New research assistant

Natasha Nowicka recently joined our team as a research assistant, supporting our current projects in political psychology with a focus on political polarization, gender, and climate attitudes. Natasha holds a BSc in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego, and an MSc in Psychology from Lund University. She has a strong interest in statistics and its application to the behavioral sciences. Her master's thesis employed a meta-analytic approach to examine the relationship between language proximity and the bilingual advantage. Natasha also has prior experience working as a research assistant on language and developmental projects, fMRI studies related to social anxiety, and research focused on community-based outreach for at-risk populations.

Ideological origins of resistance against gender-inclusive language reforms: Singular they as a de-gendering or multi-gendering strategy

In this new paper, which was just published in Political Psychology, we show that attitudes and use of gender-inclusive pronouns, such as singular they, is largely determined by individual level ideology. Specifically, we find that RWA predicts negativity towards singular they for nonbinary identities while SDO predicts negativity towards singular they for generic use.

New article about gender stereotypes in Sweden

Emma recently published an article exploring gender stereotypes in Sweden in Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.


This study investigates prescriptive (how women and men should be) and proscriptive (how women and men should not be) gender stereotypes in Sweden and how these stereotypes relate to self-ascribed gendered traits. In an online survey with students at three major universities (N = 679) it was found that participants believed that the societal view was that women should be more communal than men, but less dominant and men should be more agentic than women, but less weak. In comparison, self-ratings only differed for communion, such that women rated themselves as more communal than men (there were no differences in self-ratings of agency, dominance, or weakness). Thus, prescriptive and proscriptive stereotypes and self-views differed. Women mainly perceived differences between self-ratings and prescriptions of communion, whereas men mainly perceived differences between self-ratings and prescriptions of agency. Moreover, women mainly perceived differences between self-ratings and proscriptions of dominance, and men mainly perceived differences between self-ratings and proscriptions of weakness. Hence, both women and men perceive larger gaps between self-evaluations and societally desired and undesired gender stereotypical traits. Future studies should investigate the consequences of such mismatches.

Intergenerational altruism and climate policy preferences

In April, Gustav, Sofia, Hanna and Emma published a paper on intergenerational altruism and climate policy preferences in PNAS Nexus. Find the paper here.

Abstract

Climate mitigation constitutes an intergenerational moral dilemma; the decisions we make today will inevitably shape the prospects for generations to come. Yet, we still know little about the relationship between intergenerational altruism (IGA)—our concerns for the well-being of future generations—and support for costly climate mitigation policies. In this study, we present an approach to measuring IGA through an intergenerational dilemma, where participants allocate resources across generations. First, we describe how IGA depends on the temporal (social) distance between generations and demonstrate robust correlations between IGA and support for several climate policies. Then, we leverage randomized participation in the intergenerational dilemma to show that it causally increases climate policy support, an effect we attribute to higher worries about human-induced climate change among treated subjects. An exploratory heterogeneity analysis suggests that the impact of the intergenerational dilemma is primarily driven by female and nonbinary participants. In sum, this study presents both a novel measurement strategy and robust evidence of a malleable moral basis of climate policy preferences.

On the nexus between material and ideological determinants of climate policy support

In a recently published paper, Hanna and Emma, together with Gustav Agneman and Sofia Henriks, tested the effect of economic costs of climate mitigation policies on policy support and how this effect differed between left- and right-wing affiliates. The paper is published in Ecological Economics, and can be downloaded here.

Abstract

This study explores how rising economic costs of climate mitigation policies differentially shape climate policy support among the political left and right. To this end, we randomly manipulate how much consumption costs increase as a result of four different climate mitigation policies and study how different cost scenarios influence policy support among a sample of 1,597 Swedish adults. We find that more costly climate policies induce greater climate policy polarization, since right-leaning participants display both lower baseline and more cost-sensitive climate policy support. In addition, we investigate how policy costs affect participants’ concerns about the climatic consequences of consumption. While inconclusive, the results indicate that right-leaning participants, in some instances, display less concern about the climatic consequences of consumption when policy costs rise. This pattern can be understood through the lens of motivated disbelief, which holds that people adjust their beliefs in order to support their preferred actions. The present study provides novel insights as to how and when material conditions influence climate policy preferences.

Ideological predictors of anti-science attitudes

Amanda and Emma recently published an article about ideological predictors of anti-science attitudes in the new Frontiers Social Psychology section Political Psychology.

This research examined individual-level ideological variables as predictors of anti-science attitudes, encompassing a lack of acceptance, belief, and trust in science as an institution and source of knowledge. We specifically focused on ideologies associated with group-based dominance and populism while also considering conventional predictors like scientific literacy, symbolic ideology, and partisanship. Study 1 was an original survey (U.S. participants, N = 700), which replicated prior research showing that political conservative identity and attitudes favoring group-based dominance most strongly predicted anti-science attitudes. In contrast, populist attitudes had no substantial effect. In Study 2, analyzing data from the Dutch LISS Panel (N = 2,186), group-based dominance attitudes, specifically with regard to gender, as well as populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs, emerged as the most prominent factors predicting anti-science attitudes. These studies speak to the role of group-based dominance attitudes in undermining the perceived validity of science, as observed in both North American and Western European samples. Whether these results reflect more consistent patterns or are specific to particular countries and cultural contexts is not clear, emphasizing the need for future research on how these ideologies shape and perpetuate anti-science attitudes.

New project: Divided Parliaments? Polarization, Moralization, and the Risk of Gridlock

Hanna recently received funding for a new project together with Florence So and Robert Klemmensen at the Department of Political Science, Lund University.

Divided Parliaments? Polarization, Moralization, and the Risk of Gridlock

In well-functioning democracies, political representatives are capable of compromising to pass legislation that solve problems facing citizens. This entails the need to respond to crises and to adapt policies that are not subjected to the whims of partisanship. Recently, scholars have observed increased “affective polarization”, entailing hostility towards political opponents, in the electorates across many western democracies. Such partisan hostility can threaten the effectiveness and legitimacy of democratic policymaking if it spills over into the functioning of legislatures, leading to gridlock and stalemate. In this project we investigate if affective polarization influences the legislative behavior of political representatives. We suggest that affective polarization at the elite level entails increased use of moralized language in communication. When using moralized language, representatives signal that compromising is unlikely, since it becomes difficult to ‘split the difference’ on issues of morality. So far, there is very little research on the effects of affective polarization on legislative behavior. Hence, we fill a clear gap. Empirically, we focus on the Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish parliaments. To establish the degree of affective polarization and moralization in a legislature, we utilize quantitative text analyses of legislative speeches as a measure of their emotional and moral content and connect this to legislation.