Political Psychology

By Adam Winstock, King's College London Despite the language we use about drugs, many people don’t see themselves as “drug users” but as rational adults who aren’t on a mission to seek moral disintegration and cause themselves harm. People who...

White Americans may view diversity and multiculturalism more negatively as the U.S. moves toward becoming a minority-majority nation, UCLA psychologists report. As part of their study, the researchers divided 98 white Americans from all regions of the country — half...

People living in more liberal countries are happier on average than those in less liberal countries, but individually, conservatives are happier than liberals no matter where they live, according to a study of people in 16 Western European countries. "Liberal...

Trust in others and confidence in societal institutions are at their lowest point in over three decades, analyses of national survey data reveal. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Compared to Americans in the 1970s-2000s,...

Are political speeches manipulative and strategic? They could be – when politicians say one thing in public, and privately believe something else, political scientists say. Saddam Hussein's legacy of recording private discussions offers researchers a fascinating insight: both into the...

A new national survey reveals that the political divide among red-versus-blue states does not support the hypothesis that knowledge about abortion and health is shaped by the state in which one lives. Research led by Danielle Bessett, a University of...

Why do some people support higher taxes on the rich, while others believe such taxes are unfair? According to new research, stereotypes about wealthy people have a significant influence on Americans' tax policy preferences -- especially among conservatives. "With an...

Republicans search the Net for information about the weather, climate change and global warming during extremely hot or cold spells. Democrats google these terms when they experience changes in the average temperatures. These are some of the surprising findings from...

By Peter Ellerton How do you know the people billed as science experts that you see, hear and read about in the media are really all that credible? Or have they been included just to create a perception of balance...

By Sylvia Tippmann, The Conversation Some shares have new owners every second. Today much of the buying and selling is done by computers, but some still rely on human intuition – the gut feeling of the experienced trader. “Nobody can...

Over the last few years, we've seen increasing dissent among liberals and conservatives on important issues such as gun control, health care and same-sex marriage. Both sides often have a difficult time reconciling their own views with their opposition, and...

With over 11 million active users – or 31.1% of the population – Turkey has one of the highest rates of Twitter usage in the world. During the height of the Gezi Park protests in spring 2013, more tweets were...