Fabian Guy Neuner

Five out of six measures of identity and solidarity with U.S. people of color are equivalent across English and Spanish interviews As the US continues to racially diversify, researchers are increasingly investigating the prevalence of self-identification as – and feelings of solidarity with – people of color (PoC). Prior resea...

Our job as mentors is to identify our students' strengths and areas that can be developed. My PhD student (psych), Sydney Tran, has deep substantive interests, but also enviable methodological range. Her first, first-author publication is tagged below.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Call for Nominations!
The ISPP is seeking nominations for several leadership roles, including President-Elect, Vice President for Communications and Publications, and five members of the Governing Council (serving July 2026–July 2029).

Key items for #polisky:

(1) due November 12, 2025

(2) ONLY undergrad seniors, bachelor's not in grad programs, OR 1st-year grad students eligible (whether in a master's or PhD program)

(3) fund all projects but emphasis on "high-priority research areas in alignment with Admin priorities" like AI

Thanks for sharing, Drew. This is going straight into my lecture slides.

Rethinking measurement invariance causally Measurement invariance is often touted as a necessary statistical prerequisite for group comparisons. Typically, when there is evidence against measur…

This rethinking of MI from @dingdingpeng.the100.ci and @boryslaw.bsky.social is going straight to the syllabus.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I've also thought MI useful as a way to test substantive hypothesis, so this was clarifying more generally.

ajps.org/2021/10/11/o...

Whoa—my book is up for pre-order!

𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭 & 𝐌𝐋 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐢𝐧 #Rstats 𝐚𝐧𝐝 #PyData

The book presents an ultra-simple and powerful workflow to make sense of ± any model you fit

The web version will stay free forever and my proceeds go to charity.

tinyurl.com/4fk56fc8

Germany and the US: F. G. Neuner, Z. Kirill, C. S. Bruno, et al. “Comparing Revealed and Expressed Populism: The Case of Voting For The 'Alternative Für Deutschland' and 'Die Linke'”. In: German Politics online first (2025), pp. 1-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2025.2483225.

Thanks, Drew! I was hoping the paper could be useful for thinking through information equivalence/masking concerns in conjoint experiments (and other designs) more broadly.

Thanks Efrén!

Also came here to say there's a non-zero chance of this.

I'm not at APSA, but I will still be buying too many books because a bunch of great presses are running conference sales. I'll try to collect them all below. Feel free to add more. And self-promote if your book is on sale!!

Thanks Markus. Hope you find it helpful - I cite your paper as a good example of treatment/stimulus sampling.

Now Out on First View: "Can (Thin) Populism be Manipulated without Manipulating Host Ideology? Evidence from a Conjoint Validation Approach"
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Thanks!

Broader point: Conjoint experiments usually do not include manipulation checks. But due to information equivalency/masking concerns it is still important to validate that (1) treatments manipulate construct of interest, without (2) also manipulating other constructs.

Implications for study of populism: it is difficult - even in conjoint experiments - to disentangle effects of (thin) populism and host ideology

Additional finding: respondents are less likely to use thin ideology appeals to make inferences about host ideology when partisan labels are provided

Abstract for paper: Scholars increasingly conceptualize populism by whether politicians use people-centric and anti-elite appeals that pit a homogeneous people against a corrupt elite. These appeals reflect “thin” ideology because they offer no programmatic content and thus politicians must pair these appeals with more substantive positions, termed their “host” (or thick) ideology, which often consists of nativism on the right (e.g., espousing anti-immigrant positions) and socialism on the left (e.g., prioritizing redistribution). An emerging literature has thus sought to estimate whether populists garner support due to their thin ideology or their substantive host ideology. To date, no research has validated whether populism treatments (1) truly operationalize populist thin ideology, and (2) do so without manipulating host ideology. Results from three conjoint validation experiments fielded in both the United States and the United Kingdom show that thin ideology treatments successfully manipulate the underlying concepts but caution that some operationalizations also affect perceptions of host ideology.

Shows that thin populism treatments shift perceptions of people-centrism and anti-elitism as expected

Shows that thin populism treatments can also affect perceptions of host ideology. In particular, using treatments such as "American people" affects perceptions of a candidate's position on immigration

Shows suggestive evidence that people are less likely to use populist thin ideology appeals as heuristics for inferring host ideology when partisan information is included

New preregistered report @jepsjournal.bsky.social

"Thin" populism treatments manipulate perceptions of people-centrism + anti-elitism

But: some treatments (e.g., "American people") affect perceptions of host ideology, complicating causal analyses of impact of populist rhetoric

cup.org/4n3DvZm

Mental Health and Trauma in Politics: Causes and Consequences Thu, September 11, 12:00 to 1:30pm PDT Democracy in Distress: Psychological Perspectives on Anti-Democratic Sentiment Fri, September 12, 12:00 to 1:30pm PDT Understanding and Correcting Misperceptions Sat, September 13, 8:00 to 9:30am PDT Identity Politics: Measurement, Drivers, and Consequences Sun, September 14, 8:00 to 9:30am PDT

Ask re #APSA2025: The political psychology division has a number of panels that need additional discussants. If you're attending APSA and are willing to serve in such roles please get in touch with @carlynwayne.bsky.social and I. See screenshot for panels. Thanks in advance!

Mental Health and Trauma in Politics: Causes and Consequences Thu, September 11, 12:00 to 1:30pm PDT Democracy in Distress: Psychological Perspectives on Anti-Democratic Sentiment Fri, September 12, 12:00 to 1:30pm PDT Understanding and Correcting Misperceptions Sat, September 13, 8:00 to 9:30am PDT Identity Politics: Measurement, Drivers, and Consequences Sun, September 14, 8:00 to 9:30am PDT

Ask re #APSA2025: The political psychology division has a number of panels that need additional discussants. If you're attending APSA and are willing to serve in such roles please get in touch with @carlynwayne.bsky.social and I. See screenshot for panels. Thanks in advance!

screenshot of the top of the first page of the fall 2025 experiments section newsletter

There's a new issue of the section newsletter out! This one's on sample considerations in experiments: professional survey-takers, LLM usage, rural contexts, and more!

connect.apsanet.org/s42/newslett...

Less than two weeks left to apply for this mentoring opportunity #polisky #polcom

two vases are standing next to each other in a cave . ALT: two vases are standing next to each other in a cave .

The schedule for the Barney Ford Lab at CU Boulder's Annual Meeting (hosted with @priec.bsky.social) is up. Join us Friday September 19th for a day worth of REP research, the Rockies, & Bowling. Nearly 100 RSVPed guests. #PRIEC #BoulderPRIEC #SkoBuffs

www.colorado.edu/lab/civics/a...

APSA-bound #polisky: register for the Pol. Psych Pre-Conf by Friday (8/15)!

Featuring @lilymasonphd.bsky.social, @valentimvicente.bsky.social , @mjcohen.bsky.social, @agtheodoridis.bsky.social, S. Feldman, M. Pickup, L. Stephenson, T. Ollerenshaw, & O. Christley!

www.eventbrite.com/e/2025-polit...

Abstract of a paper written by Amanda Weiss and Ekin Dursun and titled "Robust Emotion Manipulation for Surveys: Evidence from Three Experiments." The abstract reads: "A large number of experiments investigate the effects of emotions on critical political outcomes, including policy attitudes, support for authoritarians, tolerance, and political participation. The success of these experiments depends on emotion manipulations: Manipulations must be strong enough to shift one target emotion while also being specific enough shift other confounders only minimally. In this project, we identify emotion manipulations that fulfill these imperatives. First, using causal graphs, we show that in such experiments, emotions are intermediate outcomes of randomly assigned emotion manipulation instruments—not randomized treatments themselves. Then, we present evidence from three experiments (total N = 6, 649) on the effectiveness of vignettes, autobiographical emotional memory tasks, images, and more for inducing anger, gratitude, fear, political anger, political gratitude, and political cynicism. We show that vignettes are reliable instruments in terms of both strength and specificity. We also investigate compliance with emotion manipulation instruments and find that pre-treatment attitudes toward research may moderate treatment effects.

🚨 Updated working paper!

Ekin Dursun and I ask what instruments best manipulate emotions on surveys (osf.io/56h4g).

We find that vignettes really work! They have large effects on emotions of interest & smaller effects on emotions *not* of interest.

But as always, it's complicated.👇

(1/17)

Job ad up for the political psychology position. I am not on the committee but am more than happy to answer questions!

apply.interfolio.com/170193

picture of journal article cover for Planning for heat resilience in increasingly vulnerable cities: A case study of Vienna, Austria

picture of journal article cover: Planning to mitigate heat in vulnerable neighborhoods: Applyingthe Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ for Heat in twoBoston neighborhoods

It's hot almost everywhere & our team has 2 new studies of #heat #planning both led by former master's students: One on #Vienna, Austria and the other looking at 2 neighborhoods in #Boston:
Vienna: authors.elsevier.com/a/1la4Z7sfVZ...

Boston: doi.org/10.1080/0735...

This looks fantastic!

Great thanks Sara! I think that's very important.