Vitória Sgorlon

Costa Rica 2026: A sudden drop in the fragmentation trend (with newly added graph) Costa Rica has swung from having the third-greatest votes fragmentation trend among countries that had established democracies as of 2000 to the record single-election drop in fragmentation ever re…

Re-upping this now that I’ve added a pretty picture showing the remarkable fragmentation trend and its sudden reversal.

fruitsandvotes.wordpress.com/2026/02/20/c...

Disentangling the Sophistication-Emotion Link: Political Interest and Confidence-in-Knowledge, but not Knowledge, Drive Emotional Responses - Political Behavior Why do some people feel stronger emotions about politics than others? Past work suggests that political sophistication, consisting of knowledge and interest, is related to feeling strong emotions abou...

🎉 New paper out in Political Behavior (with @gijsschumacher.bsky.social & @mrooduijn.bsky.social)

Why do some people feel stronger emotions about politics than others?
💡Not political knowledge, but interest and confidence-in-knowledge drive emotional engagement.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
🧵

College students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds often report worse well-being compared to their more privileged peers. This study investigates whether disparities in well-being are associated with relational experiences, with a focus on friendship dynamics. Using a year-long multiwave survey, we investigate key features of friend networks that are linked to well-being among first-generation, low-income (FLI) students and their continuing-generation, higher-income (CHI) peers. We find that, for FLI students, better well-being is uniquely and consistently linked to similarity and academic support in their friend networks. Furthermore, disparities in well-being between FLI and CHI students are largest when FLI students' friend networks are more socioeconomically diverse and completely mitigated when they are less diverse. These findings underscore that in socioeconomically diverse college environments, friendships are not one-size-fits-all in their ability to meet the needs of individuals.

"For first-generation, low-income students, ... better well-being is uniquely and consistently linked to similarity and academic support in their friend networks."

Paywall: doi.org/10.1177/0146...

In my experience chat GPT-style fake references have exploded in the last few months, even in high status peer-reviewed journals.

Perhaps editors & reviewers should start going through the list of references to check that they are real. The current situation does not reflect well on anyone involved

A global study of minimal groups finds discrimination in favor of the in-group in all 20 countries, yielding a large overall effect (OR = 4.58).

The degree of intergroup discrimination was related to higher societal uncertainty www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

1/ Does growing up poor always lead to political apathy?

Very happy to share my first paper published (open access) in @electoralstudies.bsky.social, where I show that parents' influence mitigates the poverty gap in participation, while economic mobility does not.

🔗 shorturl.at/p5Bac

University students who were provided with a free gym card (in a randomized experiment) exercised more and had a significant improvement in academic performance. The treated students were also less likely to drop out of classes
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

Did they just politicize the Messi or Cristiano divide?

New minimal groups effect just dropped! Bon apétit!

Rich interview with one very political science question: can Green parties emphasize economic inequality without losing their reputation on climate. Our work on the German Greens shows: yes. More emphasis on redistribution does not weaken perceived competence on climate and increases overall support

Populist appeals often signal ideology, even when no policies are mentioned Populist appeals often sound simple, but they might carry more weight than expected. A recent study shows that even vague statements about “the people” or “elites” can lead voters to assume a candidate supports specific political ideologies or policies.

Populist appeals often signal ideology, even when no policies are mentioned

Just as I was writing about my dictator game design.

Self-care is overrated—helping others has the biggest benefits for everyone involved

A new 2-week intervention finds that helping others improves well-being more than "self-kindness", with benefits for depressed mood, anxiety, and loneliness due to social connection psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Friends don't let friends give preregistration a bad name. Exploratory findings are fine; you just have to label them!

Converse (1964)

oh noooo

Crucial information!

Academia is basically a collection of people who got lucky early on and mistook it for genius. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Ultimately, the authors of the study conclude:

"[Our] results suggest that in-class phone bans represent a low-cost, effective policy to modestly improve academic outcomes, especially for vulnerable student groups, while enhancing student receptivity to digital policy interventions."

THIS IS MARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Electoral Role Models: Political Empowerment and Candidate Emergence - Political Behavior Does the election of politicians from historically underrepresented groups spur others to enter politics? Some political scientists and policymakers posit that the election of women and people of colo...

New research by Andrew Janusz, Patrick Silva and Andrea Junqueira finds that electing women or Afro-Brazilian mayors doesn’t boost similar candidacies for local office. Representation isn’t enough, systemic barriers still hold aspiring leaders back.
Read more:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Measuring Belief Certainty in Political Knowledge - Political Behavior Political knowledge measures what people know and how they reason about politics, but scholars still debate how to best measure the concept. A growing body of survey research has demonstrated the theo...

In Robert Vidigal's newest paper, he shows that how some people feel about their political knowledge matters just as much as what they know. A smarter way to measure what citizens understand, and why it matters for democracy. #PoliticalPsychology
Read more:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Researchers value null results, but struggle to publish them Survey finds that fear of reputational harm and a lack of support and publication platforms are among respondents’ key concerns.

“just 68% of the 7,057 researchers whose work had produced null results had shared them in some form, and just 30% had tried to publish them in a journal.”

What a joke.

#NullEffectsMatter

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Treatment effects of WhatsApp Multimedia Deactivation on False Rumors Accuracy and True News Accuracy Judgments

Treatment Effects of WhatsApp Multimedia Deactivation on Polarization and Subjective Well-Being

These findings are consistent with the “minimal effects” theory: the misinformation reduction did not translate to user belief accuracy and polarization changes.

Although users saw less false content, their attitudes stayed the same.

This research shows partisan categories aren't always central to political reasoning. When parties aren't reliable information sources, citizens find alternative ways to organize their political environment.

i'm not at all qualified to evaluate this study but i am absolutely going to share it with my students, scared straight style

If I suddenly had to start writing my papers in German I would absolutely use AI to help me

We’re excited to introduce a refreshed Data Playground — your go-to tool for exploring AmericasBarometer data.

📊 Interactive graphs
🌎 Cross-country comparisons
👥 Insights by age, gender & more

#AmericasBarometer #ComingSoon #DataPlayground #PublicOpinion

Studying economics and business in college makes students become much more conservative.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....