Dr. Lotte Pummerer

New article out in the Journal of Environmental Psychology led by @kwinter.bsky.social (with @lpummerer.bsky.social Matthew Hornsey & Timo von Oertzen) showing that conspiracy mentality and wind farm opposition mutually predict each other over time.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

…and really cool advisors ;)

Very proud to be supervising Paula Wessel (a very talented researcher) and the project on conspiracy beliefs and violence

The presenter, a young women with brown hair, stands in front of the presentation screen

Very excited to listen to Paula Wessel presenting the project by @lpummerer.bsky.social, Nadira Faber, Kevin Winter and myself today @ddc-sdu.bsky.social brown bag lunch series!

Unfollowing toxic social media influencers makes people less hostile!
In 2 experiments, we found that unfollowing extreme influencers:
-Reduced partisan animosity by 24%
-Increased satisfaction with X
-Led people to share higher-quality news

Effects lasted for 6+ months.
osf.io/preprints/ps...

6/6 Potential small steps: Get informed & inform others about how science & politics work (don't assume people know or want to polarize!). Resist politicization & the development of mega-identities, cultivate societal dialogue about knowledge structures and norms that bridge (perceived) divides 🌉

Cory Clark, Behavioral Scientist Webpage for Cory Clark, Behavioral Scientist and Director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project at University of Pennsylvania. Cory conducts research in political psychology, moral psychology, cogn...

5/6 Yet, people value when institutions stay neutral, even for their own causes (www.coryjclark.com).

4/6 That means, trust in media can decline due to perceptions ab the environment, e.g. through politicization, social media & "mega-identities" (identities merging different aspects of life - @dannagal.bsky.social), independent from fact-checked work of journalists (@jesperstromback.bsky.social).

3/6 Whether knowledge resistance is (ir)rational depends on the epistemic environment, and if reliable information is available or perceived as unreliable (@mbaghramian.bsky.social).

2/6 Many misconceptions seem not due to ill intentions but (missing) exposure to information - whether about policies and how politics work (@emilythorson.bsky.social) elections (@brendannyhan.bsky.social), or health/windfarm (see our work here: doi.org/10.47368/ejh...; doi.org/10.1038/s415...)

1/6 Just coming back from the interdisciplinary conference on "Perspectives on Knowledge Resistance". Cool to see how perspectives from philosophy, pol science, comm science & psychology compliment each other - esp when reaching similar conclusions from different angles 🧵

New paper out, led by Kevin Winter, with @kaisassenberg.bsky.social and Matthew Hornsey on believing misinformation about wind farms. Biggest predictor is not education and science knowledge, but conspiracy mentality. Over 25% of respondents from US, UK, AUS agree with more than half of statements.

#DGPS2024 with another conspiracy panel for me - in the first talk Lukasz Stasielowicz presents a meta-analysis (n = 60 samples) on interventions against conspiracy beliefs. He disentangled the average positive effects of interventions on reducing conspiracy beliefs

Haben Sie Menschen in Ihrem persönlichen Umfeld, die sich als „Reichsbürger*innen“ oder „Selbstverwalter*innen“ bezeichnen?

Die unten aufgeführte Studie (auch in Deutsch möglich) sucht noch Leute mit entsprechenden Erfahrungen, um bessere Hilfs- und Beratungsangebote zu schaffen.

Is partisan animosity a threat to democracy?

We find that political sectarianism (a blend of othering, aversion, and moralization toward opposing partisans), robustly predicts antidemocratic tendencies. In contrast, affective polarization does not! osf.io/preprints/ps...

The Silenced Text: Field Experiments on Gendered Experiences of Political Participation

TABLE 1. Sample Responses and Response Rates by Category

FIGURE 1. Mean Offensiveness Note: The figure shows the average treatment effect by treatment condition with 95% confidence intervals estimated using ordinary least squares. The comparison category is the ambiguous name condition.

FIGURE 2. Mean Silencing Note: The figure shows the average treatment effect by treatment condition with 95% confidence intervals estimated using ordinary least squares. The comparison category is the ambiguous name condition.

When people receive political campaign text messages from female-named volunteers, they are more offensive and silencing, but they are more likely to respond and agree to the ask, finds @alanyan.bsky.social @rivb.bsky.social in a great field experiment doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Dort gibt es auch noch viele weitere gute Artikel über die Psychologie der Klimakrise, z.B. der von @markuskl.bsky.social und Lara Ditrich darüber, wie Emotionen in Bezug auf den Klimawandel wie Sorge, Ärger, Hoffnung und Stolz mit Verhalten zusammenhängen.
de.in-mind.org/article/sorg...

Verschwörungstheorien behindern nicht nur Maßnahmen bei Pandemien, sondern auch die Energiewende. @kwinter.bsky.social und ich haben dazu einen Überblicksartikel im in-mind Magazin (@de.in-mind.org) geschrieben, editiert von @wilhelmhofmann.bsky.social und HLandmann

de.in-mind.org/article/der-...

New work with @rolandimhoff.bsky.social! ✨Victim groups have every right to reject an apology. However, if they do, it may impact their morality & power in the eyes of third parties, which is related to the support they receive. Now accepted at JPSP: IRGP. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Buchcover "Psychologie der Verschwörungstheorien"

Der Band "Psychologie der Verschwörungstheorien" ist fertig und vor einer Woche erschienen - Hurra! Ich als Herausgeber habe Exemplare, von denen ich drei gerne verschenke. Unter allen Reposts lose ich drei aus (wenn es mehr als drei sind) und schicke Euch das Buch per Post. Nur auf bluesky...

Postdoctoral Researcher (m/f/d)

Postdoc opportunity:
Are you interested in research on bias reduction? Come to work with me in Trier (Germany)! International applications very welcome!!
leibniz-psychology.onlyfy.jobs/job/ki64gegu

Safe the date! The fifth meeting of the German Political Psychology Network will be held at the University of Vienna on September 19-20, 2024. Please submit your abstracts to: univiepsy.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... (Deadline January 31, 2024)

New team effort lead by Anna Soveri. we examined if trait reactance measured before the pandemic was related to willingness to get vaccinated up to 2 years later. We also tested whether trait reactance makes anti-vaccination attitudes more resistant to information.

doi.org/10.1111/aphw...

When you discover new effects using preregistration, high power, & replicate faithfully with open materials, you get a replication rate of 86% & effect sizes 97% as big!

Our new published paper with so many wonderful researchers:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In our new Bioethics paper we find that people deem moral behaviour helped by biological means (e.g. pills that increase empathy) less worth praising than moral behaviour that is achieved via more effortful means. #philsky #PsychSciSky #socialpsyc onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Himmel über Heidelberg - nur einer von vielen Eindrücken vom @nawik.de- Seminar über Wissenschaftskommunikation. Kurz, einfach, lebendig und strukturiert sollen die Texte sein - gut, sich immer wieder darin zu versuchen.
Danke, @hannocharisius.bsky.social & Klaus Wingen für den Input, und der KTS

Over >10 years Annika Scholl, Naomi Ellemers, Daan Scheepers, and I have researched the construal of social power. All materials we have used over the years are available here: doi.org/10.23668/psy.... For a summary of the research see dx.doi.org/10.1016/bs.a...

PSA: there are now normal lists on Bluesky like on Twitter (i.e. not for muting), where you can add some people you want to follow, and you can pin such list and it becomes a feed. So you don't need SkyFeed to create simple feeds that just include posts from a list of people 👍

Pro-Climate Statements from Elon Musk can Persuade Republicans on Climate Change Reed Orchinik David G Rand

Figure 1: Pro-climate tweets by Elon Musk increase Republicans’ climate concern. (A) Average treatment effect on each of the four outcome scales, which are the average of their constituent questions. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. The point estimate of the treatment effect for each item in the scale is shown as a translucent dot. To allow the scale and individual effects to be in the same units, we use the standard deviation of the scale rather than the item when computing the z-score for each item. (B) Distribution of predicted subject-level treatment effects from a causal forest. Positive treatment effects are shown in dark grey while negative are shown in light grey.

The Elon Effect (but not the one you're thinking of): Showing Republicans Musk's pro-environmental stances increases their climate beliefs and intended actions, with no backfire effect on attitudes towards Musk, finds @rorchinik.bsky.social @dgrand.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/v9mzk/

I propose all journals make the initial submissions open format.

They can require formatting changes at the revision stage.

This would save millions of wasted hours and remove one of the most mind numbingly stupid aspects of academia.

We also have the power to easily change this.