Lior Sheffer

להסתכל במראה: הרעב בעזה הוא כתם מוסרי עלינו כמעט 700 אלף עזתים סובלים ממחסור קטסטרופלי במזון. ההערכות הן שתושבים בצפון עזה צורכים בממוצע רק 245 קלוריות ביום, ולפי ארגון המזון העולמי ארבעה מכל חמישה אנשים בעולם שסובלים היום מרעב חמור נמצאים בעזה...

Over a year ago (!) Roee Levy and I wrote this op-ed (that you can auto-translate) on Israel's responsibility for the horrifying famine in Gaza. The starvation persists. The immoral war in Gaza must end. If you can, protest with us today: 7pm, Habima Square, Tel Aviv
www.ynet.co.il/news/article...

Paper is available via open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Our findings shed light on the personality selection funnel into higher-office politics, and help explain resulting leader behaviour patterns. Proud to be part of the team working on this paper, led by Thomas Bergeron, and including Eran Amsalem, Jeroen Joly, and Peter Loewen.

Figure summarizing AMCEs of different factors used in the Study 3 conjoint experiment reported in the paper

High levels of openness to experience, which characterize most politicians exhibit, are only weakly appealing, especially among right-leaning voters. In a conjoint experiment, we find that these effects on leader preference outweigh factors such as age, education, gender, and experience. /3

Table describing the Big Five personality traits used in the study

Figure describing overall results from Study 1 described in the paper

We find remarkable consistency across countries and ideologies when citizens choose their party leaders: they are extremely averse to displays of neuroticism, and strongly reward candidates who are conscientious, agreeable, and to a lesser degree extrovert /2

Screen shot of the title, author list, and abstract of the Political Psychology paper "What Personality Traits do Citizens Want Politicians to Have?"

Now in @ispp-pops.bsky.social: what type of personality do citizens want their leaders to have? In a series of studies conducted in Belgium, Canada, and Israel, we present citizens with profiles of potential leaders with different personality configurations drawn using the Big Five traits /1

BJPolS abstract discussing politicians' perceptions of public opinion accuracy regarding leadership performance, featured on a green background with white text.

From February 2025 -

Do Political Leaders Understand Public Opinion Better than Backbenchers? - cup.org/3CNR4dt

- Stefaan Walgrave, Julie Sevenans, Frédéric Varone,
@liorsheffer.bsky.social & @breunig.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

Politicians Think Voters Are Dumb. Are They Right? A striking new study reveals that elected officials have a far more pessimistic view of voter behavior than do citizens themselves.

Really enjoyed this conversation with @jerusalem.bsky.social about our new paper on politicians' theories of voting behaviour. Such a thrill to be a guest on one of my favourite podcasts! www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...

The most important paper on democratic backsliding I've read this year

🚨Why do masses support democratic backsliding?🚨
A new @AJPS_Editor paper with Yotam Margalit, @liorsheffer.bsky.social and Itamar Yakir explores this question in the Israeli context. Our findings emphasize the role of leader attachment and affective polarization.
doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

Thanks Lucy! We love the Fastenrath and Marx paper, and figuring out which politicians even benchmark themselves against opinion polling is a priority for us, along with better understanding the inherent tension politicians face between responding to public opinion and working to change it.

Our findings undermine the idea that leaders possess some unique capacity to 'get' the public. And because they have the most power to shape agendas and policies, their perceptual errors are especially concerning for the kind of representation citizens get in democratic systems. More in the paper!

This result holds when we ask politicians to think about the general public and their own party voters; under different definitions of seniority; and even when we specifically look at those politicians who are (incorrectly) singled out by colleagues for being good at understanding public opinion. /3

We find that while politicians themselves strongly believe that top politicians - such as party leaders and cabinet ministers - excel at understanding what people want, in reality these senior figures - who were included in our sample of >800 politicians - are just as inaccurate as the rest! /2

Now in @bjpols.bsky.social: Are leaders really better at reading public opinion? In a large-scale study led by Stefaan Walgrave and Julie Sevenans, we test the assumption that politicians in leadership positions have more accurate knowledge of public opinion than others. /1
doi.org/10.1017/S000...

This paper joins a couple of others demonstrating that politicians have a conservative bias in their expectations of public opinion. This work is hugely illuminative of elite attitudes and so is of vital interest to activists pursuing progressive change

Very cool paper! Well worth your time if you study elite decision-making or elections and accountability.

@annerasmussen.bsky.social, and Maj-Britt Sterba!

Stefaan Walgrave, Karolin Soontjens, Eran Amsalem, Pirmin Bundi, Frédéric Varone, @stefaniebailer.bsky.social, @nathaliebrack.bsky.social, @breunig.bsky.social, Linda Coufalová, Patrick Dumont, @nathaliegiger.bsky.social, @miguelpereira.bsky.social, Mikael Persson, @jbpilet.bsky.social /6

@jacklucas.bsky.social, Peter Loewen and I are indebted to our wonderful team of co-authors: /5

In the paper, we argue that politicians' theories of voters are very likely consequential for how they campaign, communicate, think about public policy, and represent constituents. We also outline a new research agenda stemming from our findings. Lots more in the paper! /4

Only 16% of politicians are "democratic optimists", who see voters as knowledgeable, fair assessors of blame and credit, who care about the long term and society as a whole when voting. Citizens, on the other hand, are equally split between optimism and realism in their views. /3

Nearly 75% of all politicians adhere to what we call "democratic realism" - they think that voters are ignorant, short-term focused, egocentric, and vote based on deeply held identities rather than policy positions. This happens in every country we study. /2

Now in APSR: What do politicians think about their voters? Fielding face-to-face surveys to 982 sitting politicians in 11 countries, and accompanying surveys of 12,000 citizens, we find that politicians have remarkably consistent - and cynical - theories of voters: /1
doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Pathways to Substantive Representation: Policy Congruence and Policy Knowledge Among Canadian Local Politicians - Political Behavior In recent years, new data and methods have reinvigorated research on two central elements of elite political behavior: politicians’ congruence with and knowledge of citizens’ opinions. Here, we survey...

New paper with @liorsheffer.bsky.social and Peter Loewen in Political Behavior about politicians’ congruence with citizens, their knowledge of citizens, and – especially – the relationship between the two pathways to representation. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New working paper with Nic Dias and @liorsheffer.bsky.social. We show that politicians' over-estimation of constituents' conservatism is reduced by half when politicians are allowed to characterize their constituents' attitudes as a distribution, rather than a point estimate. doi.org/10.31219/osf...

We also show that politicians with office seeking ambitions are more affectively polarized, potentially explaining why top politicians - those who citizens often take affective cues from - may hold especially high levels of partisan animosity. More on implications in the paper!

We find remarkable variation in politicians' affective polarization, with non-partisan politicians being -less- polarized than citizens, but document higher levels among partisan politicians and extreme ideologues. /2

What explains elite affective polarization? Evidence from Canadian politicians

Now in Political Psychology: Why are some politicians more hostile than others? Do politicians as a group feel more partisan animosity than citizens? @lucasjacklucas and I report results from a study of 850 politicians and 28,500 citizens to provide first answers: /1
doi.org/10.1111/pops.12974

Excited to share my new publication in the International Journal of Press/Politics with my brilliant friends Yossi David, @noamgidron.bsky.social & @liorsheffer.bsky.social! Imagined audiences have been studied for decades - but what do we know about imagined journalists? >>
shorturl.at/klovF