2025

Attending church encourages acceptance of atheists? Suppression effects in religion and politics research

Avery Lord — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:09:19 +0000

Attending church encourages acceptance of atheists? Suppression effects in religion and politics research Avery Lord Wed, 06/17/2026 - 09:09

Attending church encourages acceptance of atheists? Suppression effects in religion and politics research

By: Paul A Djupe, Amanda J Friesen, Andrew R Lewis, Anand E Sokhey, Jacob R Neiheisel, Zachary D Broeren, Ryan P Burge

Abstract:

A proliferation of religion variables presents opportunities for those studying religion and politics in the U.S. However, many studies in this growing subfield demonstrate the pitfalls of reporting the “independent” effects of variables without qualification. This is especially evident in work on Christian nationalism where researchers often make the claim that worship attendance promotes more pro-social or liberal outcomes, while Christian nationalism promotes more conservative and less pro-social outcomes. We demonstrate that this finding—and others like it—represents a new version of an old problem: a particular structure of relationships between variables that can induce sign switches based on suppression effects (Lenz and Sahn in Political Analysis 29(3):356–369, 2021). While we do not encourage skipping controls, some commonly reported results warrant caution. Researchers should generally avoid unconditional claims about attendance encouraging liberalism. We point a way forward that prioritizes theories of religious communication and encourages the careful examination of relationships via interactions.

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Judgement by Fire: The Rapid Anti-Democratic Turn of American Christian Nationalism

Avery Lord — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:07:25 +0000

Judgement by Fire: The Rapid Anti-Democratic Turn of American Christian Nationalism Avery Lord Wed, 06/17/2026 - 09:07

Judgement by Fire: The Rapid Anti-Democratic Turn of American Christian Nationalism

By: Paul A Djupe, Jacob R Neiheisel, Anand E Sokhey, Brooklyn E Walker

Abstract:

In this chapter, we draw on a range of data to document the interlocked forces promoting an assertive, anti-democratic Christian nationalism. Specifically, we address three dynamics that have quickly consumed and channelled conservative Christianity into supporting anti-democratic movements. First, the demography of American religion has been changing at a drastic rate with the rise of the religious ‘nones’; ‘nones’ have become the largest ‘religious’ group, while white Christian identifiers are aging and have decreased in size. Second, conservative Christians have sorted to the Republican Party such that there are few White evangelical Democrats, and any partisan opposition to Republicans has been vilified as evil. Third, despite a shrinking ability to win elections on the basis of conservative Christian dominance, radicalization has been used to maintain the coalition and inspire high levels of turnout – supporters have been urged to see the rotation of power as a threat, to understand democratic process as fundamentally flawed, and increasingly to view the political process through an apocalyptic lens

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Religion Is Sometimes Raced: Christian Nationalism as In-Group Protection

Avery Lord — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:05:43 +0000

Religion Is Sometimes Raced: Christian Nationalism as In-Group Protection Avery Lord Wed, 06/17/2026 - 09:05

Religion Is Sometimes Raced: Christian Nationalism as In-Group Protection

By: Brooklyn Walker, Paul A Djupe, Brian R Calfano, Andrew R Lewis, Anand E Sokhey

Abstract:

Popular narratives suggest that the effects of Christian nationalism should be more heavily concentrated among white Americans. The academic literature on Christian nationalism largely reflects this take, often asserting that it is effectively white Christian nationalism. We question such pronouncements, as they have come without systematic analysis across the broad range of issue areas needed to justify subgroup segmentations. Utilizing national oversamples of Black and Latino Christians (alongside white Christians), we assess the relationship between standard measures of Christian nationalism and attitudes toward policies that vary in their degree of racialization. Our findings qualify typical narratives: consistent with a theory of Christian nationalism as sacralized in-group protection, we find effects that diverge by racial groups on racialized issues but otherwise converge. We close by discussing the implications of these findings and offering suggestions for future work linking race with Christian nationalism.

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The Failure of the Contact Hypothesis—Exposure to Religious Diversity Conditions Apocalyptic Politics

Avery Lord — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:03:47 +0000

The Failure of the Contact Hypothesis—Exposure to Religious Diversity Conditions Apocalyptic Politics Avery Lord Wed, 06/17/2026 - 09:03

The Failure of the Contact Hypothesis—Exposure to Religious Diversity Conditions Apocalyptic Politics

By: Paul A Djupe, Anand E Sokhey, Jacob R Neiheisel, Andrew R Lewis

Abstract:

Background

The recent jump to study worldviews like apocalypticism and Christian nationalism has left open questions about the social role of religion in the production of prejudice and politics.

Objectives

We take up the longstanding finding that social contact across lines of difference can tamp down prejudice, especially when such contact is goal-driven. Specifically, we ask if this relationship holds in the context of apocalyptics– individuals who see the other side as evil, spiritual and physical warfare as ongoing, and prejudice against Christians as widespread.

Methods

Using data collected in the spring of 2023, we explore the extreme politics of apocalyptics when they are exposed to greater and lesser degrees of religious diversity.

Results

Contrary to the usual associations from the intergroup contact thesis, we find that apocalyptics exposed to diversity dig in with even more extreme orientations to politics – they display a greater need for chaos, more support for extreme groups, and more support for potentially using violence to reclaim America.

Conclusions

Apocalyptics view American politics and society as being at the breaking point and their negative reactions to diverse others may just push the US past that point.

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Outgroup Avoidance

Avery Lord — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:04:55 +0000

Outgroup Avoidance Avery Lord Tue, 06/16/2026 - 16:04

Outgroup Avoidance

By: Chagai Weiss, Alexandra Siegel, Alexandra Scacco

Abstract:

Encouraging engagement with outgroup perspectives is a popular strategy to improve inter
group relations. But in deeply divided societies, individuals often actively avoid outgroup
members. In a Facebook field experiment, we embedded Palestinian posts in Jewish Israelis’
Facebook timelines for a period of 14 days. We find no effect on attitudes toward the outgroup
and a modest decrease in subsequent consumption of outgroup content, a pattern we attribute
to participants’ avoidance of constructive engagement. To better understand this avoidance, we
conducted a set of survey-embedded behavioral tasks. Results suggest that outgroup avoidance
online is widespread, associated with outgroup prejudice, explained by feelings of discomfort,
anger, mistrust in outgroups, and pessimism, and challenging to overcome. Our findings indicate that avoidance is a barrier to constructive intergroup engagement in naturalistic settings,
rendering many interventions that may be effective in controlled environments difficult to implement or scale in practice.

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How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation-A Response to Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan

Avery Lord — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:02:49 +0000

How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation-A Response to Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan Avery Lord Tue, 06/16/2026 - 16:02

How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation-A Response to Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan

By: Chagai M Weiss, Alexandra Siegel, David Romney

Abstract:

In our article, "How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation," we argue that threats of exclusionary policies can mobilize minority citizens through both electoral and non-electoral channels. Using Donald Trump's 2020 "Deal of the Century" (DOC)- which explicitly threatened the citizenship status of a subset of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Triangle area-we show that the announcement increased political discourse on Facebook, voter turnout, and registrations to a Jewish-Arab social movement. Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan (2025) replicate our analyses and reproduce our main findings. They raise thoughtful concerns about the parallel trends assumption, and robustness to alternative treatment definitions and outcome measures. While we welcome these contributions, we clarify that our core design choices-including focusing our analysis on three recurring elections in 2019-2020, and ten localities mentioned in the DOC-were substantively motivated and pre-registered. Building on Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan (2025), and drawing on our substantively justified research design, we employ additional event studies that provide further support for the observable implications of the parallel trends assumption, as well as our theoretical argument that threats of exclusion can mobilize minority political participation. We also address data sharing limitations stemming from platform terms of service, data agreements, and ethical concerns, and explain our matching procedures. We conclude by commending the authors' decomposition of mobilization patterns and agree that variation between institutionalized and non-institutionalized responses presents a promising avenue for future research.

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Using natural language processing to analyse text data in behavioural science

Avery Lord — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:01:05 +0000

Using natural language processing to analyse text data in behavioural science Avery Lord Tue, 06/16/2026 - 16:01

Using natural language processing to analyse text data in behavioural science

By: Stefan Feuerriegel, Abdurahman Maarouf, Dominik Bär, Dominique Geissler, Jonas Schweisthal, Nicolas Pröllochs, Claire E Robertson, Steve Rathje, Jochen Hartmann, Saif M Mohammad, Oded Netzer, Alexandra A Siegel, Barbara Plank, Jay J Van Bavel

Abstract:

Language is a uniquely human trait at the core of human interactions. The language people use often reflects their personality, intentions and state of mind. With the integration of the Internet and social media into everyday life, much of human communication is documented as written text. These online forms of communication (for example, blogs, reviews, social media posts and emails) provide a window into human behaviour and therefore present abundant research opportunities for behavioural science. In this Review, we describe how natural language processing (NLP) can be used to analyse text data in behavioural science. First, we review applications of text data in behavioural science. Second, we describe the NLP pipeline and explain the underlying modelling approaches (for example, dictionary-based approaches and large language models). We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these methods for behavioural science, in particular with respect to the trade-off between interpretability and accuracy. Finally, we provide actionable recommendations for using NLP to ensure rigour and reproducibility.

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Towards global equity in political polarization research

Avery Lord — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:58:51 +0000

Towards global equity in political polarization research Avery Lord Tue, 06/16/2026 - 15:58

Towards global equity in political polarization research

By: Max Falkenberg, Matteo Cinelli, Alessandro Galeazzi, Christopher A Bail, Rosa M Benito, Axel Bruns, Anatoliy Gruzd, David Lazer, Jae K Lee, Jennifer McCoy, Kikuko Nagayoshi, David G Rand, Antonio Scala, Alexandra Siegel, Sander van der Linden, Onur Varol, Ingmar Weber, Magdalena Wojcieszak, Fabiana Zollo, Andrea Baronchelli, Walter Quattrociocchi

Abstract:

With a folk understanding that political polarization refers to socio-political divisions within a society, many have proclaimed that we are more divided than ever. In this account, polarization has been blamed for populism, the erosion of social cohesion, the loss of trust in the institutions of democracy, legislative dysfunction, and the collective failure to address existential risks such as Covid-19 or climate change. However, at a global scale there is surprisingly little academic literature which conclusively supports these claims, with half of all studies being U.S.-focused. Here, we provide an overview of the global state of research on polarization, highlighting insights that are robust across countries, those unique to specific contexts, and key gaps in the literature. We argue that addressing these gaps is urgent, but has been hindered thus far by systemic and cultural barriers, such as regionally stratified restrictions on data access and misaligned research incentives. If continued cross-disciplinary inertia means that these disparities are left unaddressed, we see a substantial risk that countries will adopt policies to tackle polarization based on inappropriate evidence, risking flawed decision-making and the weakening of democratic institutions.

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Shooting the Messenger

Avery Lord — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:52:51 +0000

Shooting the Messenger Avery Lord Tue, 06/16/2026 - 15:52

Shooting the Messenger

By: Alexandra A Siegel, Chagai M Weiss

Abstract:

Government attacks on the press are increasingly common in polarized societies, yet their effects remain underexplored. We theorize that such attacks polarize politics by motivating journalists’ production of anti-government content, increasing partisan media consumption and evaluation, and shifting citizens’ political attitudes. We test this theory in Israel, a context marked by rising polarization and intensified attacks on the press. In Study 1, we estimate the effects of a government attack on radio hosts using an event-study design, finding suggestive evidence of an immediate but short-lived increase in anti-government content among targeted hosts. In Study 2, survey-based selection and evaluation tasks reveal that attacks on the press polarize both the consumption and evaluation of content produced by targeted journalists. In Study 3, an information experiment shows that learning about attacks on the press does not affect government supporters, but increases opposition supporters’ preferences for social distance from outpartisans and concerns about democratic backsliding, while reducing their trust in government. Our findings highlight how attacks on the press shift media production, consumption, and political attitudes, creating a potentially reinforcing cycle of polarization.

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Mandate Complexity and United Nations Peacekeeping Contributions

Avery Lord — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:22:23 +0000

Mandate Complexity and United Nations Peacekeeping Contributions Avery Lord Tue, 06/16/2026 - 15:22

Mandate Complexity and United Nations Peacekeeping Contributions

By: Lisa Hultman, Jacob D Kathman, Megan Shannon

Abstract:

United Nations peacekeeping is an important instrument for maintaining international peace, but the mandates that peacekeeping operations are expected to implement are increasingly complex. This trend has consequences. We argue that certain member states are incentivized by the benefits of partaking in complex missions. These include ‘process’ benefits such as reimbursement payments, training, and reputation building. Specifically, non-democratic states are more likely to make greater contributions to missions with complex mandates than democratic states. In a global analysis of UN member peacekeeping contributions from 1990 to 2022, we show that as mandate complexity increases, non-democracies make larger contributions relative to democracies. While democracies do not shy away from supporting peacekeeping, they resist substantial contributions to the ambitiously mandated missions that they have often themselves promoted. These findings contribute to ongoing academic discussions about the challenge of recruiting sufficient resources to pursue peacekeeping while insisting on a liberal global order.

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