Political Psychology at Kent

SUN, JUL 6
11:40 AM - 12:55 PM
S142: Ricky Green: Conspiracy theories about local political issues Karen Douglas

3:10pm – 4:25pm
S114: Dylan De Gourville: How the content of climate change conspiracy theories shapes their socialpsychological meaning and potential consequences

Spending your weekend with @polpsyispp.bsky.social in Prague? Join us for these talks:

SAT, July 5
11:05am – 12:20pm
S93: @alekscichocka.bsky.social The energy island: Texan collective narcissism predicts support for an independent power grid

11:40am – 12:55pm
S65
Caiyu Tian: How Economic Inequality Fuels Collective Nostalgia: The Mediating Role of Conspiracy Beliefs

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
S171: Nikhil Sengupta (Chair): Challenges to Democratic Functioning across Time and Place: Disruptive Protest, Polarization, Nationalism, and Violence

Don’t miss our lab’s Friday talks at @polpsyispp.bsky.social in Prague:

10:15 AM - 11:30 AM
S53
Tamino Konur: Does Gender Identity Compensate for Ethnic Discrimination?
Alessia Bacigalupo: Women, Borders and the Nation: How Sexism Predicts Nationalism and Immigration Policy Support

3:40-4:55
S33: Jocelyn Chalmers Punishing Women for Miscarriage: The role of Political Orientation and Hostile Sexism * Jocelyn Chalmers, University of Kent

S40: @alekscichocka.bsky.social Using generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) to track national sentiments

2:30-3:30
P52: Ricky Green: Real-World Responses to Conspiracy Groups: Evidence from the Lost Letter Technique

S23: Tamino Konur: Does Nationalism Compensate for Perceived Ethnic Disadvantage? The Moderating Effect of SDO

S30: @mikeybiddlestone.bsky.social The Conspiracist Worldview Scale (CWS): Development and validation of a new scale to measure the underlying ontology of conspiracy believers

Heading to @polpsyispp.bsky.social in Prague? Check out these awesome talks from our lab tomorrow (Thu, Jul 3):

11:40 AM - 12:55
S21: Daniel Toribio-Flórez: Examining the political consequences of conspiracy theories around general elections: Evidence from the UK, France and US

Proud to celebrate with @chiarazazzarino.bsky.social her fantastic PhD defense yesterday 🥂Chiara’s research funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk examined how leaders use national identity rhetoric to gain political support. Congratulations Dr Zazzarino 🎓

Moral Outrage Predicts the Virality of Petitions for Change on Social Media, But Not the Number of Signatures They Receive - Stefan Leach, Magdalena Formanowicz, Jan Nikadon, Aleksandra Cichocka, 2025 Social media is a powerful tool for activists to share their perspectives, but concerns persist that the viral spread of online moral outrage may undermine coll...

A new study finds that expressions of moral outrage increase the virality of online petitions but not signatures. Statements about helping others, on the other hand, do predict a greater number of signatures but aren’t linked to virality. @spspnews.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Landing page for our new open access article “Tune in to the prebunking network! Development and validation of six inoculation videos that prebunk manipulation tactics and logical fallacies in misinformation”, published in Political Psychology.

🚨New paper🚨Tune in to the prebunking network! Development and validation of six inoculation videos that prebunk manipulation tactics and logical fallacies in misinformation 1/17
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Social media is a great tool for activists but can the viral spread of moral outrage sometimes undermine collective causes?

We examined this in a new SPPS paper led by @stefanleach.bsky.social analyzing 1,286,442 posts on X with URLs to petitions on change.org journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Our meta-analysis "Reasons to believe: A systematic review and meta-analytic synthesis of the motives associated with conspiracy beliefs" is now published at Psychological Bulletin!
Please refer to this thread, ResearchGate, and PsyArXiv for details!
psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...

National narcissism in politics and public understanding of science - Nature Reviews Psychology Collective narcissism — a belief that one’s group is exceptional and deserves special treatment — arises when group identity is motivated by frustrated psychological needs. In this Review, Cislak and ...

The twist?
Collective narcissism can harm the group it seems to glorify. Focus on image boosting means that the country is seen a brand, rather than a people. Fellow citizens are treated instrumentally, as means to an end.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

For anyone who’s interested in this route to joining us at @polpsychkent.bsky.social, our research office is typically happy to put together a list of relevant funding opportunities (depending on country of origin, years since PhD etc.)

Beyond Abortion: What is Behind the Desire to Punish Women for their Miscarriages? In March of 2016, then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked whether women who undergo abortions when the procedure is banned…

New Blog Post 📣

Why do some people seek to punish women for miscarriages? Jocelyn Chalmers delves into this important issue in our latest blog post, shedding light on the role of ideological attitudes in support for women’s rights 🔍.

Read the article and join the conversation: bit.ly/4hmNPIz

Abstract for our accepted pre-print of Reasons to believe: A systematic review and meta-analytic synthesis of the motives associated with conspiracy beliefs

🚨Our meta-analysis of the motives associated with conspiracy beliefs has been accepted at Psychological Bulletin!🚨“Reasons to believe: A systematic review and meta-analytic synthesis of the motives associated with conspiracy beliefs” osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵👇 1/16

People - Political Psychology - Research at Kent

We are a group of researchers from the University of Kent working on the intersection of psychology and political science. Follow for updates on our work! research.kent.ac.uk/political-ps...