Political Psychology

Political Psychology is a multi-disciplinary group established to provide a forum for collaboration, discussion and support for political psychology scholars and practitioners as well as to facilitate the dissemination of political psychology research to relevant political and social institutions and the broader public. We work closely with colleagues in Psychology, via a sister section of the British Psychological Society (BPS).

Follow us on Twitter: @PSA_PolPsy

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6th UK Political Psychology conference: 20-21 June 2024, University of Southampton

Conference programme
Keynote presentation (David Redlawsk, Delaware): 'Voter Responses to Politicians' Moral Violations'.

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Political psychology research seminars

27 September, 12:00 - 13:00 (UK time)
Simone Marsilio (American University of Sharjah, UAE)
Does experiencing a voting method increase satisfaction with it? Evidence from a lab experiment.

Voter preferences for voting methods are an intertwined subject that could depend on many psychological and political reasons. This work analyzes the impact of experiencing voting methods on satisfaction with them. We conducted an incentivized laboratory experiment (N = 189), assessing voting preferences for different voting methods before and after testing one specific alternative – either evaluative voting (EV) or majority judgment (MJ) – in repeated elections. We found that experiencing an alternative voting method – which entails higher informational demand – increased its support compared to the current official method, with a greater magnitude than all control variables including monetary gains in the election task. Overall, respondents tended to attribute high importance to understandability. When they did so, they preferred the easier EV to the more complex MJ. Not only was complexity hypothesized, but it was also assessed using correct answers in the comprehension test, which measured voter understanding of the theoretical properties of voting methods. Answering correctly about an alternative did not depend on having tested said alternative nor correlated with a preference for that alternative, displaying a difference between the value attached to understandability and actual understanding.

The seminar will be held online on Teams. You can register here.

If you would like to present your research at a seminar, please contact Ben Seyd.

Previous seminars (available to view on our YouTube channel)

20 May 2024 (Rachel Gibson, Manchester)
Personalisation versus privacy concerns as determinants of attitudes toward political micro-targeting in the US, Germany and France? Testing the 'privacy calculus’ in comparative electoral context

30 Nov 2023 (George Melios, LSE)
Origin of (A)symmetry: The Evolution of Out-Party Distrust in the United States

19 Sept 2023 (Katharina Lawall, University of London)
Angry losers? The effects of feeling electoral loss on anti-democratic attitudes

6 June 2023 (Matthew Barnfield and Rob Johns, Essex)
'Hope, Optimism and Expectations in Politics'