This event will bring together researchers in psychology, political science, communications, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology to discuss political divisions and moral decision-making. The event will be in person at Foster Auditorium on campus, with live-streaming on Zoom as well. The aim of the conference is to cultivate cross-disciplinary dialogues about this topic and generate new research collaborations.
Conference Date: Friday, April 25, 11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. EST
Conference Contact: Daryl Cameron, cdc49@psu.edu
For interesting things, I think that polarization research is a compelling topic to study academically because it requires engagement with multiple academic disciplines and levels of analysis. Understanding political polarization isn’t possible without understanding the psychology of the polarized individual, the political context in which they operate, and the social systems that dictate their norms.
11:00 a.m. – noon | Victims and Values
Emerging evidence from morality research suggests perceptions of victimhood and harm are key for understanding why liberals and conservatives disagree with one another—spurring divisive partisan animus. However, this research fails to consider the important role of objectivity in morality. In the current research, through multiple correlational and experimental studies in the United States and Germany, I will show how true victimhood beliefs—or beliefs that ones’ views that a target’s suffering is based on objective truth—is central to understanding when liberals’ and conservatives’ disagreement becomes especially polarizing and divisive. I find these true victimhood beliefs drive animosity towards opponents because seeing ones’ beliefs about victimhood as objective drives perceptions of opponents as callous and irrational. This research suggests true victimhood beliefs are one way to understand why political polarization emerges while simultaneously synthesizing and extending morality research on harm and objectivity.
How do attitudes become moralized? While moral conviction—the metacognitive sense that one’s attitude reflects a fundamental distinction between right and wrong—is central to understanding political behavior and polarization, less is known about how attitudes become moralized in the first place. We propose that moral conviction spreads between connected attitudes in individual’s belief system networks over time. In Study 1, we formalize this account using a dynamic Ising model to simulate our theory. We simulate moral conviction spreading from a “patient zero” attitude in 6,000 belief system networks of varying structure over five time points. As predicted, moral conviction spreads to neighboring nodes, and the spread is more efficient in highly connected (dense) networks. These highly connected belief networks mirror the dense belief systems of ideologues (Converse, 1964). In Studies 2–4, we empirically test this dynamic in three longitudinal panel studies in the U.S. (Ns = 381, 510, 635). At baseline, we use the conceptual similarity task (Brandt, 2022) to estimate each individual’s belief system network structure. At all waves, we measure moral conviction for each attitude (Skitka et al., 2005). Multilevel models accounting for attitudes nested within individuals and topics over time show that moral conviction spreads between closely connected attitudes, but not between weakly or unconnected ones. We also find that people with denser belief systems moralize more of their attitudes. Belief systems are not just static clusters of opinions—they serve as networks through which moralization of political attitudes dynamically spreads in line with psychological theory.
People understand that hypocrisy abounds in politics and do not like hypocritical, “flip-flopping” politicians. Yet, to the extent that a politician’s current stated plans align with participants’ moral and ideologically driven convictions, people are still willing to support that politician. That is, when faced with a choice between voting for a candidate whose views oppose their own convictions, voting for a hypocritical politician who probably cannot be trusted to act on their ideologically aligned words (i.e., given their position reversal), or simply staying home and voting for neither candidate, people indicate their willingness to vote for the hypocrite. This tendency emerges for people across the ideological spectrum.
Political scientists have long viewed values as a source of constraint in political belief systems. More recently, scholars have argued that values – particularly moral values – contribute to polarization. Yet, there is little direct and systematic research on which values are perceived as moral values. We examine 21 values, including Schwartz’s values, political values, and moral foundations. Drawing on a broad literature on cooperation, we first develop theoretical expectations for the extent of value moralization both between and within value systems. We next argue that this moralization matters because it intensifies the effects of value disagreement on social polarization. Using a probability-based survey of the US and an embedded conjoint experiment, we find substantial variation in moralization across values, and that highly moralized values are more polarizing. Our research brings together competing literatures on values and shows how moral values differentially shape polarization.
Noon – 1:00 p.m. | Algorithms, Media, and Emotions
Amidst a global rise in police use of force against citizens and minorities, there remains significant uncertainty around how such violence influences citizens’ emotions and demands for policing reforms. Across four studies (N = 5,360), employing both experimental and nationally representative cross-sectional methods, we investigate how perceptions of police-related threats shape support for reform and which emotions are responsible for these shifts. These findings provide insight into the real-world impact of policing threats on attitudes toward reform, and what emotions are responsible for mobilizing support for community-focused policing reforms.
In the modern media landscape, it is all too easy to take a passive approach to getting news about politics. In this way, many people harbor a “news finds me” (NFM) mindset, believing that they can be politically informed through their interactions with peers and their social media use. However, research in political communication has consistently demonstrated that high-NFM individuals are less politically knowledgeable, less politically interested, and less likely to participate in the political process than low-NFM individuals. In this talk, I will present the results from recent studies that build on these earlier findings, showing that an NFM mindset 1. predicts greater engagement with soft news content (at the expense of hard news) and 2. fosters susceptibility to political misinformation. These findings will be discussed in terms of their implications for morality and democratic health.
As we increasingly learn from others in online spaces regulated by engagement-based feed-ranking algorithms, it is important to understand the impact that these algorithms have on our social learning. In three pre-registered studies (N = 6107), we isolated the effects of feed-ranking algorithms on social norm learning by training algorithms on passive and active engagement in a simulated social media environment. We found that engagement-based algorithms systematically amplified ingroup-aligned, moral and emotional (IME) political content, leading IME content to become overrepresented in feeds. The overrepresentation of IME content in feeds caused participants to overperceive norms of posting IME content, which mediated user intentions to post more IME content. A bridging algorithm successfully reduced IME content in feeds, but also led to underperception of some IME content, suggesting that bridging-based algorithms do not straightforwardly promote more accurate social learning. Our findings shed light on algorithm-mediated social learning in the digital age, demonstrating that specific human learning biases toward IME content are amplified by engagement-based algorithms in ways that disrupt social norm perception. Our findings highlight a central challenge for engagement-based algorithms: how to promote content in ways that enable users to accurately infer others’ preferences.
Emotions play a central role in political attitudes and decision-making. However, the range of emotions studied in prior work on voting behavior is limited. Across two national longitudinal studies with politically diverse participants (Ntotal = 1738), we explore 14 different basic and sociomoral emotions as predictors of voting behavior in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. We also explore moderators of these relationships, including social capital, political identity centrality, and democratic beliefs. Study implications and future research directions will be considered.
1:00 – 1:30 p.m. | Lunch break and downtime for discussion
1:30 – 2:00 p.m. | Interdisciplinary Panel 1
Panelists: Anne Pisor, Emily Kubin, William Brady, Chris Skurka, Scott Clifford
2:00 – 3:00 p.m. | Empathy and the Extremes
The American political context is fraught with normative hostility where there is little motivation to understand and empathize with outpartisans. Because social norms strongly shape human behavior, shifting the norm of cross-party hostility offers a powerful avenue for promoting greater empathy toward outpartisans. To address the strength and salience of this normative hostility, we employed a form of normative messaging known as dynamic norms—information that highlights the increasing popularity of a minority behavior. Past work from other domains suggests that people are motivated to act counter to prevailing norms if they believe that new norms are emerging. In three studies (N = 1,400) that used a mix of correlational and experimental methods, we tested whether perceiving a dynamic norm of cross-party empathy—the belief that a growing number of people think it is valuable to understand different political perspectives—predicts more empathic effort and less hostile attitudes toward political outpartisans. Our findings showed that belief in this dynamic norm was associated with greater empathy toward an outpartisan expressing opposing views, increased willingness to help suffering outpartisans, higher likelihood of engaging with content featuring outpartisan perspectives, more favorable moral perceptions of outpartisans, and stronger intentions to interact with outpartisans in the future.
Why is there such extreme polarization among political elites when the voters who choose them hold comparatively moderate views on many issues? While one possibility is that voters’ partisan social identities may simply override those same voters’ ideological moderation, this talk presents evidence for a different account. Rather than voters preferring extreme candidates because those voters are ignoring ideology, reasonable partisan voters may instead prefer more extreme candidates because they are prioritizing ideology while operating under conditions of uncertainty. I will demonstrate how this account works with an agent-based computational model of voting as well as presenting results from a vignette survey that validates the model’s assumptions.
Scholars and the public alike are paying increasing attention to religious nationalism. For example, a growing body of research focusing on Christian nationalism in the United States demonstrates the ideology to be (1) fused with a threat-laced form of conservatism and (2) a threat on its own to democratic health. Yet, religious nationalism is a global phenomenon that manifests not only in Christian countries, but also in countries with different religious majorities, such as Jewish nationalism in Israel and Hindu nationalism in India. Despite this, relatively little scholarly work investigates the correlates of religious nationalism across geopolitical contexts and in countries with non-Christian majorities. To address this gap, we conducted quota-representative surveys in 9 countries with different religious makeups. Results demonstrate that, across contexts and forms of religious nationalism, religious nationalism was higher among those who were more politically conservative (vs liberal), and particularly high among those on the right who perceived greater threat from the political left. Even when controlling for political leaning, we also found that religious nationalism was a strong predictor of support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence across contexts.
There has been much written about the impact of polarization on elections, political parties, and policy outcomes. But Keith Payne’s goal is more personal: to focus on what our divisions mean for us as individuals, as families, and as communities. This book is about how ordinary people think about politics, why talking about it is so hard, and how we can begin to mend the personal bonds that are fraying for so many of us. Drawing upon his own research and his experience growing up in a working class, conservative Christian family in small town Kentucky, Payne argues that there is a near-universal human tendency to believe that people who are different from us are irrational or foolish. The fundamental source of our division is our need to flexibly rationalize ideas in order to see ourselves as good people. Understanding the psychology behind our political divide provides clues about how we can reduce the damage it is causing. It won’t allow us to undo our polarization overnight, but it can give us the tools to stop going around in circles in frustrating arguments. It can help us make better choices about how we engage in political debates, how policy makers and social media companies deal with misinformation, and how we deal with each other on social media. It can help us separate, if we choose to, our political principles from our personal relationships so that we can nurture both.
3:00 – 3:15 p.m. | Downtime for discussion
3:15 – 4:30 p.m. | Polarization and Perceptions
Affective polarization, or dislike of members of opposing political groups, is thought to have mixed consequences for democracy. On the one hand, it can stimulate engagement, but on the other, depress political trust and commitment to democratic norms. Recent experimental investigations, however, find that reducing affective polarization does not change commitment to democratic norms. In this paper, we investigate whether experiments fail to find an effect because of the artificiality of the experimental environment, because affective polarization is a consequence rather than a cause of various democratic outcomes, or because there is truly no causal relationship. Using meta-analyses of studies from 20 longitudinal datasets in several advanced democracies, we find evidence for the latter. While affective polarization tends to co-occur with increased political engagement and flimsy support for democratic norms, there is no consistent evidence that within-person changes in affective polarization correspond to subsequent within-person changes in any individual-level democratic outcome, or vice versa. This suggests that political animosity, rather than a cause of democratic ills, is one of many features of an engaged, but intolerant citizen becoming more common throughout advanced democracies.
Public health initiatives often face moral opposition—pushback rooted in deeply held beliefs about right and wrong. Those who morally oppose public health programs and policies tend to be highly motivated, and their moral convictions are often reinforced by well-resourced organizations. This kind of opposition has influenced everything from vaccine adoption to comprehensive sex education and government responses to epidemics. Traditionally, many health providers and communicators have chosen not to engage with this opposition head-on. However, emerging work in moral matching and moral reframing offers promising strategies for crafting messages that speak more directly and persuasively to these audiences.
Polarization is intensifying across the globe, often driven by misperceptions between social and political groups. Across three studies (n = 4437) conducted in the United States and Israel, we investigate how exposure to partisan news media relates to meta-perceptions (how we think the outgroup views our ingroup). We also examine whether this relationship is moderated by political and religious affiliation. Results revealed that self-reported exposure to outgroup partisan news media was associated with reduced negative meta-perceptions among Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., as well as among secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israeli. Further, parasocial contact was closely related to both outgroup partisan news media exposure and meta-perceptions, suggesting it may play a meaningful role in their relationship. These results highlight the powerful role of outgroup media exposure in shaping intergroup perceptions and points to the broader implication of parasocial contact in mitigating perceived hostility across ideological divides.
Affective polarization, or dislike of members of opposing political groups, is thought to have mixed consequences for democracy. On the one hand, it can stimulate engagement, but on the other, depress political trust and commitment to democratic norms. Recent experimental investigations, however, find that reducing affective polarization does not change commitment to democratic norms. In this paper, we investigate whether experiments fail to find an effect because of the artificiality of the experimental environment, because affective polarization is a consequence rather than a cause of various democratic outcomes, or because there is truly no causal relationship. Using meta-analyses of studies from 20 longitudinal datasets in several advanced democracies, we find evidence for the latter. While affective polarization tends to co-occur with increased political engagement and flimsy support for democratic norms, there is no consistent evidence that within-person changes in affective polarization correspond to subsequent within-person changes in any individual-level democratic outcome, or vice versa. This suggests that political animosity, rather than a cause of democratic ills, is one of many features of an engaged, but intolerant citizen becoming more common throughout advanced democracies.
4:30 – 5:00 p.m. | Interdisciplinary Panel 2
Panelists: Mark Brandt, Hannah Read, Joe Phillips, Daniel DellaPosta, Robert Stise
5:00 – 5:15 p.m. | Daryl Cameron (closing remarks and open discussion)
Presentations
Emerging evidence from morality research suggests perceptions of victimhood and harm are key for understanding why liberals and conservatives disagree with one another—spurring divisive partisan animus. However, this research fails to consider the important role of objectivity in morality. In the current research, through multiple correlational and experimental studies in the United States and Germany, I will show how true victimhood beliefs—or beliefs that ones’ views that a target’s suffering is based on objective truth—is central to understanding when liberals’ and conservatives’ disagreement becomes especially polarizing and divisive. I find these true victimhood beliefs drive animosity towards opponents because seeing ones’ beliefs about victimhood as objective drives perceptions of opponents as callous and irrational. This research suggests true victimhood beliefs are one way to understand why political polarization emerges while simultaneously synthesizing and extending morality research on harm and objectivity.
How do attitudes become moralized? While moral conviction—the metacognitive sense that one’s attitude reflects a fundamental distinction between right and wrong—is central to understanding political behavior and polarization, less is known about how attitudes become moralized in the first place. We propose that moral conviction spreads between connected attitudes in individual’s belief system networks over time. In Study 1, we formalize this account using a dynamic Ising model to simulate our theory. We simulate moral conviction spreading from a “patient zero” attitude in 6,000 belief system networks of varying structure over five time points. As predicted, moral conviction spreads to neighboring nodes, and the spread is more efficient in highly connected (dense) networks. These highly connected belief networks mirror the dense belief systems of ideologues (Converse, 1964). In Studies 2–4, we empirically test this dynamic in three longitudinal panel studies in the U.S. (Ns = 381, 510, 635). At baseline, we use the conceptual similarity task (Brandt, 2022) to estimate each individual’s belief system network structure. At all waves, we measure moral conviction for each attitude (Skitka et al., 2005). Multilevel models accounting for attitudes nested within individuals and topics over time show that moral conviction spreads between closely connected attitudes, but not between weakly or unconnected ones. We also find that people with denser belief systems moralize more of their attitudes. Belief systems are not just static clusters of opinions—they serve as networks through which moralization of political attitudes dynamically spreads in line with psychological theory.
Scholars and the public alike are paying increasing attention to religious nationalism. For example, a growing body of research focusing on Christian nationalism in the United States demonstrates the ideology to be (1) fused with a threat-laced form of conservatism and (2) a threat on its own to democratic health. Yet, religious nationalism is a global phenomenon that manifests not only in Christian countries, but also in countries with different religious majorities, such as Jewish nationalism in Israel and Hindu nationalism in India. Despite this, relatively little scholarly work investigates the correlates of religious nationalism across geopolitical contexts and in countries with non-Christian majorities. To address this gap, we conducted quota-representative surveys in 9 countries with different religious makeups. Results demonstrate that, across contexts and forms of religious nationalism, religious nationalism was higher among those who were more politically conservative (vs liberal), and particularly high among those on the right who perceived greater threat from the political left. Even when controlling for political leaning, we also found that religious nationalism was a strong predictor of support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence across contexts.
Affective polarization, or dislike of members of opposing political groups, is thought to have mixed consequences for democracy. On the one hand, it can stimulate engagement, but on the other, depress political trust and commitment to democratic norms. Recent experimental investigations, however, find that reducing affective polarization does not change commitment to democratic norms. In this paper, we investigate whether experiments fail to find an effect because of the artificiality of the experimental environment, because affective polarization is a consequence rather than a cause of various democratic outcomes, or because there is truly no causal relationship. Using meta-analyses of studies from 20 longitudinal datasets in several advanced democracies, we find evidence for the latter. While affective polarization tends to co-occur with increased political engagement and flimsy support for democratic norms, there is no consistent evidence that within-person changes in affective polarization correspond to subsequent within-person changes in any individual-level democratic outcome, or vice versa. This suggests that political animosity, rather than a cause of democratic ills, is one of many features of an engaged, but intolerant citizen becoming more common throughout advanced democracies.
Affective polarization, or dislike of members of opposing political groups, is thought to have mixed consequences for democracy. On the one hand, it can stimulate engagement, but on the other, depress political trust and commitment to democratic norms. Recent experimental investigations, however, find that reducing affective polarization does not change commitment to democratic norms. In this paper, we investigate whether experiments fail to find an effect because of the artificiality of the experimental environment, because affective polarization is a consequence rather than a cause of various democratic outcomes, or because there is truly no causal relationship. Using meta-analyses of studies from 20 longitudinal datasets in several advanced democracies, we find evidence for the latter. While affective polarization tends to co-occur with increased political engagement and flimsy support for democratic norms, there is no consistent evidence that within-person changes in affective polarization correspond to subsequent within-person changes in any individual-level democratic outcome, or vice versa. This suggests that political animosity, rather than a cause of democratic ills, is one of many features of an engaged, but intolerant citizen becoming more common throughout advanced democracies.
Public health initiatives often face moral opposition—pushback rooted in deeply held beliefs about right and wrong. Those who morally oppose public health programs and policies tend to be highly motivated, and their moral convictions are often reinforced by well-resourced organizations. This kind of opposition has influenced everything from vaccine adoption to comprehensive sex education and government responses to epidemics. Traditionally, many health providers and communicators have chosen not to engage with this opposition head-on. However, emerging work in moral matching and moral reframing offers promising strategies for crafting messages that speak more directly and persuasively to these audiences.
Why is there such extreme polarization among political elites when the voters who choose them hold comparatively moderate views on many issues? While one possibility is that voters’ partisan social identities may simply override those same voters’ ideological moderation, this talk presents evidence for a different account. Rather than voters preferring extreme candidates because those voters are ignoring ideology, reasonable partisan voters may instead prefer more extreme candidates because they are prioritizing ideology while operating under conditions of uncertainty. I will demonstrate how this account works with an agent-based computational model of voting as well as presenting results from a vignette survey that validates the model’s assumptions.
Amidst a global rise in police use of force against citizens and minorities, there remains significant uncertainty around how such violence influences citizens’ emotions and demands for policing reforms. Across four studies (N = 5,360), employing both experimental and nationally representative cross-sectional methods, we investigate how perceptions of police-related threats shape support for reform and which emotions are responsible for these shifts. These findings provide insight into the real-world impact of policing threats on attitudes toward reform, and what emotions are responsible for mobilizing support for community-focused policing reforms.
In the modern media landscape, it is all too easy to take a passive approach to getting news about politics. In this way, many people harbor a “news finds me” (NFM) mindset, believing that they can be politically informed through their interactions with peers and their social media use. However, research in political communication has consistently demonstrated that high-NFM individuals are less politically knowledgeable, less politically interested, and less likely to participate in the political process than low-NFM individuals. In this talk, I will present the results from recent studies that build on these earlier findings, showing that an NFM mindset 1. predicts greater engagement with soft news content (at the expense of hard news) and 2. fosters susceptibility to political misinformation. These findings will be discussed in terms of their implications for morality and democratic health.
People understand that hypocrisy abounds in politics and do not like hypocritical, “flip-flopping” politicians. Yet, to the extent that a politician’s current stated plans align with participants’ moral and ideologically driven convictions, people are still willing to support that politician. That is, when faced with a choice between voting for a candidate whose views oppose their own convictions, voting for a hypocritical politician who probably cannot be trusted to act on their ideologically aligned words (i.e., given their position reversal), or simply staying home and voting for neither candidate, people indicate their willingness to vote for the hypocrite. This tendency emerges for people across the ideological spectrum.
The American political context is fraught with normative hostility where there is little motivation to understand and empathize with outpartisans. Because social norms strongly shape human behavior, shifting the norm of cross-party hostility offers a powerful avenue for promoting greater empathy toward outpartisans. To address the strength and salience of this normative hostility, we employed a form of normative messaging known as dynamic norms—information that highlights the increasing popularity of a minority behavior. Past work from other domains suggests that people are motivated to act counter to prevailing norms if they believe that new norms are emerging. In three studies (N = 1,400) that used a mix of correlational and experimental methods, we tested whether perceiving a dynamic norm of cross-party empathy—the belief that a growing number of people think it is valuable to understand different political perspectives—predicts more empathic effort and less hostile attitudes toward political outpartisans. Our findings showed that belief in this dynamic norm was associated with greater empathy toward an outpartisan expressing opposing views, increased willingness to help suffering outpartisans, higher likelihood of engaging with content featuring outpartisan perspectives, more favorable moral perceptions of outpartisans, and stronger intentions to interact with outpartisans in the future.
There has been much written about the impact of polarization on elections, political parties, and policy outcomes. But Keith Payne’s goal is more personal: to focus on what our divisions mean for us as individuals, as families, and as communities. This book is about how ordinary people think about politics, why talking about it is so hard, and how we can begin to mend the personal bonds that are fraying for so many of us. Drawing upon his own research and his experience growing up in a working class, conservative Christian family in small town Kentucky, Payne argues that there is a near-universal human tendency to believe that people who are different from us are irrational or foolish. The fundamental source of our division is our need to flexibly rationalize ideas in order to see ourselves as good people. Understanding the psychology behind our political divide provides clues about how we can reduce the damage it is causing. It won’t allow us to undo our polarization overnight, but it can give us the tools to stop going around in circles in frustrating arguments. It can help us make better choices about how we engage in political debates, how policy makers and social media companies deal with misinformation, and how we deal with each other on social media. It can help us separate, if we choose to, our political principles from our personal relationships so that we can nurture both.
Political scientists have long viewed values as a source of constraint in political belief systems. More recently, scholars have argued that values – particularly moral values – contribute to polarization. Yet, there is little direct and systematic research on which values are perceived as moral values. We examine 21 values, including Schwartz’s values, political values, and moral foundations. Drawing on a broad literature on cooperation, we first develop theoretical expectations for the extent of value moralization both between and within value systems. We next argue that this moralization matters because it intensifies the effects of value disagreement on social polarization. Using a probability-based survey of the US and an embedded conjoint experiment, we find substantial variation in moralization across values, and that highly moralized values are more polarizing. Our research brings together competing literatures on values and shows how moral values differentially shape polarization.
As we increasingly learn from others in online spaces regulated by engagement-based feed-ranking algorithms, it is important to understand the impact that these algorithms have on our social learning. In three pre-registered studies (N = 6107), we isolated the effects of feed-ranking algorithms on social norm learning by training algorithms on passive and active engagement in a simulated social media environment. We found that engagement-based algorithms systematically amplified ingroup-aligned, moral and emotional (IME) political content, leading IME content to become overrepresented in feeds. The overrepresentation of IME content in feeds caused participants to overperceive norms of posting IME content, which mediated user intentions to post more IME content. A bridging algorithm successfully reduced IME content in feeds, but also led to underperception of some IME content, suggesting that bridging-based algorithms do not straightforwardly promote more accurate social learning. Our findings shed light on algorithm-mediated social learning in the digital age, demonstrating that specific human learning biases toward IME content are amplified by engagement-based algorithms in ways that disrupt social norm perception. Our findings highlight a central challenge for engagement-based algorithms: how to promote content in ways that enable users to accurately infer others’ preferences.
Emotions play a central role in political attitudes and decision-making. However, the range of emotions studied in prior work on voting behavior is limited. Across two national longitudinal studies with politically diverse participants (Ntotal = 1738), we explore 14 different basic and sociomoral emotions as predictors of voting behavior in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. We also explore moderators of these relationships, including social capital, political identity centrality, and democratic beliefs. Study implications and future research directions will be considered.
Polarization is intensifying across the globe, often driven by misperceptions between social and political groups. Across three studies (n = 4437) conducted in the United States and Israel, we investigate how exposure to partisan news media relates to meta-perceptions (how we think the outgroup views our ingroup). We also examine whether this relationship is moderated by political and religious affiliation. Results revealed that self-reported exposure to outgroup partisan news media was associated with reduced negative meta-perceptions among Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., as well as among secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israeli. Further, parasocial contact was closely related to both outgroup partisan news media exposure and meta-perceptions, suggesting it may play a meaningful role in their relationship. These results highlight the powerful role of outgroup media exposure in shaping intergroup perceptions and points to the broader implication of parasocial contact in mitigating perceived hostility across ideological divides.
Penn State Presenters
Dr. Daryl Cameron is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds B.A. degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the College of William and Mary. Dr. Cameron’s research focuses on the psychological processes underlying empathy and moral decision-making, particularly examining motivational factors that influence empathic emotions and behaviors. His work has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychological Science. He has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and has been recognized with awards such as the Early Career in Affective Science Award from the Society for Affective Science in 2022.
Dr. Christopher Beem is the Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy and an Associate Research Professor of Political Science at The Pennsylvania State University. His work explores the ethical underpinnings of democratic governance, with particular attention to the institutional and cultural challenges facing democracy in the United States. Dr. Beem is the author of several books, including The Necessity of Politics and Democratic Humility: Reinhold Niebuhr, Neuroscience, and America’s Political Crisis, which examine the moral tensions at the heart of democratic life. In addition to his scholarly work, he co-hosts the podcast Democracy Works, where he engages with academics, journalists, and civic leaders on questions of civic trust, polarization, and democratic resilience. Dr. Beem earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is committed to fostering public dialogue that bridges theory and practice in the study of democracy.
Dr. Daniel DellaPosta is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Data Analytics at The Pennsylvania State University. His research examines how social networks and cultural dynamics shape political behavior, economic action, and organizational outcomes. Drawing on methods from network science, computational modeling, and natural language processing, Dr. DellaPosta investigates processes of political polarization, the diffusion of tastes and opinions, and the reproduction of inequality. His work has been published in leading journals, including the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and Organization Science. He has received several honors for his scholarship, including the Clifford Geertz Prize from the American Sociological Association’s Culture Section and Penn State’s Roy C. Buck Award for outstanding research in the social sciences by an untenured faculty member. Dr. DellaPosta earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University and his B.A. from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Sean M. Laurent is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at The Pennsylvania State University, where he directs the Morality and Social Cognition Lab (MASC Lab). His research focuses on how people make sense of others’ minds in morally charged situations, with particular emphasis on concepts like intentionality, empathy, and blame. He studies how individuals form and update moral judgments based on beliefs about others’ motives, goals, and mental states. Dr. Laurent’s work appears in journals such as Cognition and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and contributes to broader efforts in social psychology to understand the cognitive and affective processes underlying moral evaluation. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Oregon.
Dr. Anne Pisor is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Human Sociality Lab. Her research investigates how human social relationships—particularly those that cross geographic and group boundaries—shape decision-making in contexts such as climate change, migration, and natural resource use. She integrates evolutionary theory with applied research, often through interdisciplinary collaborations that connect anthropology with ecology, public policy, and development studies. Dr. Pisor has conducted fieldwork in a range of cultural settings, including Bolivia and Tanzania, and her findings have been published in journals such as Evolution & Human Behavior and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.A. in Applied Statistics. Her work contributes to a growing understanding of how long-distance social ties influence resilience and cooperation in a rapidly changing world.
Dr. Chris Skurka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at The Pennsylvania State University’s Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. His research examines how media messages shape public engagement with health, science, and environmental issues, with a particular focus on the emotional content of persuasive communication. He studies how emotional appeals—such as fear, humor, and moral outrage—affect audience attitudes and behaviors in contexts like climate change, public health campaigns, and political advocacy. Dr. Skurka is affiliated with the Penn State Cancer Institute and serves on the faculty of the university’s Science Communication Program. His work has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Communication, Health Communication, Science Communication, and Media Psychology, contributing to the growing field of affective science and strategic communication. He earned his Ph.D. in Communication from Cornell University.
External Presenters
Dr. William J. Brady is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Psychology. He is also a core faculty member in the Technology and Social Behavior program and a Faculty Associate of the Institute for Policy Research. Dr. Brady earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from New York University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University. His research focuses on how human psychology interacts with technologically mediated social contexts to shape morality and emotions. He employs methodologies such as behavioral experiments, big data analytics, and natural language processing to explore these interactions. His work has been published in leading journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, and Science Advances. Dr. Brady has received several accolades, including the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award and the SAGE Emerging Scholar Award. Beyond academia, he has been featured in media outlets like The New York Times, BBC, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal.
Abigail L. Cassario is a doctoral student in Social and Personality Psychology at Michigan State University. Her research examines the psychological underpinnings of political polarization, with a focus on how cognitive traits, ideological commitments, and belief systems contribute to partisan bias and intergroup conflict. She uses experimental designs and large-scale survey methods to investigate how individual differences shape political attitudes and behavior. Abigail holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and dual B.A. degrees in Psychology and Political Science from UNC Asheville. With a background that bridges the disciplines of political science and psychology, her work contributes to a growing literature on the cognitive foundations of political division and the mechanisms that sustain it.
Dr. Scott Clifford is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Florida State University. Dr. Clifford’s research focuses on public opinion, political psychology, and survey and experimental methods, with a particular emphasis on moral psychology. His work examines how moral values influence political behavior and how politicians utilize moral rhetoric to shape public opinion. He has published extensively in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. Dr. Clifford currently serves as the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Political Science and is a member of the editorial board for the American Political Science Review. Before joining Texas A&M, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Houston.
Dr. Fade R. Eadeh is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Seattle University. His research sits at the intersection of social psychology and political science, examining how emotions shape political attitudes, ideology, and public discourse. He studies how perceived threats—such as terrorism, intergroup conflict, or social unrest—can influence support for civil liberties, partisanship, and tolerance of dissent. Dr. Eadeh’s work highlights the subtle but powerful ways that emotional processes contribute to ideological rigidity or flexibility, offering insight into the psychological foundations of political behavior. His research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and Political Psychology. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis.
Dr. James L. Floman is an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. His work focuses on how emotional skills can be developed to enhance well-being, social functioning, and learning across diverse settings. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of British Columbia, where his research examined the impact of mindfulness and compassion-based interventions on emotion regulation and prosocial behavior among educators. At Yale, Dr. Floman contributes to the design and evaluation of emotional intelligence programs implemented in schools and organizations, with an emphasis on translating psychological research into evidence-based practice. His work draws on insights from neuroscience, education, and contemplative science, and has been published in journals such as Mindfulness and Emotion. Through his research and applied efforts, Dr. Floman advances understanding of how emotional intelligence can be cultivated and leveraged to support resilience and connection in everyday life.
Dr. Emily Kubin is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with both the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) in Germany and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from RPTU, focusing her dissertation on the interplay between social media and depolarization. Dr. Kubin’s research centers on political and moral psychology, with a particular emphasis on understanding how individuals perceive political and moral conflicts and developing strategies to mitigate intergroup tensions. Her work delves into the influence of both social and traditional media on political cognition and intergroup dynamics, as well as the role of victimhood narratives in shaping political and moral landscapes. Her research has been published in reputable journals, including Social Psychological and Personality Science and Nature Communications. Beyond her academic pursuits, Dr. Kubin has contributed articles to Scientific American, discussing topics related to political polarization and media influence.
Dr. Samantha Moore-Berg is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Utah. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Temple University in 2018 and her B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from Florida State University in 2013. Dr. Moore-Berg’s research focuses on isolating the mechanisms that contribute to intergroup conflict and understanding the psychological barriers that make people resistant to attitude and behavior change. She then develops theory-driven interventions that have real-world impact and identifies the underlying mechanisms of established interventions currently used to fight intergroup conflict and systemic inequality. Her work has been published in leading journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Social Psychological and Personality Science. Before joining the University of Utah, Dr. Moore-Berg was the Emile Bruneau Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Michael H. Pasek is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he directs the Belief, Identity, and Group Relations Lab. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University and his B.A. in Political Psychology from Bates College. Dr. Pasek’s research focuses on intergroup relations, particularly how religion, as both a group identity and belief system, influences moral decision-making, social attitudes, and behaviors in intergroup contexts. He also examines intergroup dynamics related to race, politics, and sexual orientation, aiming to leverage social psychological theories to promote social change and equality. His work has been published in leading academic journals, such as Psychological Science, and featured in media outlets like The New York Times. Dr. Pasek’s research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Dr. Keith Payne is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Payne’s research focuses on how inequality influences human thought and behavior, particularly in areas such as automaticity, social cognition, and implicit bias. He has authored several books, including The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die and Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America’s Dangerous Divide. His work has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychological Science. Dr. Payne has received multiple awards for his research, including the SAGE Young Scholars Award and the International Social Cognition Network Early Career Award. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Joseph Phillips is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Psychology at the University of Kent, where he works with the PSYPOL (Psychology and Public Policy) Research Unit. His research sits at the intersection of political science and social psychology, focusing on political polarization, misinformation, and democratic resilience. Before joining Kent, he completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at Penn State, where he studied how elite cues and emotional responses shape public opinion and partisan conflict. His work draws on a range of methods—including experiments, surveys, and longitudinal designs—to understand how people process political information and how that shapes attitudes toward opponents, institutions, and democracy itself. His research has been published in Political Behavior, Electoral Studies, Nature Human Behaviour, and The Journal of Politics. He has also held academic positions at the University of Exeter and Cardiff University.
Hannah Read is a researcher at Duke University, focusing on empathy in human-human and human-computer interactions, responsible AI, and the ethics of new digital technology in light of users’ experiences. She employs mixed-methods approaches in her research. Hannah has contributed to the academic discourse on empathy, including publications such as “A Typology of Empathy and Its Many Moral Forms” in Philosophy Compass and “Empathy and Common Ground” in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Her work emphasizes the role of empathy in connecting individuals by coordinating and aligning their feelings, thoughts, and responses, thereby facilitating common ground.
Dr. Karina Schumann is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, where she also serves as Chair of the Social Psychology Program and directs the Conflict Resolution (CORE) Lab. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Waterloo and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University under the mentorship of Dr. Carol Dweck. Dr. Schumann’s research focuses on the psychological processes that facilitate constructive responses to interpersonal and intergroup conflict, including apologies, forgiveness, empathy, and intellectual humility. Her work has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. She has received several honors for her scholarship, including the Heterodox Academy Open Mind Award for Exceptional Scholarship.
Robert Stise is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware. His research explores how media—particularly social and political messaging—shapes public attitudes, behavior, and democratic discourse. He examines the use of moral and emotional language in political communication, with a focus on how rhetorical strategies employed by public figures influence audience engagement and persuasion. His recent work has analyzed the role of moral appeals in social media campaigns, contributing to broader conversations around polarization, digital discourse, and the ethics of political messaging. Robert regularly presents his research at academic conferences and is committed to advancing scholarship that bridges empirical inquiry with the practical challenges of communication in contemporary public life.