Attitude change is not solely an individual process—it unfolds within social networks. While interventions to shift individuals’ political attitudes are widespread, from campaign persuasion to efforts reducing prejudice and partisan animosity, little is known about how such interventions depend on and interact with social structures. We report results from a field experiment in sixteen Ugandan villages that provides a rare, direct view of how attitude change occurs within social networks. We combine measures of village social networks with surveys of attitudes before and after a perspective-taking intervention seeking to warm attitudes toward nearby refugees. Targeted individuals did exhibit warmer attitudes toward refugees immediately after treatment on average. Two to three weeks later, however, substantial additional change had occurred throughout the villages—even among those never treated directly. We show evidence that these attitude shifts occurred within and because of social networks. Attitudes of network neighbors moved toward one another, even more than would be expected by common positive shifts. The new attitudes of targeted individuals spill over to influence the attitudes of network neighbors. Some people react to the intervention especially strongly right away; network distance to these people predicts longer-term attitude change, where attitudes of individuals closer to strong positive or negative reactors shift in the corresponding direction over time. These patterns do not predict immediate responses, only later ones after people have had time to interact with their network ties. Our findings demonstrate that political attitude change is ultimately shaped by real-world social networks.

When most of the world’s parliaments were created, women could not vote or be elected. Correspondingly, parliaments’ rules and infrastructure as well expectations of parliamentarians’ (MPs) performance were designed around masculine standards, including the assumption that MPs had no caretaking responsibilities. Scholars seeking explanations for women’s underrepresentation argue that parliaments remain unwelcoming to those with caretaking roles. As long as women continue to bear disproportionate household obligations, increasing women’s presence in elected office requires parliaments to adopt reforms to accommodate parents. We surveyed members of Germany’s national and state parliaments about their attitudes towards parenthood and politics and support for various parenthood accommodations. We find that gender rather than being a parent shapes how politicians perceive the challenge of reconciling politics and parenthood. But shared experiences among women do not automatically produce similar attitudes about policies to make parliaments family friendly. Party ideology and gender both predict support for parliamentary reforms.

Recent literature suggests that citizens in Western democracies have become desensitized to Islamist terrorism and that Islamist attacks therefore no longer evoke the same changes in political attitudes as before. However, this hypothesis remains undertheorized and has not been systematically tested. We develop a theoretical framework that positions desensitization alongside alternative trajectories of public responsiveness and subject it to two complementary tests. In Study 1, we draw on a meta-analytic dataset of over 170 previous studies and 800 effect estimates to assess whether public reactions to Islamist terrorism have changed as a result of repeated exposure. In Study 2, we conduct a more controlled comparison of the effects of two recent Islamist terrorist attacks using a comparable research design and a new data source. Across both studies, we find little evidence that responsiveness has systemically diminished – or increased – over time, calling into question the presumed erosion of the effects of Islamist terrorism on political attitudes in Western democracies.

This article examines democracy-related attitudes of German sports club members. It employs a framework derived from the neo-Tocquevillian theoretical works about democracy to argue that the depth of individual involvement in a club, in conjunction with the club’s political and democratic culture, is crucial for determining attitudes conveyed by members. A representative sample of the population (N = 3,049) indicates that there is only a slight difference in the levels of political interest, political efficacy beliefs, cosmopolitan orientations, or satisfaction with democracy between sports club members and non-members. However, more nuanced models for sports club members indicate that active participation, as well as a club culture that encourages initiative, open political debate, and diversity, is predictive of pro-democratic attitudes. Based on these findings, we propose a perspective that no longer treats sports clubs as a homogeneous group, but acknowledges the existence of a range of club cultures.

Immigration has historically been of low salience in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, the region has consistently higher levels of ethnocentrism than the rest of Europe. Scholars argue that the East's limited politicization of immigration is due to its status as a region of emigration and the presence of ethnic minority ‘others’. I argue that this is changing. The politicization of the European refugee crisis by domestic elites has begun to refocus the sociocultural dimension on the immigration issue. Using structural equation models, I compare European Values Study data from 2008 and 2017 across 10 East European EU member states. I find evidence that traditionalist attitudes are more strongly related to anti‐immigration attitudes since the crisis, particularly for those who are interested in politics. Further, immigration attitudes are polarizing across the GAL‐TAN dimension and by education. Hence, immigration is bolstering a pre‐existing, socially structured divide around both nationalist and traditionalist values.

Becoming a parent can affect the lives of men and women by introducing salient new social roles and identities, altered social networks and tighter constraints on financial resources and time. Even though modern family life has evolved in many important respects, parenthood continues to shape the lives of men and women in very different ways. Given that parenthood can change the lives of men and women in profoundly different ways, it seems that it would bring about changes in the way women and men think about politics and policy issues. Using data from the Wave 4 of the European Social Survey, this article investigates how parenthood, and the distinctions of motherhood and fatherhood, influence attitudes. The findings suggest that parenthood can have a polarising effect on attitudes, and that the polarising effect is most evident in countries where there is less support from the state for parental responsibilities.

The COVID‐19 pandemic led to widespread fear among the population. Early studies suggested that this resulted in exclusionary attitudes and increased support for discriminatory policy measures. We still lack an understanding of the longer‐term, potentially erosive consequences that COVID‐19‐specific anxieties may carry for citizens' commitment to liberal democratic norms. In this research note, we present evidence from an original experiment in which we manipulate individuals' cognitive accessibility of their fears related to COVID‐19. We implemented this experiment in Hungary and Romania – two cases where illiberal attitudes are most likely to amplify under conditions of fear – a year and a half after the outbreak of the pandemic. The results show that our intervention is successful in elevating respondents' levels of worry, anxiety and fear when thinking about infectious diseases like COVID‐19. However, these emotions do not carry secondary effects on individuals' levels of right‐wing authoritarianism, nationalism or outgroup hostility, nor do they affect preferences for specific discriminatory policy measures aimed to fight a potential resurgence of COVID‐19. We discuss these findings in light of the literature on the demand‐side determinants of democratic backsliding and the consequences of emotions on political behaviour.

A certain type of citizen holds technocratic views. They favour pragmatic problem solving through scientific and technical expertise, and reject party politics for being harmful to the common good. Yet, empirical evidence on the ideological profile of these citizens is fragmented and inconclusive. Using an original survey in Western Europe, Australia and the United States, we test predictions about the left−right alignment of citizens with technocratic attitudes on the economic and cultural dimensions of politics. We argue that technocracy is not antithetical to ideology and that citizens holding technocratic attitudes are not immune to ideological positions. Findings show that technocratic citizens are more economically left-wing than mainstream voters, contrary to common associations of technocracy with neoliberal economic principles. However, they are more centrist than populists. This highlights that, in addition to a representational challenge, technocracy mounts an ideological challenge to party-based representative democracy. In times of cumulative crises, which put democracies under stress with demands for competence and effectiveness, these findings offer insights about the appeal of alternative forms of representation.

Democratic innovations aim to strengthen citizen participation in democratic decision-making processes. Building on theories of deliberative democracy, participatory democracy and direct democracy, different types of democratic innovations have been developed, ranging from mini-publics, to participatory processes and referendums and citizens’ initiatives. Over the last four decades, an expanding number of scholars have investigated the effects of these democratic innovations on citizens. However, even though a considerable amount of research has been done, there currently exists no overview of the effects of different types of democratic innovations on citizens’ attitudes, behaviour and capabilities. In addition, it is unclear which effects prove robust across studies, and which effects require more investigation.

The aim of this paper is to systematically evaluate what we know and what we do not know yet about the effects of democratic innovations on citizens who participate in them. In order to do so, we conduct a meta-analysis of 100 quantitative empirical studies published between 1980 and 2020. We find, perhaps unsurprisingly, that mini-publics are widely researched for their effects on citizens, whereas studies into the effects of participatory processes and referendums and citizens’ initiatives on participating citizens are much less frequent. We also find that participation in mini-publics changes citizens’ policy attitudes and positively affects citizens’ political attitudes, knowledge, internal efficacy and reasoning skills. For participatory processes, our analyses indicate that they appear to have a positive effect on participants’ political attitudes and knowledge and no effect on participants’ internal efficacy, but there are too few studies to draw robust conclusions. Participation in referendums and citizens’ initiatives appears to have a positive effect on participants’ knowledge and internal efficacy, even though these findings should also be considered preliminary due to the limited number of studies.

This article examines the link between personality traits, political attitudes and the propensity to vote in elections, using an Internet panel survey conducted in two Canadian provinces at the time of the 2008 federal election and the subsequent provincial elections. It first establishes that the two most proximate attitudes that shape one's propensity to vote are political interest and sense of civic duty. The article then look at specific personality traits (altruism, shyness, efficacy and conflict avoidance) that could affect level of political interest, civic duty and the propensity to vote in elections. In the last part of the analysis, a model is proposed and tested, according to which the impact of personality traits is indirect, being mediated by interest and duty. The article shows that the data are consistent with such an interpretation.

Are political attitudes a stable feature of individuals or a rational response to changing circumstances and contexts? This question has long been a feature of political science and underpins our theories of how political attitudes are formed and what their consequences might be. In this paper, we explore this perennial question with a focus on the case of political trust, a fundamental indicator of democratic legitimacy and a long‐standing topic of debate. Theoretically, we devise a framework that highlights how different theories of political trust assume different levels of stability or volatility and the implications that this has for those theories and their normative consequences. Empirically, we study within‐individual stability of political trust using six panel studies that cover five countries between 1965 and 2020. Our results consistently point to trust being stable in the long term, with potential for short‐term volatility in response to changing political contexts, and for substantial changes between people's formative years and their adulthood. Even over a period of 19 years, most people's responses to trust questions are remarkably similar between surveys and significant life events such as unemployment and going to University do not significantly influence trust. Changes in the political environment, like incumbent government turnover, have larger effects but these appear to return to equilibrium in a few years. The exception to this general finding is individuals who are first surveyed when they are under the age of 18, who appear much more likely to change their trust levels in subsequent waves. Overall, our results complement previous research on attitude stability, indicating that trust is approximately as stable as other attitudes, such as towards immigration and redistribution. These findings have fundamental implications for our understanding of the nature of political trust and attitude formation more broadly.

Political ideology has regained prominence in political science and psychology. On the one hand, most of the literature recognizes that ideology is not characterized by a single dimension. On the other hand, recent scholarship has returned to Converse's classic conceptualization of ideology as a belief system: a network of interconnected political beliefs. Using survey data collected after the 2022 Italian general elections, I examine the dimensionality of political attitudes and compare latent and network conceptualizations. Results confirm that Italian political attitudes are bidimensional, and that a partial correlation network model captures their structure very well. I then apply Correlational Class Analysis to identify three distinct belief system types. Political orientations (left-right self-placement and vote) emerge as the strongest individual-level predictors of class membership. I explain these findings through an extension of Converse's theory: while he argued that belief systems primarily vary in tightness (internal consistency), I show that conflicting partisan cues might foster low belief consensus: disagreement over which attitudes should be held together.

Extant work shows that generative AI such as GPT-3.5 and perpetuate social stereotypes and biases. A less explored source of bias is ideology: do GPT models take ideological stances on politically sensitive topics? We develop a novel approach to identify ideological bias and show that it can originate in both the training data and the filtering algorithm. Using linguistic variation across countries with contrasting political attitudes, we evaluate average GPT responses in those languages. GPT output is more conservative in languages conservative societies (polish) and more liberal in languages used in liberal ones (Swedish). These differences persist from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4. We conclude that high-quality, curated training data are essential for reducing bias.

How do perceptions of demographic change affect the strength of white identity and corresponding attitudes toward immigrants, immigration and personal perceptions of victimhood? While white identity has received scholarly attention in the United States, we know much less about its effects in Canada. We conducted a preregistered survey experiment in which we exposed respondents to different framings on Canada’s increasing ethnic diversity. We find that perceiving demographic change increases feelings of white identity, particularly when framed as an increase in Canada’s visible minority or immigrant population. However, exposure to these trends does not in turn robustly affect respondents’ attitudes toward immigrants, immigration admission preferences or own perceptions of personal victimhood. These findings suggest that white identity is both present and can be primed in Canada; however, it has not yet been politically mobilized in the same way as in other contexts, such as the United States.

Popular willingness to compromise is an important step for conflict resolution. A key argument suggests that improving expectations about the prospects of peace can increase public support for concessions. Yet a competing view, anchored in broader debates about preferences and expectations, suggests that prior ideological dispositions motivate biased future expectations rather than vice versa. This tension, however, remains understudied in violent conflicts. In this study, we leverage rich survey data from Israel to disentangle the causal relationship between expectations and preferences for compromise in a long-standing conflict. Using two decades of aggregate monthly series and two exogenous shocks to peace expectations, we find that changes in prospective expectations do predict subsequent shifts in support for compromise. We find no contrary evidence for a null, opposite, or heterogeneous relationship. The findings contribute to ongoing debates about the interrelations between expectations and preferences and provide insights into their implications for conflict resolution.

Research demonstrates that English- and French-speaking Canadians differ in a wide range of attitudes, including their political preferences, their vision of the Canadian federation and their national identity. In this article, we ask whether individual bilingualism is associated with a decrease in the attitudinal differences between anglophones and francophones. Using survey data collected in the summer of 2023, we attempt to determine whether knowledge of the French language is related to an increase in the responsiveness of English-speaking citizens toward issues that typically preoccupy French-speaking Canadians. Our analyses suggest that knowledge of French as a second language is strongly linked to the political preferences of Canadian citizens but does not bridge the attitudinal gap between Canada’s two main language groups. These results highlight the relevance of considering the different languages that people speak—and not just their mother tongue—to understand their political attitudes.

What are the effects of reason-giving on political attitudes? Both political philosophers and political scientists have speculated that defending proposals with reasons may change voters’ preferences. However, while models of attitude formation predict that the explicit justification of one’s political views may result in attitudes that are more ideologically consistent, less polarized, and more stable, empirical work has not assessed the connection between reason-giving and attitudes. Implementing a survey experiment in which some respondents provide reasons before stating their opinions on six issues in UK politics, I find that reason-giving has very limited effects on the constraint, stability, or polarization of the public’s political attitudes. These findings have important implications for our understanding of deliberative conceptions of democracy – in which reason-giving is a central component – as well as for our understanding of the quality of voters’ political opinions.