Facebook increases political knowledge, reduces well-being and informational treatments do little to help.

Nearly three billion people actively use Facebook, making it the largest social media platform in the world. Previous research shows that the social media platform reduces users' happiness, while increasing political knowledge. It also may increase partisan polarization.

Inconsistent and very weak evidence for a direct association between childhood personality and adult ideology.

Objective: We add depth and breadth to the study of the childhood personality-adult ideology link with additional data, measures, and measurement approaches.

Background: Past research in (political) psychology has put forward that individual differences in psychological needs shape ideology. Most evidence supporting this claim is cross-sectional.

Science interrupted .

Recent research contends that the behavioral immune system, operating largely outside conscious awareness, motivates individuals to exhibit higher levels of prejudice toward unfamiliar out-groups. This research finds that individual variance in disgust sensitivity correlates with support for political policies that facilitate the avoidance of out-groups. We were interested in developing less intrusive indicators of disgust sensitivity via olfactory measures (i.

Are need for affect and cognition culture dependent? Implications for global public health campaigns: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Cultural differences in affective and cognitive intrinsic motivation could pose challenges for global public health campaigns, which use cognitive or affective goals to evoke desired attitudes and proactive health-promoting actions. This study aimed to identify cross-cultural differences in affective and cognitive intrinsic motivation and discuss the potential value of this information for public health promotion.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey using cross-culturally validated need for affect (NFA) and need for cognition (NFC) scales was carried out among 1166 Chinese participants, and the results were compared with published data from 980 American participants.

Some people just want to watch the world burn: the prevalence, psychology and politics of the 'Need for Chaos'.

People form political attitudes to serve psychological needs. Recent research shows that some individuals have a strong desire to incite chaos when they perceive themselves to be marginalized by society. These individuals tend to see chaos as a way to invert the power structure and gain social status in the process.

Political psychophysiology .

The past decade has seen a rapid increase in the number of studies employing psychophysiological methods to explain variation in political attitudes and behavior. However, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of physiological data present novel challenges for political scientists unfamiliar with the underlying biological concepts and technical skills necessary for utilizing this approach. Our objective in this article is to maximize the effectiveness of future work utilizing psychophysiological measurement by providing guidance on how the techniques can be employed most fruitfully as a complement to, not a replacement for, existing methods.

Conservatives and liberals have similar physiological responses to threats.

About a decade ago, a study documented that conservatives have stronger physiological responses to threatening stimuli than liberals. This work launched an approach aimed at uncovering the biological roots of ideology. Despite wide-ranging scientific and popular impact, independent laboratories have not replicated the study.

Elites are people, too: The effects of threat sensitivity on policymakers' spending priorities.

Recent research suggests that psychological needs can influence the political attitudes of ordinary citizens, often outside of their conscious awareness. In this paper, we investigate whether psychological needs also shape the spending priorities of political elites in the US. Most models of policymaking assume that political elites respond to information in relatively homogeneous ways.

Elaborating the role of reflection and individual differences in the study of folk-economic beliefs.

Intuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses - that is, to be reflective - and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.

The genetic basis of political sophistication.

Political sophistication is a concept that encompasses political reasoning, the coherence of people's issue attitudes, and their knowledge of political processes. To what extent is political sophistication affected by genes and environments? Do these distinct but related measures of sophistication share a common genetic structure? We analyze survey data collected from participants in the Minnesota Twin Registry to estimate influences of genes and environments on variables used to measure political sophistication. Additive genetic factors explain 48-76% of the variation in educational attainment, political interest, and political knowledge, while dominance genetics influence 28% of the variance of ideological consistency.