Gijs Schumacher’s research while affiliated with University of Amsterdam and other places

Societal threats such as climate change, economic crises, and wars shape citizens’ political attitudes and behaviors. Yet, the structure of threat perceptions and their socio-demographic and ideological correlates remain underexplored. Using a six-wave Dutch survey (N = 685) and a network approach, we uncover the complexity of societal threat perceptions. First, we show that societal threat perceptions vary in their interconnectedness, with security threats as crime, the war in Ukraine, and asylum seekers emerging as central nodes. Second, ideology, age, and education are the most relevant variables linked to societal threat perceptions. Third, we replicate the structure of societal threat perceptions over time, highlighting the robustness of our conclusions. Our results reveal that societal threat perceptions form a stable and complex network, offering insights into how citizens process and respond to societal challenges. Future research should examine how contextual factors and interventions may reshape these networks.

Empathy has been proposed as a solution to alleviate interparty antipathy. Recent findings from the US suggest that one aspect of empathy – empathic concern – increases rather than decreases affective polarization. Perspective-taking, another aspect of empathy, has no effect on affective polarization. In this article, we describe a preregistered replication and extension of these findings in the contrasting political context of the Netherlands, to see whether this relationship generalizes beyond the US. First, using a cross-sectional nationally representative sample of 1,258 Dutch voters, we show that empathic concern indeed fuels affective polarization while at the same time we find that perspective-taking reduces it. Second, using a two-arm survey experiment (n = 438), we show that perspective-taking reduces ingroup bias, whereas empathic concern does not. Reflecting on the American and Dutch findings, we conclude that while empathic concern likely contributes to affective polarization, perspective-taking may reduce it.

A prominent theory in political psychology contends that individual differences in negativity bias explain political ideology: people who are more sensitive to negative stimuli find solace and comfort in conservative approaches to politics. Using self‐reported measures of negativity bias, the evidence is relatively consistent. Yet, using physiological indicators of the negativity bias, the results are, across the board, inconsistent with the negativity bias argument. Building on recent neuroscience work, we propose and test two innovations. First, unconscious and conscious processes are not necessarily aligned. Therefore, we propose that there are different – conscious and unconscious – paths that could link ideology with the negativity bias. Second, individuals vary in their ability and motivation to down‐regulate arousal and reflect on their emotions. As such, the ideology‐negativity bias may emerge in some individuals but not in others. In two preregistered laboratory studies (US and the Netherlands), we find limited evidence for these claims. In a subsequent registered report, we replicate some inconsistent patterns that emerged in study 1. We confirm that self‐reported social conservatism and implicit social conservatism (measured with an IAT) are positively correlated. We also establish that negativity bias is unrelated to social conservatism (both explicit and implicit). We conclude that negativity bias is most likely not the answer to why people on the left and right differ.

Political interest is fundamental to democratic engagement. Yet, its conceptualization remains debated. In this study, we offer a new but important perspective by conceptualizing political (dis)interest as a social identity. We introduce two innovative measures: the Positive Political Interest Identity Scale (PPIS) and the Negative Political Interest Identity Scale (NPIS). Employing Item Response Theory, we validate the construct validity of both scales in a pre- registered study in the Netherlands (N = 2,060). Using the same dataset, we also demonstrate their predictive validity. Importantly, the PPIS and NPIS uncover substantial differences in political attitudes and behaviors both between and within individuals who identify as politically (dis)interested. Recognizing political (dis)interest as a social identity enriches our understand- ing of the concept and its implications for politically relevant attitudes and behaviors, while also informing interventions to foster political interest equally across all citizens.

We revisit the hypotheses that conservatism positively correlates with amygdala and negatively with anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) gray matter volume.Using diverse measures of ideology and a large and representative sample (Amsterdam Open MRI Collection [n = 928]), we replicate a small positive relationship between amygdala volume and conservatism. However, we fail to find consistent evidence in support of the ideology-ACC volume link. Using a split-sample strategy,we conducted exploratory whole-brain analyses on half the data, preregistered the findings, and then conducted subsequent confirmatory tests that additionally highlight weak, positive associations between the right fusiform gyri and conservatism. This is the largest preregistered replication study in the context of political neuroscience. By using Dutch as opposed to British or American data, we also extend the amygdala-conservatism link to a multiparty, multidimensional political context. We discuss the implications for future investigations of the neural substrates of ideology.

A prominent theory in political psychology contends that individual differences in negativity bias explain political ideology: people who are more sensitive to negative stimuli find solace and comfort in conservative approaches to politics. Using self-reported measures of negativity bias, the evidence is relatively consistent. Yet, using physiological indicators of the negativity bias, the results are, across the board, inconsistent with the negativity bias argument. Building on recent neuroscience work we propose and test two innovations. First, unconscious and conscious processes are not necessarily aligned. Therefore we propose that there are different - conscious and unconscious - paths that could link ideology with the negativity bias. Second, individuals vary in their ability and motivation to down-regulate arousal and reflect on their emotions. As such, the ideology-negativity bias may emerge in some individuals but not in others. In two preregistered laboratory studies (US and the Netherlands) we find limited evidence for these claims. In a subsequent registered report, we replicate some inconsistent patterns that emerged study 1. We confirm that self-reported social conservatism and implicit social conservatism (measured with an IAT) are positively correlated. We also establish that negativity bias is unrelated to social conservatism (both explicit and implicit). We conclude that negativity bias is most likely not the answer to why people on the left and right differ.

Who supports the populist radical right (PRR)? And under what circumstances? We theorize that social status-related envy (SSRE) is the construct that integrates personality- and grievance-based theories of PRR support. To assess our theory, we estimate psychological network models on German survey data to map the complex relationships between PRR support, Big Five personality traits, facets of narcissism, political attitudes, and multiple constructs measuring objective and subjective social status. Our findings confirm previous studies detecting two routes to PRR support: a disagreeable and an authoritarian one. The Bifurcated Model of Status-Deprived Narcissistic Right-Wing Populism claims that SSRE is the distant predictor of PRR support and the two constructs are connected by two pathways. The middle-class route is characterized by disagreeable narcissism (Rivalry) and nativism, while the lower-class route by Neuroticism (potentially Vulnerable Narcissism) and authoritarian right-wing populism. Moreover, we find preliminary support for our expectation that PRR voting is explained by the activation of narcissistic traits by SSRE.