Jeffrey Martin Lees’s research while affiliated with University of Groningen and other places

Scholars warn that partisan divisions in the mass public threaten the health of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy ( n = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find that many treatments reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting relatable sympathetic individuals with different political beliefs or by emphasizing common identities shared by rival partisans. We also identify several treatments that reduced support for undemocratic practices—most strongly by correcting misperceptions of rival partisans’ views or highlighting the threat of democratic collapse—which shows that antidemocratic attitudes are not intractable. Taken together, the study’s findings identify promising general strategies for reducing partisan division and improving democratic attitudes, shedding theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

Partisans hold inaccurate perceptions of the other side. What drives these inaccuracies? We address this question with a focus on partisan animosity meta-perceptions (i.e. how much a partisan believes opposing partisans hate them). We argue that predictors can relate to meta-perceptions statically (e.g. at a specific point in time, do partisans who post more about politics on social media differ in their meta-perceptions relative to partisans who post less?) or dynamically (e.g. does a partisan who increases their social media political posting between two defined time points change their meta-perceptions accordingly?). Using panel data from the 2020 US presidential election, we find variables display distinct static and dynamic relationships with meta-perceptions. Notably, between individuals, posting online exhibits no (static) relationship with meta-perceptions, while within individuals, those who increased their postings over time (dynamically) became more accurate. The results make clear that overly general statements about meta-perceptions and their predictors, including social media activity, are bound to be wrong. How meta-perceptions relate to other factors often depends on contextual circumstances at a given time.

Climate change is currently one of humanity’s greatest threats. To help scholars understand the psychology of climate change, we conducted an online quasi-experimental survey on 59,508 participants from 63 countries (collected between July 2022 and July 2023). In a between-subjects design, we tested 11 interventions designed to promote climate change mitigation across four outcomes: climate change belief, support for climate policies, willingness to share information on social media, and performance on an effortful pro-environmental behavioural task. Participants also reported their demographic information (e.g., age, gender) and several other independent variables (e.g., political orientation, perceptions about the scientific consensus). In the no-intervention control group, we also measured important additional variables, such as environmentalist identity and trust in climate science. We report the collaboration procedure, study design, raw and cleaned data, all survey materials, relevant analysis scripts, and data visualisations. This dataset can be used to further the understanding of psychological, demographic, and national-level factors related to individual-level climate action and how these differ across countries.

Objective We assess the hypothesis that socially responsible capitalism (SRC) is fundamentally partisan and primarily supported by people on the left, or whether this perception is another example of “false polarization”—overestimation of disagreement between the left and right. Methods We conduct two studies: (1) a survey of Americans' opinions on a general definition of SRC and five examples of recent prominent firm actions corresponding to distinct areas of SRC ( n = 1000, representative sample) and (2) an incentivized survey on second‐order beliefs about results from the first survey ( n = 605, quota‐matched convenience sample). We conduct statistical tests of the accuracy of second‐order beliefs about polarization between Democrats and Republicans in support for SRC and correlates of this accuracy. Results Large majorities of Democrats and Republicans support examples of corporate behavior from three of the five areas of SRC, but opinions are somewhat divided across the parties on support for SRC as a concept, and highly divided for the SRC examples on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and climate change. Both Democrats and Republicans generally underestimate SRC support from partisans on both sides except for DEI, which both parties overestimate support for. SRC support is especially underestimated by people opposed to SRC and people with no opinion on SRC. Democrats overestimate polarization in support for SRC. Overestimation of polarization in SRC support is correlated with affective polarization. Conclusion Bipartisan support for SRC is underappreciated, but some aspects of SRC are polarizing or even more polarizing than commonly perceived. Republican opposition to SRC may be partially due to underestimation of copartisan support for SRC. A focus in the news and popular discourse on the more polarizing aspects of SRC may contribute to a general perception that support for SRC is more polarized than it truly is.

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.

Is socially responsible capitalism (SRC) fundamentally left-leaning, or is that perception another example of ``false polarization''---over-estimation of disagreement between the left and right? We address this question via two studies: 1) a survey of Americans' opinions on a general definition of SRC and five examples of recent prominent firm actions corresponding to distinct areas of SRC (n=1,000, probability-based representative sample), and 2) a second, incentivized survey on second-order beliefs about the distribution of opinions from the first survey (n=605, quoted convenience sample). We find large majorities of Democrats and Republicans support examples of corporate behavior from three of the five areas of SRC, but opinions are somewhat divided across the parties on support for SRC as a general concept, and highly divided for the two other SRC examples from the areas of DEI and climate change. Both Democrats and Republicans generally underestimate support from partisans on both sides for the SRC definition and all examples of SRC except DEI, which people on both sides overestimate support for (on both sides). SRC support is especially under-estimated by people who are personally opposed to SRC, or have no opinion on SRC, suggesting that false second-order beliefs may contribute to lack of personal support for SRC. Democrats particularly underestimate Republican support for SRC and consequently overestimate polarization in support for SRC. Overestimation of polarization in SRC support is correlated with affective polarization.

Effectively reducing climate change requires dramatic, global behavior change. Yet it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to non-climate-skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened most by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior–several interventions even reduced tree planting. Finally, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.

Addressing many social challenges requires both structural and behavioral change. The binary of an i- and s-frame obscures how behavioral science can help foster bottom-up collective action. Adopting a community-frame perspective moves toward a more integrative view of how social change emerges, and how it might be promoted by policymakers and publics in service of addressing challenges like climate change.