To understand how modern democracies function, we must understand how mass opinion on public policy is formed, develops, and changes over time (i.e. its causes), and how it affects the social structure (i.e. its consequences). Research on public policy in economics, political science and sociology has revealed a puzzling pattern– people’s political attitudes often do not reflect objective reality or rational self-interest. Psychology has a long tradition of examining the social pressures, cognitive biases, and competing motivations that prevent people’s attitudes from aligning with objectivity and rationality. The current project extends these insights to politics, by examining the social, cognitive, and motivational bases of policy preferences, while also examining the consequences of preferences for political behavior and the social structure.
To do so, the project tracks political change in the UK, at both the individual and societal level and (b) leverages this change to model understand the causes and consequences of public opinion. The project focusses on three domains of political attitudes: inequality, immigration and international relations. The two largescale longitudinal data collection initiatives - VOICE (adults) and SNAP (adolescents) - enable the use of cutting edge statistical techniques to understand the dynamics of change. These datasets represent the largest attempt to integrate social psychology and political science theorising in the UK using an an overarching methodology while tracking society over time. It reflects my scientific vision to use psychology as the lens through which knowledge about key issues of resource distribution in democratic societies, that are of interest across the social sciences, can be integrated.
