Politics is associated with a range of negative mental and physical health problems. Some work considers how MH disorders are associated with politics. Others, study to what extent there are mental ill-health symptoms people attribute to politics. We contend directly with why a focus on mental (ill) health attributed to politics is necessary in the study of MH and politics and examine 1) to what extent measures specific to the domain of politics are conceptually distinct from general measures and 2) to what extent domain-specific measures demonstrate a different pattern of association to political correlates. We test and compare the construct and predictive validity of "political mental health" (PMH) and MH in two pre-registered samples in the Netherlands. We find PMH is uni-dimensional and conceptually distinct, but related, to MH and that PMH has stronger associations to relevant political correlates -such as conspiracy mentality and news aversion- and explains unique variance above and beyond a MH measure. We end with suggestions for future work on MH and politics that include the use domain-specific PMH and conclude that PMH has both clinical and political implications.

Partisanship is a powerful social identity that not only conditions how citizens vote, but also how they reason. The ’Hot Cognition’ hypothesis posits that affective associations are activated immediately upon exposure to political stimuli, such as party leaders delivering polarizing messages. The integration of the speaker with the message might be comprised of temporally distinct processes: automatic affective response triggered by the identity of the source (disliked leader), and a more conscious, evaluative response triggered by leader misalignment. Yet, previous work has relied on methods that cannot temporally disentangle neural responses to party leaders. We conducted a preregistered EEG study (N = 44) using a task with just politicians’ faces and a task with faces and statements. Out-party faces elicited an enhanced early posterior positivity (200–356 ms). When paired with messages, this early response (148–424 ms) was amplified by out-party faces and counter-attitudinal statements, and aligned with slower reaction times. Consistent with a visual P2 component, these findings suggest that partisanship prioritizes the detection of political opponents within 150 milliseconds, well before conscious evaluation begins.

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, such as crime, threats related to asylum seekers, and the war in Ukraine emerging as central nodes. Second, ideology, age, and education are the most relevant variables linked to societal threat perceptions. Third, we replicate the levels and structure of societal threat perceptions over time, highlighting the robustness of our conclusions. Our study’s results indicate that societal threat perceptions form a complex network that replicates over one year. We outline an agenda for the next generation of theorizing on the structure, correlates and stability of societal threat perceptions.

Five years after Dienlin et al.’s (2021) agenda-setting article explicitly called for communication research to adopt open science practices, this study systematically assesses the current state within the field. Through manual content analysis of articles published in 2025 across 20 leading communication journals, we evaluated the adoption of six Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Research Practices provided by the Center for Open Science, namely study registration, study protocol, analysis plan, materials transparency, data transparency, and analytic code transparency. The results show limited adoption of TOP research practices in communication research. Sharing of research materials is done more frequently than other practices, yet its extent of transparency remains limited. Quantitative studies achieve higher transparency scores than qualitative studies. Critically, justifications for non-sharing of materials, data, or analytic code, as well as explicit reporting of deviations from preregistrations, are mostly absent, despite their importance for transparency and openness. We argue that voluntary adoption may be insufficient and discuss whether stricter enforcement mechanisms are needed to establish open science as a normative standard. By mapping the current implementation of open science practices, this study contributes to critical reflection on the reproducibility and credibility of communication research and informs the development of infrastructures to support greater transparency.

Societal threat perception, worry, and issue salience are central to research in psychology and political science, and previous research suggests considerable overlap between the three measures. Nevertheless, they have not yet been empirically distinguished. This study addresses whether the empirical patterns of these three measures are consistent and whether they yield congruent conclusions about political ideology across twelve societal issues. Using data from a diverse Dutch sample (N = 1863), we first show that threat and worry, but not salience, produce similar empirical patterns in terms of means and correlations, as citizens find issues more important than threatening or worrying. Next, we find that threat and worry correlate overall similarly with ideology -- but also highlight exceptions -- whereas issue salience often overestimates this relationship (Type M error) but rarely reverses its direction (Type S error). These findings clarify the unique roles of threat, worry, and issue salience in (political) psychology, offering a framework for future research on the threat-politics link.

Although affective polarization is fundamentally an affective construct, existing theories and measures focus almost exclusively on evaluative valence, largely overlooking emotional arousal. Building on the Circumplex Model of Affect, we develop and evaluate a two-dimensional framework of affective reactions toward political parties and affective polarization that incorporates emotional valence and arousal. Across three studies conducted in the Netherlands (N=984), the United Kingdom (N=1,001), and the United States (N=1,000), we show that feeling thermometers function as measures of valence and that valence and arousal represent empirically distinct dimensions of affective reactions. We then demonstrate that the level of emotional arousal provides incremental validity over traditional, valence-based measures of affective polarization, yielding additional and often stronger associations with key political correlates such as political engagement, ideological extremity, and democratic attitudes. These findings advance the conceptualization and measurement of affective polarization by incorporating arousal as a distinct dimension and clarifying when and why affective polarization is most strongly linked to political behavior and democratic attitudes.

Support for fundamental political rights is a defining feature of liberal democracy. Crises may undermine citizen support for these rights. Yet, existing research does not often distinguish support for 'illiberal' policies that encroach on fundamental political rights from other 'intrusive' crisis policy responses. By conducting a series of well-powered, preregistered conjoint and vignette experiments in the US and the UK during the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we examine the extent to which citizens are willing to support policies that violate liberal democratic rights in a crisis as well as intrusive policies. Our results suggest that support for liberal democratic rights is quite robust, although endorsements by an in-group party or trusted expert can increase support for illiberal policies. Overall, we find noteworthy resistance to illiberal policy measures, such as postponing elections and banning protests, indicating popular commitment to liberal democratic norms.

What is the nature of affective partisan polarization? We answer this question in a preregistered laboratory study conducted in the United States measuring partisans' affective reactions tostatic images of U.S. politicians with self-reports and physiological indicators of valence and arousal. Consistent with prior research, participants reported substantially more negative evaluations of out-party than in-party politicians. However, we do not observe reliable physiological differentiation between in-party and out-party elites under these conditions. This disconnect between self-reported negative affect and concurrent physiological responses suggests that, in the context of minimal elite exposure, affective polarization can be expressed without detectable visceral activation. These findings are consistent with constructivist and attitude-retrieval accounts and constrain strong versions of the hot cognition thesis, though they do not logically exclude all possible roles for visceral affect under different conditions.

Political interest is fundamental to democratic engagement. Yet, its conceptualization remains debated. In this agenda-setting 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 preregistered study in the Netherlands (N = 1, 553). Using the same dataset, we demonstrate their predictive validity. The PPIS and NPIS uncover substantial differences in political attitudes and behaviors both between and within individuals who identify as politically (dis)interested. Conceptualizing political (dis)interest as a social identity enriches our understanding of the concept and its implications for politically relevant attitudes and behaviors, while also informing interventions to foster political interest equally across all citizens.

Deep concerns about the ability of democracies to cope with polarization, political violence, and anti-democratic attitudes have motivated social scientists to develop interventions that strengthen democracy. The emerging evidence base has impact on policy globally but is predominantly based on American findings. To strengthen democracies, we need a broader evidence base. To this end, we conducted an intervention tournament (14 interventions, 23,146 participants) in a very different democracy – the Netherlands. Some successful interventions in the US replicate, with others failing to replicate. We identify a newly constructed narrative-based intervention as the most successful in strengthening democracy. By developing a theoretical framework to compare interventions and innovations in our research design we lay the groundwork for a global intervention tournament.

OBJECTIVES:The mental and physical health consequences of loneliness are well documented. However, loneliness's socio-political ramifications have been largely unexplored. We theorize that loneliness, due to its physiologically dysregulating impact on the nervous system, facilitates greater susceptibility towards populist radical right parties. METHODS:We tested our hypothesis in 25 unique tests in four population-based samples (N = 40852), spanning nine countries - the Netherlands (15 tests, 2008-2023), Germany (two samples; 2017, 2018), Austria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Hungary, Sweden, and Switzerland (all in 2017). Logistic regressions were run per year and per country. Two internal meta-analyses were run, the first for the Dutch sample and the second for the cross country dataset. RESULTS:In the Netherlands, lonelier individuals were more likely to support the populist radical right across 15 tests spanning 15 years of data, with 11 tests reaching statistical significance - odds ratios ranging from 1.1 to 1.38. For the cross country analysis, Denmark reached statistical significance (OR = 1.2, 90% CI = 1.01, 1.42). Due to smaller sample sizes however, the cross country tests were underpowered to reliably detect small effects. CONCLUSIONS:Loneliness is positively associated with support for the populist radical right in the Netherlands. The effect sizes are comparable to common health correlates of loneliness - high blood pressure, heart diseases, and depression - emphasizing their socio-political relevance. Going forward, well-powered cross-national replications are needed.

Measuring affective polarization, defined as the liking for one’s political ingroup and dislike for political outgroups, poses methodological challenges in multiparty systems: evaluations of 7, 13, or even more parties in a survey are costly, time consuming and demanding. Studies therefore frequently rely on only a subset of political parties in measures of affective polarization. However, it is unclear how this approach affects the validity of the measurement. Here, we assess the construct and predictive validity of brief affective polarization measures. Across 39 countries, we demonstrate that brief measures that include ratings of only 3-5 parties can maintain acceptable validity, as shown by strong correlations with the full measures and consistent associations with political correlates. The construct and predictive validity of brief measures is best, when selecting a set of large, ideologically diverse parties. We offer specific recommendations on how to effectively capture affective polarization in different multiparty settings.

Book Review: Alexa Bankert. When Politics Becomes Personal: The Effect of Partisan Identity on Anti-Democratic Behavior.

Innovation implies successful introduction. Measures of psychophysiological and neural activity have been introduced to political science but the fact they are still rarely used, particularly in mainstream political science, indicates that this introduction has not been successful. Instead, the status quo in political science is to rely on self-reported measures of feelings, beliefs, and opinions. A recent review of research on ``emotion and politics'' in the Annual Review of Political Science underlines this point as it contains very few references to work using measures of psychophysiological and neural activity. We identify three problems with this status quo. First, unconscious (or preconscious) affective processes cannot be measured with self-reports because we are mostly unaware of these processes. Second, the complex interplay between affective and cognitive processes at the neural level cannot be characterized by relying on typical (survey) experimental outcome measures. Third, on socially sensitive topics, people may be motivated to self-report in socially desirable ways. As such, self-reports may even be misleading. In sum, political psychology largely concentrates on more conscious reflections at the expense of potentially relevant preconscious or unconscious explanations or mechanisms. The goal of this chapter is to inspire the next generation of political psychology research to move beyond self-reports and adopt theories and methods that help us to better characterize the affective-cognitive processes of political decision-making. To this end we provide an overview of work using psychophysiological measures (skin conductance, heart rate variability, and facial electromyography (fEMG)), eye-tracking, and neuroimaging measures (electroencephalography (EEG), functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging).

Partisanship has been associated with various cognitive biases. These findings are primarily based on self-reports and task performance and less on measures of neural activity. We build on the related literature on in-group/out-group dynamics that employs a face-viewing paradigm and electroencephalography methods to analyze biases. Reviewing this literature, we developed and preregistered several hypotheses about the extent to which partisanship is associated with neural processing of political faces. Our lab experiment was conducted in the Netherlands (N=51) and sufficiently-powered to pick up modest effect sizes for in-party/out-party comparisons. As preregistered, we find that faces of political leaders elicit a stronger N170 ERP response than faces of strangers, but we did not find the same pattern for the N250 component. Also contrary to our preregistered hypotheses, we find no statistically significant differences in the P200 and N200 components between in-party and out-party leader faces. The strength of partisanship also did not correlate with P200 or N200. We discuss whether different interpretations of these signals (e.g. familiarity or affective processing) guide our theories about how partisan bias emerges and operates.

The transition from traditional flow television to streaming services has created a media landscape in which traditional news outlets are in intense competition with entertainment content. This paper argues for optimizing news for streaming through the affective structure of news narration. We compared flow TV news with a novel narrative structure, the Batman Affective Structure (BAS). The BAS strategically places an emotional peak at the news message's start and one at the end to enhance emotional impact and attention. In an experiment, six real news videos from major Danish broadcasters were re-edited by professionals to align with the BAS. Viewer responses were measured using skin conductance for arousal and self-reported assessments for arousal, attention, and news appreciation. The results showed that the BAS elicited higher physiological arousal and adhered to the expected double-peak arousal pattern, while flow TV news followed an unexpected s-shaped pattern. Additionally, media habits played a moderating role, with the BAS performing the best among viewers with high media use but low news interest, a group that holds great potential for increased news exposure. This study highlights the potential for the BAS to help news adapt to the challenges of the streaming era.

: For some, negative news increases negative affect, harms mental well-being, and reduces news consumption. Others, however, cope better with recurring news negativity. We propose that differences in emotional regulation strategies explain, at least partly, these varied responses to negative news. In a preregistered, longitudinal intensive diary study (7 days) with a diverse, predominantly Western European sample (N = 120), we examine to what extent emotion regulation strategies are associated with negative affect, mental well-being, and news use frequency. Our findings indicate that cognitive reappraisal and selective attention effectively down-regulate negative emotions arising from news use. However, distraction and suppression showed no statistically significant effects on affect, well-being, or news consumption. This study provides initial evidence that emotion regulation strategies help explain individual differences in responses to negative news and lays the groundwork for a research agenda in communication science exploring the role of emotion regulation in media effects.

Academics and pundits alike suggest politics harms our health. In the literature on mental health and politics -work that spans different disorders and political outcomes-there has been a turn to domain-specific measures of `political health'. However, when studying the complex relationship between mental health and politics, it is not yet clear if we need a disorder specific or general approach and to that end, if there is a need for domain-specificity (i.e., what it might contribute beyond traditional mental health measurements). To investigate this, we test and compare the construct and predictive validity of domain-specific political mental health (PMH) and general mental health (MH) in a study conducted in the Dutch population. Through our tests of construct validity, we find PMH is an independent construct to MH. Our tests of predictive validity demonstrate that while both PMH and MH have a range of political correlates, from political participation to external political efficacy, it is PMH that has stronger and broader political associations -- to affective polarization, ideological extremism and news aversion, among others. In the discussion we outline a research agenda for moving forward the study of mental health and politics in light of our findings: our results imply that domain-specificity is needed to properly identify the extent to which mental health is connected to engagement with politics and who may be the most affected and importantly, that PMH and MH have more far reaching political consequences than previously assumed.

To help researchers determine what studies to replicate, Isager et al. (2021, p.1) introduced the Replication Value (RV), “a proxy for expected utility gain”. In this commentary, we point out that there are scenarios where people can opt to replicate studies with a lower RV compared to those with a higher RV. Methodologically, we highlight that the differences in the RV become very small when comparing studies with different large (e.g., over 500) samples. To adjust for this, we demonstrate that a modification to the RV-equation – by log transforming the sample size – leads to a RV that discriminates between studies with large sample sizes with greater precision.

Daily negativity in the news can cause people to experience negative affect, negatively affects mental wellbeing, and, in response, people (temporarily) avoid the news. Others, however, seem to handle recurring news negativity better. We theorize that the way people regulate emotional responses to the news could help explain the different patterns of coping with the news. We do this by introducing the emotion regulation literature from psychology in the political communication literature. We investigate if, and to what extent, emotion regulation in response to news use is associated with negative affect, mental wellbeing, and news use frequency. In a preregistered longitudinal intensive diary study in a diverse sample from Western Europe, we find that individuals rely on various emotion regulation strategies to cope with news negativity. We find that people use cognitive reappraisal and selective attention to successfully down-regulate negative emotions arising from news use. On the other hand, no effects of the use of distraction or suppression on affect, wellbeing, or news use frequency were found. Thus, the study offers first evidence that some emotion regulation strategies could be one determinant in explaining why people are affected differently by the news. Our study sets the stage for a research agenda in political communication research that studies the role of emotion regulation strategies in understanding differential media effects.