The Hot politics lab
Co-director
I am an Assistant Professor in political communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research at the University of Amsterdam. I am interested in the psychological underpinnings of political beliefs. The role of personality and emotions receive most of my attention in answering this question. My research has appeared in journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, the Journal of Politics, European Journal of Political Research and Political Psychology. I am an Associate Editor at the Journal of Experimental Political Science. Check my personal website for more details.
Co-director
I am an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. I study the causes and consequences of the rise of populist radical left and right parties. Who votes for these parties and why? To what extent do the messages expressed by these parties affect other actors in the electoral process and public opinion? My work has been published in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research and Party Politics. Check my personal website for more details.
Co-director
I am an Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. I am interested in political rhetoric and the effect it has on citizens. For this purpose, I have published on topics such as party politics, populism, party organization, emotions and personality. My work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Analysis and Plos One. Check my personal website for more details.
I’m a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, department of Political Science. My research interests lie in areas related to political science, communication science and cognitive neuroscience, with a focus on psychophysiological processes that seem to govern socio-political ideologies and related behavioural phenomena. For instance, how do political beliefs determine decision-making, inference and judgement? Do individuals differ in the cognitive or emotional processing of information, based on political beliefs?
I have a background in sociology and have worked with cognitive neuroscientific methods in projects that took an interdisciplinary approach. My work has been published in academic journals such as Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, PlosOne, and Cognitive, Behavioural and Affective Neuroscience.
PhD Candidate
I am a Ph.D candidate in Political Science at the University of Stavanger, Norway. I obtained both my Bachelor’s degree and Research Master’s degree in Political Communication at the University of Amsterdam. Besides a strong interest in automated text analysis methods, I am very interested in the impact of news concerning the European Union. After previously publishing in Political Analysis on the use of Google Translate in automated text analysis, I am currently investigating the influence of news about EU issues on political party support, through the concept of issue ownership.
PhD candidate
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. I obtained a Bachelor’s degree at the University of Vienna and completed the Research Master’s Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. During my studies, I specialised in Political Psychology, electoral behaviour, and quantitative methods. My main research interests are the role of emotions and personality in shaping political attitudes and behaviour. My Master’s thesis focused on how personality (more specifically Neuroticism), together with economic and cultural anxieties influence sympathy for the far-right in the Netherlands.
PHD candidate
I am a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. I recently graduated from the research master Social Psychology at Vrije Universiteit . My master thesis focused on social identity and leadership processes with help from professor Alex Haslam. I am interested in interdisciplinary research, resulting in a broad range of interests such as communication science, neuroscience, and politics. I am especially interested in combining psychological processes (such as identification and emotional reactions) with physiological responses (e.g. brain activation, face muscle activity) in political contexts.
PhD Candidate
I am a Ph.D candidate in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. I graduated with a Master’s degree in European Union and Russian Studies from the University of Tartu, and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in International Development Studies at the University of Vienna. Before joining the University of Amsterdam I worked for the liberal politics thinktank Neos Lab and taught statistics at the University of Vienna. I am interested in developing and applying text as data methods, and currently study the use of emotional appeals by politicial elites for my PhD project.
PhD Candidate
I am a candidate for a joint Ph.D project at the University of Fribourg and the University of Amsterdam. I obtained both my Bachelor’s and Masters degree in communication and media research (minors: gender studies and English linguistics) at the University of Fribourg and am currently finishing up a Master of Advanced Studies in Data Science. I am interested in mechanisms of voters’ evaluations of political candidates. I am passionate about tackling gender effects in political communication from an interdisciplinary perspective and combining both qualitative and quantitative methods. I am currently working on a meta-analysis of candidate evaluations based on gender-differentiated media coverage.
Lab fellow
I am an Assistant Professor in Political Science at University College Dublin. Before that, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, working on the Horizon2020 project EUENGAGE. In this project, we look at speeches of European political elites. We analyze, among other things, the topics they address, the sentiment they use and also the complexity of their rhetoric.
Lab fellow
Kevin Arceneaux is Thomas J. Freaney, Jr. Professor of Political and Director of the Behavioral Foundations Lab at Temple University. He studies how people make political decisions, paying particular attention to the effects of psychological biases. He has published articles on the influence of partisan campaigns on voting behavior, the effects of predispositions on attitude formation, the role of human biology in explaining individual variation in predispositions, and experimental methodology. His most recent book, Taming Intuition, takes a closer look at why people vary in their ability to get beyond their biases and explores the implications for citizens’ ability to live up to the demands of democracy.
Lab fellow
Mariken A.C.G. van der Velden is Assistant Professor of Political Communication at the Department of Communication Science at the Free University Amsterdam. Until July 2019, she will also be a senior researcher (Oberassistentin) at the Department of Political Science of the University of Zurich. She has been a visiting researcher at Department of Politics and International Relations of the University of Oxford and at the Department of Political Science of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research interest centers on electoral behavior of voters and parties in Europe. For instance, she is studying how political parties navigate the tension to govern together, but compete for votes alone – the so-called coalition dilemma.
Research Assistant
I’m a Research Master’s student at the University of Amsterdam. My interest lies in investigating the determinants of political ideology and the consequences of that ideology, focusing specifically on ideological asymmetries and affective polarization. In coordination with Bert Bakker, I recently investigated the association between childhood personality and adult ideology using two large longitudinal studies. For the Hot Politics Lab, I assist in the data collection of the lab experiments as well as the transformation and formatting of the physiological data.
Intern
I’m a Research Master’s student from the program Brain and Cognitive Sciences, before that I earned my Bachelor’s degree in linguistics and philosophy at the University of Groningen. I’m interested in the intersection of social sciences and cognitive sciences, especially how social and political communications are emotionally affected. At the Hot Politics Lab, I work on the emotional processing of populist political messages under the supervision of Gijs Schumacher. In my free time, I enjoy board games, reading, and Netflix.
Intern
I’m a Research Master Neurosciences student at the VU in Amsterdam. I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in Psychobiology at the University of Amsterdam. I am fascinated by neuroscience but also like to be involved in interdisciplinary research. For the Hot Politics Lab, I am an intern in a new project of Maaike Homan and Diamantis Petropoulos Petalas investigating mirror neuron activity when observing politicians.
Intern
I am a Master’s student in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences (major: Life Sciences) from the University of Freiburg, Germany, where for my final thesis I investigated the efficacy of deep brain stimulation as a novel treatment of depression. My interests broadly lie in the fields of Neuroscience, Psychology, Philosophy and Politics, and with my research I aim to bridge the gap between the (wet) lab and society. Together with Diamantis Petropoulos-Petalas and Babke Weenk I am currently investigating the Jumping-to-Conclusions bias in people with conspiracy thinking tendencies.
Intern
I’m a research master Communication student at the University of Amsterdam. I obtained my bachelor’s in Natural and Social Sciences at the UvA, with a focus on Political Science. I am interested in the formation of political opinions through psychological and neurological processes. For the Hot Politics Lab, I work together with Bert Bakker to develop a measurement of emotional granularity in politics.
Lab Visitor
Lab Visitor
Lab Visitor
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
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Research assistant
Research assistant
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Research assistant
The Hot Politics Lab 2018 || Website designed by Maria Alexandra Rosales
