Lee de-Wit
@leede-wit.bsky.social
Associate Professor in Political Psychologist at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Trinity Hall. Deputy Head of the Department of Psychology, and Head of Undergraduate Education.
Academics have encountered issues in trying to establish whether polarisation is rising and why, primarily because it is hard to define polarisation and find ways to measure it. This #RSOS papers presents a new way of measuring polarisation using a machine learning algorithm: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
"Due to these misperceptions, even willing politicians who want to do more felt their hands were tied.”
‘A silent majority’: MPs underestimate support for green policies, study reveals
Exclusive: From solar subsidies to meat taxes, minority rightwing voices appear to drown out the consensus
theguardian.com
I was delighted to jointly win the Anne Treisman award 2025! For my paper on Bayesian polarisation, in Cognition: doi.org/10.1016/j.co... Thanks so much to @sjblakemore.bsky.social and the rest of the committee, and my co-authors @leede-wit.bsky.social and @jenskoedmadsen.bsky.social
doi.org
Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore@sjblakemore.bsky.social · 8mo ago🌟 Congratulations to Dr Chloe Austerberry and Dr @davidyoung-psych.bsky.social, who were jointly awarded The Anne Treisman Annual Best Paper Prize by a postdoctoral researcher in the Cambridge Department of Psychology.
Open access: Malte Dewies, @leede-wit.bsky.social and Lucia Reisch use a pre-registered survey study to examine how assumptions about cooperation, behavioural malleability, and self-control influence policy preferences among public officials in the Netherlands www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
In a new paper in Cognition w. @davidyoung-psych.bsky.social and @leede-wit.bsky.social, we explore perceived dependencies as a possible cause for issue polarisation. We show that this is possible experimentally where high dependency depresses updating. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Belief polarization can be caused by disagreements over source independence: Computational modelling, experimental evidence, and applicability to real-world politics
A large literature debates whether belief polarization, in both experiments and real-world political opinion data, is the result of biased forms of re…
sciencedirect.com
First time on Blue Sky! Super happy this article is now out in an issue of Political Psychology! And honoured by the promo tweet with custom-made graphic! @leede-wit.bsky.social
Political Psychology@ispp-pops.bsky.social · last yr.New research by David Young and Lee de-Wit gives us a deeper look at polarization within political parties. Their findings suggest factional divides within a party can be as strong, and even stronger, than those between parties. Read more: https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12973
Last year, we published a paper showing that AI models can "debunk" conspiracy theories via personalized conversations. That paper raised a major question: WHY are the human<>AI convos so effective? In a new working paper, we have some answers. TLDR: facts osf.io/preprints/ps...
Excited to share that our BBS target article — "Children as agents of cultural adaptation" — is online & open for commentary! In it, @sheinalew.bsky.social & I argue that children's peer cultures might play an important & understudied role in cultural adaptation. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Over the 2020 US and NZ elections, antidemocratic attitudes preceded conspiracy beliefs, rather than conspiracy beliefs fostering antidemocratic attitudes by @lindaskitka.bsky.social & many others in @ispp-pops.bsky.social #socpsych #polisky #polpsych onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
(1/8) I’m very excited to share this new publication in Public Understanding of Science. Citizens’ trust in science increasingly depends on their political leaning. In a theoretical article published in 2021, I proposed a four-level model for this ‘science polarization.' doi.org/10.1177/0963...
We often define the ideological space in terms of the economic and cultural dimensions; how does this resonate with ordinary citizens? This is the question Thomas and I explore in a new Element, analyzing answers to open-ended survey questions 🧵 cup.org/4gEYCOj
The European Ideological Space in Voters' Own Words
Cambridge Core - Organisation Studies - The European Ideological Space in Voters' Own Words
cup.org
No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a #meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... New paper led by Oded Ritov and w/ @nicholaraihani.bsky.social and Jan Engelmann.
No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Disadvantageous inequity aversion (IA), a negative response to receiving less than others, is a key building block of the human sense of fairness. While some theorize that IA is shared by species acro...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Now published in PNAS! We had a survey in the field at the time of the first assassination attempt on Trump. We found that Rs became significantly less supportive of partisan violence and had increased in-party affect. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
What attributes of a government lead citizens to view it as trustworthy? Our article - led by @danjdevine.bsky.social - is out in EJPR today... Competence, benevolence and integrity all matter - but perceived benevolence matters most. ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
In January @lizsuhay.bsky.social & I will be co-EiC at Political Psychology. We will be the first EiC team that represents both of the key disciplines of this interdisciplinary journal.
