Year: 2021

Individuals’ behaviors are causing environmental problems and behavioral change is needed to mitigate these problems. Recent research suggests that the majority of people have a biased perception of their pro-environmental engagement, namely they see themselves as “greener” than others. It has been speculated that this bias inhibits people from taking further pro-environmental actions. Yet, research…

The legitimacy of impartial institutions, such as the judicial system, law enforcement, and educational institutions, is pivotal to the proper functioning of democratic society. Yet, in public debate such supposedly impartial, a-political institutions are portrayed as politically biased: ‘the tax service is racist’ and ‘universities practice left-wing indoctrination’. In other words, these institutions are perceived…

In democracies the views of the voting population ultimately determine important policies, such as income redistribution. Recent trends in income inequality, migration and inter-generational mobility motivate a new wave of attention for preferences for income distributions and redistribution. The research in this proposal presents an innovative next step in our understanding of both the measurement…

The societally highly salient issue of political trust is studied intensively in political science. However, widely used measures of political trust do not reflect its multidimensional nature. We propose to develop and empirically validate a novel measure of political trust incorporating its four key dimensions – competence, care, accountability, and reliability. We do so for…

Euroscepticism features prominently in societal and scholarly debates. Following the adage to know it is to love it, educating the citizenry about the European Union (EU) is often assumed to dampen such negative EU attitudes. As the EU is vast and complex and people are generally ill-informed about it, the so-called information deficit model indeed…

Experts claim that vaccination is the most effective tool to combat infectious diseases, like COVID-19. Vaccination not only protects the vaccinated person; it also indirectly protects unvaccinated people if enough people are vaccinated. However, do people consider this or do they vaccinate themselves only out of self-interest? Recent research has shown that pro-social motivations (e.g.,…

Although Mobile Instant Messenger Services play an increasingly important role in social and political participation of citizens and the spreading of information, we know surprisingly little about these networks. Most research on social media focuses on “traditional” social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, because in contrast to MIMSs, data from these platforms are…

Ostracism—being ignored and excluded—is a ubiquitous yet extremely painful experience. While the negative consequences of ostracism are widely acknowledged, the root causes of ostracism are poorly understood. Past studies dispersed across several areas within social and health sciences have identified several disparate variables that purportedly shape people’s subjective feelings of ostracism, such as having a…

At present there is a lack of evidence when and how informed consent should be performed in radiological healthcare. This problem plays a role in 1)interventional radiology, 2)diagnostic radiology, and 3)retrospective radiology research. So far, the issue of informed consent has only been discussed from the viewpoint of healthcare professionals, whereas the voice of the…