Project title
A Comprehensive Map of the Threat-Politics Relationship
Research question
How do threatening life events shape people's political preferences?
Project description
People experience threatening life events. Relationships crumble, jobs are lost, terrorists attack, and loved ones pass away. The purpose of this project is to comprehensively map how these threatening life experiences affect political preferences.
Mark Brandt studies how a wide range of real-life experiences predict stability and change in political preferences. Comprehensively mapping how threat impacts political preferences is important for understanding the dynamics of political preferences. This has direct implications for theories of political attitudes, but also for understanding how societies respond to both personal and societal crisis.
Selected publications
- Brandt, M. J. & Bakker, B. N. (2022). The complicated but solvable threat–politics relationship. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26, 368-370.
- Brandt, M. J., Vallabha, S., & Turner-Zwinkels, F. (2025). The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic made people feel threatened, but had a limited impact on political attitudes in the United States. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 51, 284-300.
- Cassario, A. L. & Brandt, M. J. (in press). Testing theories of threat, conservatism, and individual difference: Little evidence of personality based individual differences in ideological responses to threat. Social Psychological and Personality Science.