14 February 2020
We are pleased to announce that two new research projects will be carried out at Political Cognition Lab.
Dr Marta Marchlewska (Polish Academy of Sciences) together with Dr Paulina Górska (University of Warsaw) will coordinate the Polish side of the project entitled “Threat, identity, and dissent: Understanding and addressing political polarization in European democracies”. The grant is part of a transnational programme on Democratic governance in a turbulent age, organised by the New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe, operating within the HORIZON2020 framework. 207 applications were submitted and only 14 projects chosen for funding, which totalled 17,8 mln euros.
The project aims to determine how identities and threat combine to generate multiple polarized attitudes and compares subpopulations of belief systems across countries and over time. Correlational class analysis and experiments that test causal effects of identities and threats are used to further explore this and help to not only understand, but to also identify solutions to overcome polarization.
Dr Marchlewska was also awarded a research grant as part of the OPUS 18 programme, funded by the National Science Centre. The project, titled “The role of emotion and stress regulation processes in the endorsement of conspiracy theories”, seeks to explore the relationship between emotion and stress regulation strategies and the belief in conspiracy theories. The project will allow for a better understanding of differences in the perception of significant socio-political events between people using different ways of dealing with a psychological threat.
