James Dennison
Political and social scientist
Prof @mpc-eui.bsky.social @eui-eu.bsky.social & Pierre Keller Prof @harvardkennedy.bsky.social
Interests: attitudes, behaviour, comms, migration, quant, 🇬🇧 & 🇪🇺 politics
www.jamesdennison.eu
- Reposted by James DennisonNew at ESR! Does moving often as a child weaken social capital later in life? #RValente #MVacchiano find a more complex picture: childhood moves reduce place attachment, but can strengthen personal agency, supporting social capital in adulthood! 🔥 #OpenAccess: doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcag001
- Reposted by James DennisonReally happy this work with @fraraffaelli.bsky.social found a home at EJPR. We show that growing up at times of high salience of immigration produces cohorts of voters who are more likely to vote for parties that they agree with specifically on immigration. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- Reposted by James DennisonIt's a shame that in these anti-political times, Jenrick doing extremely lucrative planning favours for mega-rich donors is not something anyone bothers to mention about him
- Reposted by James Dennison
- Reposted by James DennisonSurely, surely, this will allow most Reform supporters finally to wake up to the fact that they are backing the very same self-serving, corrupt, venal right wing grifters they’ve been trying to reject since the last election? www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cr...
- Reposted by James DennisonOn the Robert Jenrick defection psychodrama: His team have been plotting for months, so it was going to blow up at some point! Most of my Tory sources agree he decided to defect after months of losing momentum in his bid to topple Badenoch as leader, as she started to improve
- Reposted by James DennisonSpoiled brats are running the world.
- WH sources say Venezuela's opposition leader committed the "ultimate sin": She accepted the Nobel Peace prize. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one said. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
- Reposted by James DennisonMargaret Thatcher was kept in dark over Reagan's attack on Grenada Daily Telegraph. It's an old tradition of the "special relationship."
- Reposted by James DennisonA message for you all to carry through the year
- Reposted by James DennisonThey gentrified the tinfoil hat
- Reposted by James Dennison"social science has to answer questions that people beyond academia care about..academia can['t] just be self-referential as it grows infinitely. I think there are challenges to understand what’s going on in the United States and the world and to talk about it to broad audiences in plain language.."
- Reposted by James DennisonThe worst, most dishonest prime minister we’ve ever had, rocks back and forth in his Daily Mail cubbyhole spewing out idiotic bilge to kid himself that he and his disastrous Brexit weren’t an almighty national fuck-up. A deeply pathetic threat from an abject failure of a man.
- Reposted by James DennisonJo Cox was murdered before the vote by a far-right terrorist & this is the language this complete disgrace chooses to use
- Reposted by James DennisonThis is extremely important
- Reposted by James DennisonFor the historical polling nerds out there, an article about our project with @ropercenter.bsky.social that digitised ~800 surveys by Gallup poll in Britain between 1955 and 1991 has been published in JEPOP. The merged dataset contains over three-quarters of a million respondents.
- Reposted by James Dennison[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by James DennisonDamning overview of the nudging literature. "[We] provide the most comprehensive synthesis of the effectiveness of nudging." "We find a small aggregated effect size." "[Our results show] the urgent need for higher quality, preregistered meta-analyses to clarify the true impact [of nudging]."
- Reposted by James DennisonHow hard would it have been to say "of course not... that's not what it's for"? I get that you've got a product to sell, but have some self-respect, man.
- Reposted by James DennisonThis is v good
- Very cool paper using physiology to measure issue salience academic.oup.com/poq/advance-...
- Reposted by James DennisonBreaking. Liz Truss wins this year's FIFA Prize for Economics.
- Reposted by James DennisonExperimental participants to us
- Three preregistered experiments with prolific participants (N = 2,254) found no evidence for experimenter demand effects osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by James Dennison"Broad claims of generalized cognitive enhancement resulting from physical exercise appear premature"
- Reposted by James DennisonA critique of our (w/ @bertous.bsky.social) paper “Instrumentally inclusive” has just been published. Our response is under review (see below on process) but we feel obliged to share our draft for balance since the comment has been released without the response. osf.io/rn6h3/files/...
- Reposted by James DennisonIs welfare spending ''out of control''? It's estimated to be 10.8 per cent of GDP this financial year. That's just 0.8 per cent of GDP higher than in 2007-08, and total welfare spending has actually fallen fallen by 1.2 per cent of GDP since 2012-13⤵️ buff.ly/s5mz97u
- Reposted by James DennisonThe number of British citizens emigrating hasn’t increased, btw. Outward migration is up, but the increase is mostly non-EU migrants leaving the UK. The methodology counting emigration of British citizens changed in 2021, which increased the number, and it’s been pretty much flat ever since…
- Reposted by James DennisonReally great and interesting paper: "Using British electoral panel data, it shows that greater open-mindedness, tolerance for uncertainty, and social distrust are associated with greater political attitudinal volatilty."
- Thrilled to share my new article in Political Psychology: “The psychology of political attitudinal volatility.” In it, I attempt to answer why do some people change their political views more than others? Open access at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... @ispp-pops.bsky.social
- Thrilled to share my new article in Political Psychology: “The psychology of political attitudinal volatility.” In it, I attempt to answer why do some people change their political views more than others? Open access at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... @ispp-pops.bsky.social
- Reposted by James DennisonDo Americans judge acts of partisan political violence impartially? No. We show that Democrats and Republicans exhibit clear partisan bias: both see the same violent act as more justified when it targets the other party than when it targets their own side. osf.io/preprints/so... #polisky
- Reposted by James Dennisonlads i found ANOTHER Table of Impossible Summary Statistics in a "green economics" paper 🚩 Can you see the problem?
- Reposted by James DennisonNew publication w/ my friend & amazing coauthor @fedetrastulli.bsky.social in @ejprjournal.bsky.social! 🎉 doi.org/10.1017/S147... We explore: Who considers which political issues as important & how is this related to sociodemographic/socioeconomic variables?
- I'm happy to share my *open access* contribution to the "IPSA Companion to Political Science: A Practical Introduction to the 200 Most Important Concepts" entitled simply "Immigration". I hope that the entry is of use for researchers at all levels! link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/...
- Reposted by James DennisonLooking at this fiasco, and the mess Starmer is making of government, it’s looking more and more like the defeat of Corbynism was about its own limitations rather than the Machiavellian machinations of the Labour right
- Reposted by James DennisonIt’s very revealing how the techno-futurist crowd assumes that the rest of us also treat other people as props and gadgets in our lives, as opposed to valuing the fact that there’s a thinking, feeling person there.
- This is an absolutely fantastic video by @jameskerlindsay.bsky.social : "Could Britain rejoin Europe?" www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KKk...
- Reposted by James DennisonThose claiming Dems should retreat on racial justice aren't hard-headed realists, they're pushing against the electoral tide rather than leaning into it. The story of Gen Z isn't about racist backlash or red-pilled young men. It's the most racially progressive generation in American history. 🧵
- Reposted by James Dennison📢 @jamesrdennison.bsky.social, @lorenzopiccoli.bsky.social & Mariana Carmo Duarte: Migration communication campaigns: towards a research agenda and open database 🔗https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2024.2419550
- Reposted by James DennisonEven in the era of zero-cost LLMs, some scientists are still crafting data for their clinical trials by hand... and getting published in the @bmj.com! Inspiring. pubpeer.com/publications...
- @bmj.com Please look at PubPeer comments on an article you published last week. pubpeer.com/publications... I think your research integrity dept shld act swiftly on this one, given clinical significance. I'm aware of even more evidence of problems so let me know if this is not sufficient.
- Reposted by James DennisonEU repeats request for Israel to let in media into Gaza
- Reposted by James DennisonKemi made me do it.
- Reposted by James DennisonEU states have provisionally agreed to curb Russian diplomats' travel and ban imports of liquid gas, but Austria and Slovakia still have objections to the next round of sanctions.
- Reposted by James DennisonHappy to publish today in the @ejprjournal.bsky.social Pop culture (think Netflix's Sex Education) make us think that emerging cohorts are happy to socially incorporate partners with sexually modern backgrounds and experiences 🏳️🌈 But is this really the case? doi.org/10.1017/S147...
- Reposted by James Dennison⚠️New publication @ssreditorial.bsky.social 📖 #ethics in the practical implementation of #migration information campaigns ➡️ Sender credibility and Anxiety-trigger both impactful for information provision ➡️ but via distinct paths: No double-down-effect 🛄 Multi-treatment RCT, N=2612 in Nigeria
- Reposted by James Dennisonreminded today of the incredible Summerhill parody in The Day Today, which is both *extremely* specific and very funny even if you have no idea what Summerhill was. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tebh...
- Reposted by James DennisonIN NEW ISSUE: British attitudes to ‘Europe’ have been long characterised as ‘reluctant’. @jamesrdennison.bsky.social explores the exception between 1988–1992 - Britain’s Pro-European Moment: buff.ly/3D41PIx (OPEN ACCESS) @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social #ECRs @sagepub.com
- Reposted by James DennisonNew Zealand prevaricates on whether to recognise Palestine as a state, or not. My Stuff #cartoon today #NZpol #Palestine #Gaza
- Reposted by James DennisonThe light of dawn hits cirrus clouds just right for a beautiful palette of cool and warm colors. Photo taken at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. August 2025. #Stunday #CratersoftheMoon #Idaho #NationalParks #photography #travel #camping #dawn #clouds
- Reposted by James Dennison1/ How does migration affect political attitudes? Using 380k obs from 104 sending & 28 receiving countries, @filipkostelka.bsky.social, Nicolas Sauger & I find some migrants’ attitudes align with locals, while others exceed origin-host context, reshaping ideological space. 👉 doi.org/10.1111/ajps...
- Reposted by James DennisonAnother problem is that UK politics has a serious "pipeline problem". If Starmer keeled over tomorrow, I've no idea who would replace him. I don't even know who the frontrunners would be. There are no experienced, tested candidates in either main party, because UK politics no longer develops that
- I suspect Starmer would be in more peril if MPs still picked the leader. Under the present rules, Labour MPs can fell a prime minister but they can't replace him. And right now, no one can predict who the membership would choose. That will make many MPs nervous. www.ft.com/content/1487...
- Reposted by James Dennison[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by James DennisonThe evil that men do lives after them
- Reposted by James DennisonThe pretty draft is now online. Link to paper (free): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.... Our replication package starts from the raw data and we put real work into making it readable & setting it up so people could poke at it, so please do explore it: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...
- Reposted by James DennisonDonald Trump, Peter Mandelson & Jeffrey Epstein. From Matt.
- Reposted by James DennisonRemembering my childhood in Camberley, Surrey (at a later date, Michael Gove’s seat) where the Conservative controlled council proudly flew the 🇪🇺 flag outside their offices, at about that period of time.
- IN NEW ISSUE: British attitudes to ‘Europe’ have been long characterised as ‘reluctant’. @jamesrdennison.bsky.social explores the exception between 1988–1992 - Britain’s Pro-European Moment: buff.ly/3D41PIx (OPEN ACCESS) @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social #ECRs @sagepub.com
