Lars Erik Berntzen
Associate Professor, Department of Government, University of Bergen 🇧🇻 | activism, norms, political violence
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen“Visible state violence against sympathetic civilians was the beginning of the end for Jim Crow. It may be a turning point now, too.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/o...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenYesterday marked 10 years since C‑REX was founded. This thread highlight what the center has done — research, PhDs, datasets, events, policy engagement and international partnerships. THREAD 🧵 www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenTwo new articles in Party Politics With @gessler.bsky.social Measuring party positions and issue salience with mass media and manifesto data" doi.org/10.1177/1354... With Hanspeter Kriesi "Restructuring party systems in Northwestern Europe" doi.org/10.1177/1354... Feedback very welcome!
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenEach week, about 12 people are killed in homicides in England and Wales. But who is most likely to be killed? This thread summarises what we know about who is most likely to be a victim of homicide. 🧵
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenOur first joint article with the PhD researchers of my research group @rexklima.bsky.social has just been published! 🎉 "Explaining Attitudes Towards #Climate #Action in Germany: AfD vs. the Greens, the East vs. the West, Wind vs. Solar Energy" is now out. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... (1/4)
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen🧵New preprint: Adults often agree with their ingroup even when evidence says otherwise. Why? To find out, we studied kids, who show the same tendency but *before* political identities take hold. With developmental data, we can see the basic psychological ingredients. doi.org/10.31234/osf... 1/11
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenClosing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenNew publication with @turnbulldugarte.com in @psrm.bsky.social! 🧵 We study whether citizens’ liberal values are selective: do people support policies based on who promotes them? Short answer: Yes, and it's driven by ethnic out-group disidentification. (1/11) 👇 doi.org/10.1017/psrm...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenInterested in pursuing a career in climate governance, policy or politics research? Do you have a relevant PhD degree in political science, public administration or international relations? Then you should check out this opportunity! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenI maintain that this is an excellent benchmark for d-type effect sizes: Sleep satisfaction & duration declined with childbirth & reached a nadir during the first 3 months postpartum, with women more strongly affected (satisfaction d = -0.79, duration minus 62 min, d = -0.90)>
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenThe 1️⃣article of our 5️⃣0️⃣Anniversary Special Issue "Debating European Politics: Advances and Perspectives" is out!🎉 "The rise of populism and the new cleavage" by Hanspeter Kriesi, describing contemporary populism is likely to be a temporary phenomen. 🔗https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2591874
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenFrom October 2025 - The Gendered Persistence of Authoritarian Indoctrination - cup.org/3WCwC5v - Nourhan A. Elsayed, @hannohilbig.bsky.social, @riazsascha.bsky.social & @dziblatt.bsky.social #OpenAccess
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenPartisan voters can reward candidates who stick to the party line even on unpopular issues. Under uncertainty, voters infer that ideologically rigid candidates are also more likely to back the party's other, more popular positions academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenA 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 Lars Erik BerntzenNew article by @rmuriaas.bsky.social and I: While seniority can benefit all parliamentarians and serve as a powerful resource, it does not confer power equally. Women face structural barriers to accessing seniority, and even when they attain it, their legitimacy and influence remains contested.
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenMy new article with @leberntzen.bsky.social out in @scandpolstud.bsky.social! Can politicians calm conflict as effectively as they can inflame it? Our experimental evidence from Norway suggests that they cannot. 🧵
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen„the importance of sample size stemmed from small effect sizes across studies (perhaps smaller than researchers may have anticipated), highlighting a tension between commonly used power calculi and determining what constitutes a “meaningful effect.“
- Needed - larger samples, more realism about (the lack of) heterogeneous treatment effects: -"less than a third of proposed hypotheses were supported... the largest predictor of positive exp. results was sample size" -"moderation hypotheses were rarely significant" academic.oup.com/poq/advance-...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenThrilled 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
- Do 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
- Using a survey experiment with a realistic political rally scenario, we manipulate who commits violence (inparty, outparty, no party) and how severe the provocation is. Across conditions, partisan identity acts as a powerful perceptual filter.
- Both sides apply clear double standards when judging identical acts of violence. Strong partisans are nearly 3 times more likely to explicitly justify acts of partisan political violence against the opposition (27–30%) than against their own party (10–11%).
- A more severe provocation increases violence justification, but it does NOT shrink the partisan double standard. Study is forthcoming in Public Opinion Quarterly, coauthored w/ @lilymasonphd.bsky.social, Cornelius Cappelen and Tor Midtbø.
- New article with @draege.bsky.social out in Scandinavian Political Studies: “Asymmetric Influence: Politicians Can Fuel but Not Dampen Conflict.” We test whether politicians in one of the world’s least polarized democracies, Norway, can calm conflict as effectively as they can inflame it. #polisky
- We run a survey experiment in the Norwegian Citizen Panel (N=2,287) using real elite reactions to the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks: mutual recrimination vs. cross-partisan conciliatory appeals vs. a control. Then we ask whether people see July 22 as contributing to political conflict
- Results: Recrimination significantly heightens perceptions of conflict, while conciliation has no impact. These findings contribute to understanding the boundary conditions of elite influence, suggesting that for political leaders, it is easier to fan the flames of conflict than to put out the fire.
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenOn average across traits, the three methods produced remarkably similar estimates of ~30%. Most (~85%) of this variance could already be estimated by common variant GWAS run on the same samples. Strikingly, classical twin estimates for these traits were ~2x higher!
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenI wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenAn important rule of politics is that all formal institutions—all laws, all procedural rules, all constitutions—are just informal institutions in disguise. The minute they are not actually backed by behavior of some kind, they cease to exist. Formalization only sets a higher bar for ignoring them.
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen🚨 New paper with Maria Grasso on generational shifts in political values. Despite talk of rising age polarisation, we show that gaps in attitudes are stable or even narrowing. Economic attitudes move in cycles, while social values have become more liberal – mainly due to generational replacement.
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenNew research explores why openness/intellect stands apart from other personality traits. It turns out this trait may be less universal across cultures and rarely targeted for change. Read more in #PSPR: ow.ly/UGlJ50XqLqS
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenOur @apsrjournal.bsky.social article is now in print! We develop a theory to explain why the public doesn't become more prosocial toward LGBTQ+ people after illegitimate anti-LGBTQ+ violence and provide causal, externally valid, evidence for the theory across 4 studies doi.org/10.1017/S000...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenThree preregistered experiments with prolific participants (N = 2,254) found no evidence for experimenter demand effects osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenShare widely with your students in Switzerland 🇨🇭thinking about a PhD @eui-eu.bsky.social 𝗢𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗘𝗨𝗜 𝗣𝗵𝗗 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 🇨🇭 21 Nov 2025 | 2:30pm CET @alissasiara.bsky.social introduces the program & life at EUI, I share my experience, and we answer your questions. 👉 Register: www.eui.eu/events?id=58...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenHow common do you think something is? When asked to judge proportions, people's estimates can be drawn towards their prior expectations of what the 'typical' value is. The result can be an overestimate of low proportions, and an underestimate of high ones... link.springer.com/article/10.3...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenIf you know anyone considering doing a PhD in political science or sociology, encourage them to apply to the EUI PhD program and join the institute's landmark 50th cohort of PhD researchers in the SPS Department! Applications from Central and Eastern Europe are particularly welcome!
- 🚨 Applications Now Open for the EUI PhD Programmes 2026-2027! 📊 Economics |⚖️ Law |📘 History | 🏛 Political and Social Sciences Join the EUI's 50th PhD cohort! Apply by 15 January 2026 (14:00 CET) for the academic journey of a lifetime! 👉: eui.eu/phd #EUIPhD #PhDOpportunity
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenNew article on “The Relational Dynamics of Violence Escalation and Inhibition During Far-Right Protest Waves” by Joel Busher, Julia Ebner, Zsófia Hacsek, Gareth Harris and myself in the latest issue of “American Behavioral Scientist”:
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenTwitter/X is a story on its own: 🔴 While users have become more Republican 💥 POSTING has completely transformed: it has moved nearly ❗50 percentage points❗ from Democrat-dominated to slightly Republican-leaning.
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenMost young men in Britain, despite popular commentary, are *not* flocking to Reform UK. Just under 1/3 women would vote for Reform Just over 1/3 would vote for Reform. We *cannot* reject the null of gender gap homogeneity across cohorts.
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenPosting is correlated with affective polarization: 😡 The most partisan users — those who love their party and despise the other — are more likely to post about politics 🥊 The result? A loud angry minority dominates online politics, which itself can drive polarization (see doi.org/10.1073/pnas...)
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen🚨 🆕 analysis w/ @turnbulldugarte.com: most British young men reject the far right @ukandeu.bsky.social Despite media claims, 71% of young men & 75% of young women say they’d never vote Reform UK. The gender gap exists, but it’s steady across ages—not youth-driven. 🔗 ukandeu.ac.uk/most-british...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenNew chapter on affective polarization and support for political violence (open access): www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap-o...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenMain takeaways: (1) Affective polarization predicts higher support for political violence at extreme levels; (2) its main effect may be expanding opportunity structures for a small subset willing to act violently. US & Brazil show highest risk.
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen"The Conservatives propose to deport about 5 per cent of the UK’s legal population" "the Conservative party increasingly holds positions that are further from mainstream British public opinion than Reform"
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenNow out in Party Politics 🎉 Our study (@jbpilet.bsky.social)suggests that when a mainstream right-wing party signals willingness to rule with the radical right, support for the radical right rises — while the mainstream gains nothing. 👉 A legitimisation effect. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenEzra Klein's suggestion that Dems can win in red states with pro-life candidates is entirely consistent with his theory of the case as to why Democrats are underperforming. But, as @jessicavalenti.bsky.social lays out so clearly here, this is an obvious, objectively nonsensical suggestion. Quick 🧵.
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenSadly, there's a lot to be said for Marina Hyde's analysis here. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenSocial media users adopt the toxic behaviors of ingroup members An analysis of 7 million tweets from over 700,000 accounts finds that exposures to toxic behavior by ingroup members is the primary driver of contagious toxicity online academic.oup.com/jcmc/article...
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen📢 New publication! 📢 Why do ordinary citizens participate in election violence in democracies? Kathleen Klaus and @meganturnbull.bsky.social argue that such violence is often jointly produced by elites and citizens, enabled by threat-based narratives and social networks that legitimize violence.
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenSo many echoes from this article for US politics....
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen🚨New preprint🚨 osf.io/preprints/ps... In a sample of ~2 billion comments, social media discourse becomes more negative over time Archival and experimental findings suggest this is a byproduct of people trying to differentiate themselves Led by @hongkai1.bsky.social in his 1st year (!) of his PhD
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Lars Erik Berntzen✨Very happy to see my paper "Attitudinal ambivalence toward multiculturalism" out on @jeppjournal.bsky.social ! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/8 🧵
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenWe often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenShot, chaser Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men
- Reposted by Lars Erik BerntzenRadical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...
