🔍How does young people's anxiety about the future relate to their political attitudes? Find out in my first PhD paper, just published in the special issue "The Psychology of Pushback" at advances.in/psychology/1...

👫 Future anxiety is associated with the ideological gender gap: Young men—but not young women—who are more anxious about the future also report being more politically conservative and right-wing. This results in ideological gender polarisation, but only among young people high in future anxiety!

🙍 Our UK data further revealed that only among young men future anxiety was associated with more support for authoritarian principles and lower open-minded thinking

😨 Surprisingly though, future anxiety across genders was also associated with 🚨 stronger support for democratic principles (e.g., equal rights to vote) and greater political participation 🚨

🧠 In follow-up analyses, we show how these associations differ not just by gender, but also depending on young people's emotion regulation strategies.

Why this matters: Our findings suggest that understanding the futures that young people imagine—and how they feel about the future—is of considerable political relevance. 🌱 The focus on young people is also particularly important:

Today's younger generations will live the longest with the consequences of current political, societal, and natural crises, but they also have the potential to defend democratic values in the future!

This work is the result of a cross-country collaboration with my great colleagues and co-authors from the IP-PAD Doctoral Network Melina Niraki and Ermioni Seremeta, and my amazing supervisors @mtsakiris.bsky.social and Kaat Smets!

Huge thanks also to the team at @advances.in: The feedback from the editors, peer-reviewers, and production team was beyond exceptional! Bonus, peer-reviewers get paid for their work, which they more than deserve for the helpful feedback we received!!