If the life sciences are to have much to say about politics, there needs to be a universal element to political orientations. In this essay, I argue that the recent prominence of nativist, law-and-order, populist politicians reveals the nature of this universal element. All social units have to address bedrock dilemmas about how to deal with norm violators and how welcoming to be to outsiders as well as to proponents of new lifestyles. Might differences on these core dilemmas be the universal element of political life? Using the followers of one of the most prominent examples of a nativist political leader—Donald Trump—as an example, I present data showing that Trump’s most earnest followers are different from others—even those who share their general ideological leanings—not on traditional economic or social issues, but rather on the group-based security issues that grow out of the bedrock dilemmas of social life.

The 2020 U.S. presidential election saw rising political tensions among ordinary voters and political elites, with fears of election violence culminating in the January 6 riot. We hypothesized that the 2020 election might have been traumatic for some voters, producing measurable symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We also hypothesized that negative sentiment toward the opposing party correlates with PTSD. We measured PTSD using a modified version of the PCL-5, a validated PTSD screener, for 573 individuals from a nationally representative YouGov sample. We modeled the association between affective polarization and PTSD, controlling for political, demographic, and psychological traits. We estimate that 12.5% of American adults (95% CI: 9.2% to 15.9%) experienced election-related PTSD, far higher than the annual PTSD prevalence of 3.5%. Additionally, negativity toward opposing partisans correlated with PTSD symptoms. These findings highlight a potential need to support Americans affected by election-related trauma.

Sleep changes predate shifts in mood/affect, thought processing, mental and physical health, civic engagement, and contextual circumstances, among other things. Theory predicts that these changes may lead to shifts in political and social beliefs. Do sleep disruptions shape how individuals see the world, the people around them, and themselves in relation to others? In this article, we use daily survey data from the 77 waves (N $ \approx $ 460,000) of the University of California, Los Angeles’s 2019–2021 Nationscape Survey—a nationally representative political survey—to examine the effect of an exogenous short-term sleep disruption on measures of political views, polarization, and discriminatory beliefs. Using this data set, we leverage the modest sleep disruption that occurs at the start (and end) of Daylight Saving Time (DST) and employ a regression discontinuity in time design around the precise DST cutoff (which we supplement with event study models). Despite strong theoretical expectations and correlational connection between measures of sleep and many outcomes related to social fragmentation, we find that the DST change has little to no causal effect on citizens’ levels of polarization or their discriminatory attitudes. These effects are precise enough to rule out small effects, robust to a host of specification checks, and consistent across potential subgroups of interest. Our work adds to a small but growing body of research on the social and political effects of sleep disruptions.

While there have always been those in the American public who mistrust science and scientists’ views of the world, they have tended to be a minority of the larger public. Recent COVID-19 related events indicate that could be changing for some key groups. What might explain the present state of mistrust of science within an important component of the American public? In this study, we delve deeply into this question and examine what citizens today believe about science and technology and why, focusing on core theories of trust, risk concern, and political values and on the important role of science optimism and pessimism orientations. Using national public survey data, we examine the correlates of science optimism and pessimism and test the efficacy of this construct as drivers of biotechnology policy. We find that science optimism and pessimism are empirically useful constructs and that they are important predictors of biotechnology policy choices.

Partisans in the American electorate are affectively polarized, which coincides with the tendency for partisan geographic sorting. Could mate selection pressures contribute to this geographic tendency, and how might they interact with out-party affect? I propose a model in which an individual’s perception of their mate success in a niche is key. I argue that perceived mate success is a function of a niche’s partisanship and one’s out-party affect, which in turn, incentivizes sorting. The model is partially tested with conjoint experiments on multiple U.S. samples. Results show that partisans perceive a lower probability of mate success in niches with greater shares of out-partisans and that mate success interacts with negative out-party affect. I also replicate findings on political mate choice preferences with a more appropriate method. Lastly, this project links instrumentality and affect, which is a departure from past work. In doing so, it contributes to research on the consequences of mate pressures for political behavior.

Partisans have biased perceptions of objective conditions. At first glance, the COVID-19 pandemic would appear to be an example of this phenomenon. Noting that most citizens have consistently agreed about the pandemic, I argue that we have overlooked pre-political factors that are as influential as partisanship in shaping citizens’ responses to the pandemic. I identify one such construct in perceived vulnerability to infectious disease (PVD). In one cross-sectional study and one panel study, I find that the influence of PVD on citizens’ perceptions of COVID-19 equals that of partisanship. I also find that PVD can moderate the influence of partisanship on perceptions of harmfulness, nearly erasing the impact of being a Republican on perceiving COVID-19 as a threat. When led by PVD as well as partisanship to accurately perceive harm, citizens, including Republicans, attribute more responsibility to former president Donald Trump for his failed handling of the crisis.

We examine the likely acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine in the period prior to political polarization around vaccine mandates. Two representative cross-sectional surveys of 1,000 respondents were fielded in August and December 2020. The surveys included items about the COVID-19 vaccine and vaccine mandates. Respondents self-identifying as liberal were the least likely to believe the vaccine had undisclosed harmful effects (p< .001), conservatives were the most likely (p < .001), and moderates fell in between. Individuals with a bachelor’s degree were less likely to think the vaccine had undisclosed harmful effects than individuals without a bachelor’s degree (p < .001), and 60.5% of those individuals did not support a government vaccine mandate. Political ideology was more often strongly associated with avoiding government involvement compared to education level. In summary, both liberal political ideology and higher education were significantly associated with endorsing intended vaccine uptake. We discuss these results in terms of positive versus negative rights.

After drawing a distinction between “class” and “status,” an early but short-lived sociological literature on status politics is reviewed. That approach has lost favor, but moral foundations theory (MFT) offers a new opportunity to link morality policy to status politics. While any of the five moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity) can provoke conflict over status, most often sanctity is the cause of status politics because it engages the emotion of disgust. Disgust drives the behavioral immune system, which prevents us from being infected by contaminants in tainted food or by “outsiders” who are perceived to follow unconventional practices. This research note concludes by referencing 20 empirical studies in which feelings of disgust targeted certain groups or practices in society (i.e., immigrants, criminals, abortion). Thus, status politics is the origin of morality policy.

Besides vaccine certificates, research suggests leaders also need to trigger society’s intrinsic motivation to help in order to achieve lasting and equitable solutions.

President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 illness, and the treatments he received, raise serious concerns about the adequacy of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to handle cases of transient presidential incapacity. This is particularly challenging when the president refuses to acknowledge any impairment and resists any attempt to constrain his powers, even temporarily.