Thomas Zeitzoff

Thomas Zeitzoff

@zeitzoff.bsky.social

440

Posts

Associate professor @AU. Political Violence | Political psychology.

New book "Nasty Politics"

https://www.zeitzoff.com/book-project.html

Posts Replies Media

A few thoughts on the assassination attempt against Trump. 1) The vast majority of Americans reject political violence—don't let anyone tell you otherwise (prlpublic.s3.amazonaws.com/reports/Janu...).

Yep, and misinformation is a symptom. Deeper question: how do we get political elites to stop trafficking in conspiracies.

Misinformation is one of many difficult problems for which we lack magic bullets - I'm not sure that it's a failure that we lack one here too. There's rarely an equivalent of a vaccine in any scientific field (especially in social science): www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/t...

Even Disinformation Experts Don’t Know How to Stop Itwww.nytimes.com Researchers have learned plenty about misinformation and how it spreads. But they’re still struggling to figure out how to stop it.

New paper joint with @brendannyhan.bsky.social and Yamay on antisemitism. Using unique data on antisemitic attitudes across >100 countries, we show that ⬆️ education is associated with ⬆️ antisemitism in countries where elites traffic in antisemitism.

New study: How the relationship between education and antisemitism varies between countries journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Key finding: Association b/w education & stereotype endorsement varies by whether countries supported statements against Holocaust denial & antisemitism 🧵 below

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New study: How the relationship between education and antisemitism varies between countries journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Key finding: Association b/w education & stereotype endorsement varies by whether countries supported statements against Holocaust denial & antisemitism 🧵 below

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It's generally believed that education reduces prejudice. But in some countries, elites and education systems actively foment antisemitism. We test the association between them with a unique global dataset of individual-level survey data measuring antisemitic attitudes and stereotypes.

Given the primacy of the president in foreign policy, I think people are really underestimating the damage of a second Trump term here. See this excellent article by @dandrezner.bsky.social on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order effects of a Trump redux. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Opinion | The Strange Future After a Second Trump Termwww.politico.com The dollar will decline, Europe will rise, and Asia will nuclearize.

So the Supreme Court thinks that a self-coup/autogolpe* doesn't exist, and isn't illegal as long as there's a whiff of "official conduct." *A leader who is elected or assumes office in a legal way, then uses irregular or illegal means to stay in office.

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I’ve seen a lot of jokes about this, but not much discussion about how this might disrupt academia. Are programs going to admit less PhD students? Will existing PhD students become Uber productive? Will this out a greater premium on academic skills that are not reducible to AI?

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This should be front-and-center in every “hey why are so many VCs backing Trump this time” article. Joe Biden has spent 3.5 years rebuilding administrative capacity. We now have regulators actually saying “hey knock it off that’s illegal.” The VCs would much prefer autocracy to accountability.

The Federal Trade Commission, of all entities, is out here writing absolute bangers about AI snake oil. www.ftc.gov/business-gui...

I am very excited to announce that my book—"No Option But Sabotage"—which explores the past and future of the radical environmental movement, will be published by Oxford University Press! Geared toward a general audience, it will be available in late 2025/early 2026.

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Found some weird/interesting things about how Americans view 40 social movements in a survey I conducted recently with YouGov (1/11)

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New from me for Wired: read the extremely mild story that caused a vice presidential candidate to lightly dox me for some reason www.wired.com/story/nicole...

Nicole Shanahan Is Just Getting Startedwww.wired.com Phenomenal wealth and a penchant for pseudoscience related to autism and vaccines have put Nicole Shanahan in position to do far more consequential things than being RFK Jr.'s running mate.

New paper on what public discourse gets wrong about misinformation. We push back on causal claims about harms from mass exposure to social media misinfo. Instead, we argue for focusing on exposure/effects on the fringe -- and, importantly, in non-US contexts. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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New paper on what public discourse gets wrong about misinformation. We push back on causal claims about harms from mass exposure to social media misinfo. Instead, we argue for focusing on exposure/effects on the fringe -- and, importantly, in non-US contexts. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fascinsting article on what happens when you give isolated groups—in this case Amazonian Indigenous tribes—Internet access. H/t @jayvanbavel.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/w...

This is a big deal, also buckle your seat belts for November. In places where party leaders/former leaders have been convicted—it’s led to heightened contention. Ukraine (Tymoshenko), Brazil (Lula), etc.

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Here's a nice new paper from the fully blueskyless author team of Philip Moniz, Rodrigo Ramirez-Perez, Erin Hartman, and Stephen Jessee, showing that survey exp. effects are similar for "eager" and "reluctant" respondents, with positive implications for generalizability doi.org/10.1017/pan....

For folks who have written or are writing books: thoughts on using Google Docs vs MS Word? I wrote my last book in LaTex and promised myself I never would again.

Very excited to share that I was promoted to full Professor today! And congrats to my colleagues, Dr. Cater and Dr. Flores, who were oath promoted to Associate Professor!

The Orban strategy led one of the best universities (Central European University) to close its doors in Budapest and re-open in Vienna amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/d...

Almost 60 years ago a geography graduate student accidentally* killed the oldest living organism—a bristlecone pine tree named Prometheus—that was nearly 5,000 years old.

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In a newly released preprint with Tessa Charlesworth and Patrick Mair, we are looking at long-term trajectories of explicit and implicit age, body weight, race, sexuality, and skin tone attitudes, using data from 1.4 million+ participants across 33 countries: osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Our new Psychological Science paper provides a preregistered replication of “Moral Hypocrisy: Social Groups and the Flexibility of Virtue" journals.sagepub.com/eprint/DZD88... Although we did not replicate the original findings, we found evidence of moral hypocrisy in minimal + political groups.

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Greetings from LA! Looking forward to sharing a nearly-polished draft of our working paper, "The Disparate and Durable Effects of Mail Voting Restrictions: Evidence from Texas." Buckle up for some CRAZY effect sizes 🧵

Voted today in the Democratic Primary in Montgomery County, Maryland. The party could do a bit more deciding, just saying.

For those interested in understanding the logic of the insults, threats, and incitement in our current politics my book "Nasty Politics" is available for a *steal* on Amazon 👇 www.amazon.com/Nasty-Politi...

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This is an important NYT piece, and I’m not just saying that because it quotes me and @johnsides.bsky.social. What people choose to remember about Trump’s presidency has very little to do with his chaotic last year in office. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The One Thing Voters Remember About Trumpwww.nytimes.com We asked voters for the one thing they remembered most about the Trump era. Few of them cited major events like the pandemic and Jan. 6.

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Fantastic piece - maybe the best I've seen on the coverage dilemmas that mainstream media outlets face and how they are failing to meet the moment newrepublic.com/article/1813...

Top New York Times Editor Offers Stunning Defense of Coverage of Trumpnewrepublic.com Why asking our media to get it right on Trump’s threat to democracy is not remotely the same as being in the tank for Biden

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Earlier this week Washington Monthly share this excerpt from Roadblocked washingtonmonthly.com/2024/05/01/e...

Even Without the January 6 Insurrection, the 2021 Presidential Transition Was Not Good. Are We Ready For 2025? | Washington Monthlywashingtonmonthly.com Four years ago, the Trump administration's cooperation with Biden’s team was inconsistent at best. Can the two camps set aside their differences and properly plan for another transition?

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An odd problem for Democrats that goes back decades has been the public's basic incredulity that various explicit Republican policy positions are actually real. Trump '24 is really testing the boundaries of this dynamic. The man is not obfuscating! time.com/6972021/dona...