I do research on emotions and politics. Politics is emotional. We often have strong reactions to politics: from aversion to anger, and sometimes a little hope. Sometimes we express this. Sometimes we put it away. Sometimes our heart rate goes up or we feel our gut. These emotions influence how we think about politics or what decisions we make. Maybe we make ill-considered political choices. Or we don’t listen to people with different opinions. Emotions can also motivate us: to seek information or vote. You can't take emotions out of politics. My question is: how can we use emotions to strengthen democracy?

Democracy is a complex system, a dynamic interaction between citizens and politicians. It is an interplay between identities and attitudes on the one hand and political strategy, interests and institutions on the other. Emotions are also complex. They consist of processes in the brain and bodily reactions. But they also exist as feelings and actions. We also try to regulate our emotions, and we are sometimes told how to feel. For me, the scientific challenge is to unravel the interplay between these two complex concepts - democracy and emotions.

I do that unraveling in many ways. I research social themes such as polarisation, populism and the rise of the radical right. This involves all kinds of concepts: emotions, but also personality, identity, ideology, communication of politicians and mental health. I mainly do experimental research. In this research we look at behavior, attitudes, narratives, physical reactions and brain activity.

I keep saying I, but I mean we. My (our) research is a team effort. This team is called the Hot Politics Lab. The lab's mission is to use insights from psychology to investigate pressing political problems. Scientific transparency, team work, and societal impact are core tenets of this mission.

As of July 2025, I am Professor of Political Psychology in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. I am co-Director of the Hot Politics Lab and the Challenges to Democratic Representation group. I am (have been) involved in several national and European research projects (for more info see my lab website and my personal website). My scientific publications can be found here. Here is a selection of links to English-language articles about my research written for a general audience: ideology and threat, ideology and the brain and personality and populism.

I frequently write blogs about my research on stukroodvlees, a Dutch-language popular science blog. I give public lectures on topics such as polarisation, emotions and politics, and the brain/body and politics. We are open to collaboration with societal partners. Feel free to send an email.    

Under "About" you can read about my research. Below you will find a summary of the project supporting this research. 

Current projects

• IP-PAD (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Politics and Adolescence). This is a Marie Curie Doctoral Network of 5 universities. Among other things we investigate how political interest, political identity and polarization develop among adolescents.
• VIDIs: as copromotor I am involved in Bert Bakker's VIDI project on threats and politics, and the VIDI project of Matthijs Rooduijn about the relationship between personality and radicalization. 
• Research Priority Area Polarization. Faculty-wide project in which we investigate polarization, particularly the neural processes involved in processing congruent and incongruent political standpoints. 
• Research Priority Area Emotions. Faculty-wide project in which we investigate converations about climate change and the role of emotions in it. 

Past projects

• ERC Starting Grant project POLEMIC. Broad research project concerning the role of emotions in politics.
• "Onderbuik" (translation: GUT). A series of experiments about the bodily responses to politics.
• Danish "Sapere Aude" grant. Postdoctoral grant in which I investigated political parties and how they represent voters. 

Research methods

• Experiments
• Psychophysiology
• Text- and video-analysis

Bachelor courses

- Introduction to Political Science Research

- Hot Politics Lab

Master courses

- Experimental designs: Designing and analysing RCT, lab, survey- and natural experiments

PhD-supervision (current)

- Xinyao Zhang

- Jakob Kasper

- Gustavo Couto de Jesus

- Delaney Peterson

- Linda Bomm

- Céline Laffineur

- Joshua Gilmore

- Daniel Komáromy

PhD-supervision (past)

- Isabella Rebasso

- Maaike Homan

- Christian Pipal

- Erik de Vries

- Tobias Rohrbach

- Dieuwertje Kuijpers

- Mariken van der Velden