Bence Hamrak
banner
bencehamrak.bsky.social
Bence Hamrak
@bencehamrak.bsky.social
Phd researching public opinion and group identities @weareceu.bsky.social & representation @univie.ac.at | bencehamrak.github.io
Pinned
My experiment on election outcomes, partisan identity & affective polarization is now out in @electoralstudies.bsky.social.

Puzzle: From a group ID lens, outcomes could shift both perceived out-party threat & in-group status → ambivalent predictions for affective polarization.
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
🚨 Job Alert! Postdoc in POLITICAL TEXT ANALYSIS in the MULTIREP project

You do quant text analysis? You are interested in political representation? Enjoy working in teams? Would like to live in a great city? Consider joining us in Vienna!

⏱️ Apply by 15/12/2025

wratil.eu/files/MULTIR...

1/4 🧵
November 10, 2025 at 6:50 AM
We’re looking for an RA for the MULTIREP ERC project at @univie.ac.at — working on citizens' fundamental motivations for political representation.
We look for MA students with some experience and a lot of interest in surveys & experiments.

Deadline is 10 Nov, 23:59pm!

wratil.eu/files/Resear...
November 4, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
🔍🇰🇿 Even in #authoritarian #parliaments, not all voices speak in unison. My new paper examines possible pockets of rhetorical dissent or "embedded rhetorical contestation" in #Kazakhstani Senate debates. The paper is now in OA thanks to @weareceu.bsky.social: shorturl.at/YoY9h
Whispers of dissent? Analyzing the rhetorical alignment of the elites with the authoritarian incumbent through parliamentary discourse in the Kazakhstani Senate
Parliaments are often thought to be key arenas of elite signaling in authoritarian regimes. This paper examines the patterns of rhetorical alignment between individual elite members of parliament a...
www.tandfonline.com
October 31, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
Paths to Power (PtP) is out in @bjpols.bsky.social! It is a database with data on cabinet members' social profile globally from 1966-2021.

This is a great team effort with @chknutsen.bsky.social, @peterla.bsky.social, @inalkristiansen.bsky.social. But many more helped us along the way 🙏

A short 🧵
Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments | British Journal of Political Science | Cambridge Core
Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments - Volume 55
www.cambridge.org
October 20, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
NEW! The public opinion effects of antisemitic elite cues: a survey experiment on the Hungarian Soros campaign in @eepolitics.bsky.social w/ @bencehamrak.bsky.social @erinjenne.bsky.social G.Simonovits. Soros cues worked through partisan motivated reasoning & not antisemitism doi.org/10.1080/2159...
October 7, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
🚨We are looking for a research assistant at the masters level to help us with designing & running some surveys in the MULTIREP project.

If you are based in Vienna or around, have some interest in political representation & experience with surveys, consider applying! 👇

wratil.eu/files/Resear...
October 8, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality?

Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):
October 7, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
Final day to submit to 24h of Political Psychology in February! We hope to see many of you in Vienna! 📚🎊
🎉We're back! 24 hours of Political Psychology is once again coming to Vienna - save the dates: 26 / 27 February 2026

▶️ Abstract submission is OPEN - find the link & further information here: 24hpolpsy.univie.ac.at

Very excited to co-host with @markuswagner.bsky.social and @isabellareb.bsky.social
24 HOURS OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE 2026
24 HOURS OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE 2026
24hpolpsy.univie.ac.at
September 30, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
no better way to depart from #ecprgc25 than 👀 my paper just published in @eupthejournal.bsky.social! I find localism in an unlikely place & show that people feel more represented when they live in incumbent MEPs' hometowns, using survey data from 🇷🇴🇭🇺🇮🇹🇧🇪 doi.org/10.1177/1465... #Polisky
The effect of MEPs' local ties on perceived representation: Evidence from four EU member states - Daniel Kovarek, 2025
Concerned with the electoral and attitudinal effects of localness, a large literature studies how candidates’ and elected deputies’ local ties shape perceived r...
journals.sagepub.com
August 30, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
🧪 🗳 New in Scientific Data

"The #AUTNES Online Panel Study 2017–2024: A Dataset of Austrian Voter Attitudes and Behavior”

The new data descriptor offers background on study design & data quality.

➡️ doi.org/10.1038/s415...

📂 Dataset: doi.org/10.11587/HNU...

#OpenScience @aussda.bsky.social
August 28, 2025 at 8:32 AM
My experiment on election outcomes, partisan identity & affective polarization is now out in @electoralstudies.bsky.social.

Puzzle: From a group ID lens, outcomes could shift both perceived out-party threat & in-group status → ambivalent predictions for affective polarization.
August 27, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
🚨 Big News for European Political Science 🚨

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the European Political Science Society (EPSS): a new, member-led, not-for-profit association built to support our scholarly community.

🔗 epssnet.org

Here’s a thread with everything you need to know.

🧵
June 26, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
🚨 REPLICATION REPORT UPDATE: One year ago, a tweet by John Holbein alerted me, @ollefolke.bsky.social, and @jopieboy.bsky.social to a paper with a shocking result about Sweden’s law criminalizing the purchase of sex.🧵
May 9, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
take a gentle intro course on R @weareceu.bsky.social @methodsnet.bsky.social Summer School with me! I assume zero pre-existing knowledge w/ programming & guarantee that you'll leave Vienna with strong analytical skills and plenty of data viz tricks up your sleeve!
March 27, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
Who does Spiderman vote for? Who you vote for.

In a new paper w/ @markuswagner.bsky.social we show that people engage in motivated projection of political identities. In the absence of explicit info on politics, individuals rely on valence to infer the politics of others

doi.org/10.1017/psrm...
March 19, 2025 at 11:50 AM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
If you are interested in how to design survey experiments in the social sciences, I am teaching a course on exactly that @methodsnet.bsky.social Vienna summer school at CEU! Early bird discount applies through 26 March 👇. Looking forward to meeting you ☺️

methodsnet.org/course/d01-0...
D01-01AM: Designing Survey Experiments – Methodsnet
Not a Member yet? Check out the long list of benefits here – Student Membership from only €33.00 and FREE for some locations! > Courses > D01-01AM: Design
methodsnet.org
March 17, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
if need a break from #BTW25, here's a 📄 on 🇭🇺 TISZA, a new challenger to #Orbán! A genuinely new party, led by a #Fidesz defector is currently leading the polls in #Hungary & has a 🇪🇺 pro-European, knowledgeable, and low trusting electorate. Voters are more pro #Ukraine🇺🇦 + culturally liberal. #Polisky
Elite defection and opposition realignment in Hungary: Respect and Freedom Party (TISZA) in the 2024 European Parliamentary elections
The 2024 European Parliamentary elections yielded an opposition landslide in Hungary. Respect and Freedom (TISZA), a genuinely new party led by a Fidesz defector, emerged as Orbán's unequivocal cha...
www.tandfonline.com
February 24, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
Social media posts containing misinformation evoke more moral outrage than posts with trustworthy information, and that outrage facilitates the spread of misinformation, a new Science study finds.

📄: scim.ag/4f6WzRF
Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online
We tested a hypothesis that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, examining generalizability across multiple platforms, time periods, and classifications of misinformation. Outrage is high...
scim.ag
December 9, 2024 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
APSR will start inviting replications for a random subset of accepted papers. I really like this as well as the constructive tone around it 👏 (from the latest Notes from the Editors)
December 5, 2024 at 12:30 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
Why do academic journals have such strict/varied formatting guidelines on first submission? (Beyond length)

Isn’t formatting for a journal, only to be rejected, just a massive unnecessary cost imposed on scientists?

Couldn’t scientists put their time to better use?
December 3, 2024 at 11:40 PM
Reposted by Bence Hamrak
#OpenAccess -

Why Politicians Won't Apologize: Communication Effects in the Aftermath of Sex Scandals - cup.org/498h7ba

- Bence Hamrak, Gabor Simonovits, Alex Rusnak & Ferenc Szucs

#FirstView
November 27, 2024 at 2:44 PM
1/ In my inaugural @bsky.app post, I share insights from my latest publications in the BJPOLS @bjpols.bsky.social and the EJPE.

We studied electoral incentives for denials vs. apologies during political scandals through survey experiments & structural estimation.

Here is what we found:
Why Politicians Won't Apologize: Communication Effects in the Aftermath of Sex Scandals | British Journal of Political Science | Cambridge Core
Why Politicians Won't Apologize: Communication Effects in the Aftermath of Sex Scandals
cup.org
November 27, 2024 at 9:32 PM