All Stories

  1. The psychological ability to adopt recommended coping responses reduced infections during the COVID-19 pandemic

    Article • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

    Michael Bang Petersen

  2. Pandemic fatigue fueled political discontent during the COVID-19 pandemic

    Article • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

    Michael Bang Petersen

  3. Transparent communication about negative features of COVID-19 vaccines decreases acceptance but increases trust

    Article • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

    Michael Bang Petersen

  4. Cognitive Biases and Communication Strength in Social Networks: The Case of Episodic Frames

    Article • British Journal of Political Science, October 2018, Cambridge University Press

    Michael Bang Petersen

  5. Healthy Out-Group Members Are Represented Psychologically as Infected In-Group Members

    Article • Psychological Science, October 2017, SAGE Publications

    Michael Bang Petersen

  6. Assessing causal pathways between physical formidability and aggression in human males

    Article • Personality and Individual Differences, July 2017, Elsevier

    Michael Bang Petersen

  7. The Behavioral Immune System Shapes Political Intuitions: Why and How Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity Underlie Opposition to Immigration

    Article • American Political Science Review, April 2017, Cambridge University Press

    Kevin Arceneaux, Michael Bang Petersen

  8. Perceived Conflict and Leader Dominance: Individual and Contextual Factors Behind Preferences for Dominant Leaders

    Article • Political Psychology, March 2017, Wiley

    Michael Bang Petersen

  9. Corrigendum: Distrust As a Disease Avoidance Strategy: Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity Regulate Generalized Social Trust

    Article • Frontiers in Psychology, December 2016, Frontiers

    Michael Bang Petersen

  10. Distrust As a Disease Avoidance Strategy: Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity Regulate Generalized Social Trust

    Article • Frontiers in Psychology, July 2016, Frontiers

    Michael Bang Petersen

  11. The Evolved Functions of Procedural Fairness: An Adaptation for Politics

    Article • January 2016, Springer Science + Business Media

    Michael Bang Petersen

  12. Evolutionary Political Psychology

    Article • November 2015, Wiley

    Michael Bang Petersen

  13. Birth Weight and Social Trust in Adulthood

    Article • Psychological Science, September 2015, SAGE Publications

    Michael Bang Petersen

  14. Winning Faces Vary by Ideology: How Nonverbal Source Cues Influence Election and Communication Success in Politics

    Article • Political Communication, August 2015, Taylor & Francis

    Michael Bang Petersen

  15. Does a competent leader make a good friend? Conflict, ideology and the psychologies of friendship and followership

    Article • Evolution and Human Behavior, July 2015, Elsevier

    Michael Bang Petersen

  16. Constituents of political cognition: Race, party politics, and the alliance detection system

    Article • Cognition, July 2015, Elsevier

    Dr Oliver Scott Curry, Michael Bang Petersen

  17. Physiological Responses and Partisan Bias: Beyond Self-Reported Measures of Party Identification

    Article • PLOS One, May 2015, PLOS

    Michael Bang Petersen

  18. Testing Theories about Ethnic Markers

    Article • Human Nature, May 2015, Springer Science + Business Media

    Michael Bang Petersen

  19. Evolutionary Theory and Political Behavior

    Article • May 2015, Wiley

    Michael Bang Petersen

  20. Evolutionary Political Psychology: On the Origin and Structure of Heuristics and Biases in Politics

    Article • Political Psychology, February 2015, Wiley

    Michael Bang Petersen

  21. Individual differences in political ideology are effects of adaptive error management

    Article • Behavioral and Brain Sciences, June 2014, Cambridge University Press

    Michael Bang Petersen

  22. Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy

    Article • January 2014, De Gruyter

    Michael Bang Petersen

  23. Hunger Games

    Article • Psychological Science, December 2013, SAGE Publications

    Michael Bang Petersen

  24. Politics in the Mind's Eye: Imagination as a Link between Social and Political Cognition

    Article • American Political Science Review, April 2013, Cambridge University Press

    Michael Bang Petersen

  25. Moralization as protection against exploitation: do individuals without allies moralize more?

    Article • Evolution and Human Behavior, March 2013, Elsevier

    Michael Bang Petersen

  26. Studying institutions in the context of natural selection: limits or opportunities?

    Article • Journal of Institutional Economics, January 2013, Cambridge University Press

    Michael Bang Petersen

  27. Is the Political Animal Politically Ignorant? Applying Evolutionary Psychology to the Study of Political Attitudes

    Article • Evolutionary Psychology, December 2012, SAGE Publications

    Michael Bang Petersen

  28. Adaptationism and intuitions about modern criminal justice

    Article • Behavioral and Brain Sciences, December 2012, Cambridge University Press

    Michael Bang Petersen

  29. Motivated Reasoning and Political Parties: Evidence for Increased Processing in the Face of Party Cues

    Article • Political Behavior, November 2012, Springer Science + Business Media

    Michael Bang Petersen

  30. To punish or repair? Evolutionary psychology and lay intuitions about modern criminal justice

    Article • Evolution and Human Behavior, November 2012, Elsevier

    Michael Bang Petersen

  31. Who Deserves Help? Evolutionary Psychology, Social Emotions, and Public Opinion about Welfare

    Article • Political Psychology, May 2012, Wiley

    Michael Bang Petersen

  32. Social Welfare and the Psychology of Food Sharing: Short-Term Hunger Increases Support for Social Welfare

    Article • SSRN Electronic Journal, January 2012, Elsevier

    Dr Oliver Scott Curry, Michael Bang Petersen

  33. The evolutionary psychology of mass politics

    Article • November 2011, Oxford University Press (OUP)

    Michael Bang Petersen

  34. Social Welfare as Small-Scale Help: Evolutionary Psychology and the Deservingness Heuristic

    Article • American Journal of Political Science, October 2011, Wiley

    Michael Bang Petersen

  35. States in Mind: Evolution, Coalitional Psychology, and International Politics

    Article • International Security, October 2011, The MIT Press

    Michael Bang Petersen

  36. The naturalness of (many) social institutions: evolved cognition as their foundation

    Article • Journal of Institutional Economics, June 2011, Cambridge University Press

    Michael Bang Petersen

  37. To Defer or to Stand up? How Offender Formidability Affects Third Party Moral Outrage

    Article • Evolutionary Psychology, January 2011, SAGE Publications

    Michael Bang Petersen

  38. Distinct Emotions, Distinct Domains: Anger, Anxiety and Perceptions of Intentionality

    Article • The Journal of Politics, April 2010, University of Chicago Press

    Michael Bang Petersen

  39. Evolutionary Psychology and Criminal Justice: A Recalibrational Theory of Punishment and Reconciliation

    Article • January 2010, Springer Science + Business Media

    Michael Bang Petersen

  40. Public Opinion and Evolved Heuristics: The Role of Category-Based Inference

    Article • Journal of Cognition and Culture, January 2009, Brill

    Michael Bang Petersen

  41. Social Capital in the Brain?

    Article • Edward Elgar Publishing

    Michael Bang Petersen

  42. Evolutionary psychology and political psychology: how to use evolutionary psychology to theorize about political psychology

    Article • Edward Elgar Publishing

    Michael Bang Petersen

  43. The ancestral logic of politics: Upper body strength regulates men’s assertion of self-interest over economic redistribution

    Article • SSRN Electronic Journal, Elsevier

    Michael Bang Petersen