PIPES LAB RESEARCH

Workstream 1

Poverty, Inequality, and Decision-Making

How do socioeconomic conditions shape decision-making?

Topics include:

• The relationship between SES and self-regulation from the perspective of constraints in agency imposed by scarcity and unpredictability in material and social resources;

• The effect of resource scarcity and low social status on information processing, from the perspective of the rational relocation of cognitive resources to meet pressing needs;

• The link between SES, social trust, and cooperation (social investment and prosociality), drawing on socio/behavioral ecological perspectives;

• The link between SES and shame, as moderated by appraisals of society and interactions with social policy institutions;

• The role of social policy interventions such as universal basic income in addressing the psychological consequences of poverty at its source.

Example publications:

• Merrell, W., Fan, L., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., & Thomsen, L. (2025). Resource possession in the mind's eye: Ideological convergence and divergence in the perceptions of poor people. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 128(5):1103-1141. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251371787

• Buzan, J., & Sheehy-Skeffington, J. (2024). Barriers in the transition from school to work: How student financial adversity predicts deprioritizing jobs with the best long-term career progression. Journal of Social Issues, 80(4), 1460-1483. Open access link.

• Sheehy-Skeffington, J. (2020). The effects of low socioeconomic status on decision-making processes. Current Opinion in Psychology, 33: 183-188. Link; PDF

• Sheehy-Skeffington, J. (2019). Inequality from the bottom up: Toward a ‘psychological shift’ model of decision-making under socioeconomic threat. In J. Jetten and K. Peters (Eds) Social Psychology of Inequality, (pp. 213-231). New York, NY: Springer. Link; PDF chapter; PDF full book

Workstream 2

Foundations of Political Ideology and Behavior

Where do our preferences for different political platforms ultimately come from?

Drawing on evolutionary, anthropological, historical, and political insights, we explore the origins of our political preferences, moving beyond left-right ideology to investigate the core relational templates that people apply to their societies. We use cross-national surveys, panel surveys, administrative registry data, experimental, and multivariate behavioral genetic analyses to delineate the evolutionary and socioecological foundations of ideology and political behavior.

Topics include:

• Individual and cross-national variation in anti-egalitarianism as it is expressed through social dominance orientation (SDO), conceived of as a ‘basic grammar of social power’ in line with social dominance theory;

• The relevance of core relational models of communality, hierarchy, equality, and proportionality, to debates around resource distribution in society;

• What the genetic foundations of individual differences in ideological orientations and related attitudes can reveal about their latent structure and adaptive function;

• The relationship between subjective perceptions of exclusion and status deprivation on political ideology, policy attitudes, and voting behavior;

• The socioecological foundations of ideology, with a focus on how ecological conditions such as resource scarcity and appropriability (e.g. through patchiness) may shape the emergence of hierarchy-relevant adaptive behavioral strategies;

• The development of sociopolitical attitudes in the young adult years in a multicultural university setting (NYU Abu Dhabi: see the WeAreNYUAD Survey project);

• Challenges to liberal democracy revealed by the study of the psychology of totalitarianism.

Example publications:

• Eftedal, N. H., Kleppestø, T. H., Czajkowski, N. O., Eilertsen, E., Røysamb, E., Vassend, O., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., & Thomsen, L. (2026). The relationship between educational attainment and Right-Wing Authoritarianism: A discordant twin study. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167225140777

• Ho, A. K., Kteily, N. S., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., & Thomsen, L. (2025). Social dominance orientation: The motivational basis of intergroup inequality. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 128-208. Link, PDF

• Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Cano, I., Henry, P., & Karubchuk, T. (2024). Global identity in an uncertain world: A longitudinal study of the development of cosmopolitan social attitudes at an elite international university setting in the Middle East. LSE Middle East Paper Series. Open access link.

• Kleppesto, T. H., Czajkowski, N. O., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Vassend, O., Røysamb, E., Eftedal, N. H., Kunst, J. O., Ystrom, E., & Thomsen, L. (2024). The genetic underpinnings of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation explain political attitudes beyond Big Five personality. Journal of Personality, 92(6), 1744-1758. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12921

• Waldfogel, H., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Hauser, O., Ho, A. K., & Kteily, N. S. (2021). Ideology selectively shapes attention to inequality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(14) e2023985118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023985118; PDF

WORKSTREAM 3

Political Economy in psychological perspective

What is the relationship between citizen, state, and polity in the context of advanced capitalism?

Topics include:

• The basic social psychological mechanisms shaping the relationship between the citizen and the state, as manifested in expectations for social mobility and progress;

• The permeation of the principles and values of free market capitalism from the political and economic into the subjective realm, shaping our sense of self and social relations, with downstream consequences for political engagement, socioeconomic marginalization, and youth mental health;

• Alternative orientations toward the polity grounded in notions of solidarity, collective resources, and the common good;

• The relationship between communal and exchange relations in the context of feminist critiques of capitalist logic;

• How ‘insider-outsider’ dynamics are evolving in advanced economies, as exemplified through notions of the ‘liberal elite’ versus those ‘left behind’ by globalization, and how they shape democratic sentiment and electoral backlash.

Example publications:

• Obradovic, S., Power, S., & Sheehy-Skeffington, J. (2020). The psychological appeal of populism. Current Opinion in Psychology, 35, 125-131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.06.009. PDF

• Obradovic, S., & Sheehy-Skeffington, J. (2020). Power, identity, and belonging: A mixed methods study of the processes shaping perceptions of EU integration in a prospective member state. European Journal of Social Psychology. 50 (7), 1425-1442. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2691 (open access).

• Sheehy-Skeffington, J. (2023). Towards an evolutionarily informed psychology of solidarity: a reply to ‘The challenges of encouraging refugee assistance: lessons learned from reframing the problem as one of within-group collective action and norm change’ by Faiza El-Higzi and Cristina Moya. Global Discourse, 13(3-4), 389-398. Link. PDF