Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Mark Brandt
2025-2026
Home institution
Michigan State University
Country of origin (home institution)
United States
Discipline(s)
Political Sciences
Psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis
Theme(s)
Behavior & Cognition
Contemporary violence & Justice
Democracy, Citizenship, Governance
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Mark is a NIAS Theme Group Fellow (Why do adults change their beliefs?) during 2025-2026.
I am an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University and a member of the Minority Politics Lab in the College of Social Sciences. My goal is to understand the causes and consequences of political, religious, and moral beliefs that can ultimately be leveraged to reduce conflict and promote a more fair, just, and free society. I study ideological and moral beliefs – such as political ideology, racism, religious fundamentalism, and moral conviction – and how they structure attitudes and behaviors, how they become moralized, and why people adopt them in the first place.
Research Project
A Comprehensive Map of the Threat-Politics Relationship
Research question: How do threatening life events shape people's political preferences?
People experience threatening life events. Relationships crumble, jobs are lost, terrorists attack, and loved ones pass away. The purpose of this project is to comprehensively map how these threatening life experiences affect political preferences.
Mark Brandt studies how a wide range of real-life experiences predict stability and change in political preferences. Comprehensively mapping how threat impacts political preferences is important for understanding the dynamics of political preferences. This has direct implications for theories of political attitudes, but also for understanding how societies respond to both personal and societal crisis.
Research Interests:
political ideology; racism; religious fundamentalism; moral conviction; threat and political attitudes; political preference stability and change; life events and politics; crisis response; political psychology
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