Bio + Publications

I am an Asssociate Professor for Good Research Practices at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (University of Amsterdam). Before that I was an assistant professor and a post-doc at ASCoR. I completed my PhD in political science at the University of Southern Denmark.

I am interested in the psychological roots of citizens’ political beliefs. I primarily study the role of personality and emotions. Besides I am motivated to work as transparent as possible and stimulate others to do the same. My work has appeared in journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Communication, the Journal of Politics, Trends in the Cognitive Sciences, Emotion, Political Psychology and European Journal of Political Research,

I serve as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Experimental Political Science and an editorial board member of the Dutch Tijdschrift Communicatiewetenschap. I am the co-founder of the Hot Politics Lab, a lab-group in which we study the role of emotions and personality in politics (here). Moreover, I co-founded and co-organize the Dutch Political Psychology Meetings held twice a year at the University of Amsterdam.

You can read my CV,  or click here for my Google Scholar page

Academic appointments

  • 2021 – current: Associate professor at the University of Amsterdam
  • 2015 – 2021: Assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam
  • 2017 – 2018: Visiting researcher at Temple University
  • 2014 – 2015: Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam
  • 2011 – 2014: PhD candidate at the University of Southern Denmark

Grants

Publications

  • Homan, M.D., Schumacher, G., & Bakker, B.N. (2022 – accepted). Facing emotional politicians: Do emotional displays of politicians evoke mimicry and emotional contagion? Emotion.
  • Schumacher, G., Rooduijn, M., & Bakker, B.N. (2022). Hot populism? Affective responses to antiestablishment rhetoric. Political Psychology
  • Malka, A., Lelkes, Y., Bakker, B.N., & Spivak, E. (2022). Who is open to authoritarian governance within western democracies? The role of cultural conservatism and the protection-based attitude package. Perspectives on Politics.
  • Brandt, M., & Bakker, B.N. (2022). The complicated but solvable threat-politics relationship. Trends in the Cognitive Sciences, 26(5), 368-370
  • Bakker, B.N., Lelkes, Y., Malka, A. (2021). Reconsidering the link between personality and political preferences. American Political Science Review, 115(4), 1482-1498. (Open access)
  • Bakker, B.N., Jaidka, K., Dorr, T., Fasching, N., & Lelkes, Y. (2021). Questionable and open research practices among quantatitive communication researchers. Journal of Communication, 71(5), 715-738. (Open access)
  • De Vries, C.E., Bakker, B.N., Hobolt, S.B., & Arceneaux, K. (2021). Crisis signalling: How Italy’s coronavirus lockdown affected incumbent support in other European countries. Political Science Research and Methods, 9(3), 451-467. (Open access)
  • Bakker, B.N., & Schumacher, G., & Rooduijn, M. (2021). Hot Politics. Affective responses to political communication. American Political Science Review, 115(1), 150-164. (Open access)
  • Bakker, B.N., Schumacher, G., & Rooduijn, M. (2021). The populist appeal. Personality and anti-establishment communication. The Journal of Politics., 83(2), 589-601. (Open access)
  • Bakker, B.N., & Schumacher, G., & Homan, M. (2020). Yikes! Are we disgusted by politicians? Politics and the Life Sciences, 39(2), 135-153. (Open access)
  • Bakker, B.N., Schumacher, G., Gothreau, C., & Arceneaux, K. (2020). Conservatives and liberals have similar physiological responses to threats: Evidence from three replication. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 613-621. Preprint
  • Bakker, B.N., Lelkes, Y. & Malka (2020). Understanding partisan cue receptivity: Tests from predictions from the bounded rationality and expressive utility perspectives. The Journal of Politics. 82(3), 1061-1077. (Open access)
  • Schoonvelde, M., Brosius, A., Schumacher, S. & Bakker, B.N. (2019). Liberals lecture, conservatives communicate: Analyzing complexity and ideology in 381,609 speeches. PloS one, 14(2),  e0208450. (Open access)
  • Schoonvelde, M., Schumacher, S. & Bakker, B.N. (2019). Friends with text as data benefits: Assessing and extending the use of automated text analysis in political science and political psychology. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 7(1), 124-143. (Open access)
  • Bakker, B.N. & Lelkes, Y. (2018). Selling ourselves short. How abbreviated measures of personality change the way we think about personality and politics. The Journal of Politics, 80(4), 1311-1325. (Open access)
  • Bakker, B.N. (2018). With an Open Mind: A Review of “Open versus Closed. Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution” by Johnston, Lavine and Federico. Social Justice Research, 31(4), 386-399
  • Bakker, B.N. (2017). Personality traits, income and economic ideology. Political Psychology. 38(6): 1025-1041(Open access). Blog at LSE British Politics and Society; StukRoodVlees
  • Bakker, B. N., Klemmensen, R., Nørgaard, A.S., & Schumacher, G. (2016). Stay loyal or exit the party? How openness to experience and extroversion explain vote switching. Political Psychology. 37(3): 419-429. (Open access). Covered on PsyPost, LSE British Politics and Society; StukRoodVlees
  • Bakker, B.N., Rooduijn, M., & Schumacher, G. (2016). Personality traits and voting for populist parties: Evidence from the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. European Journal of Political Research. 55 (2): 302-320. (Open access). Covered on: Monkey Cage; The Science Behind Trump; StukRoodVlees (1); StukRoodVlees (2)
  • Bakker, B.N., &  De Vreese, C.H. (2016). Personality and European Union attitudes: Relationships across European Union attitude dimensions. European Union Politics 17(1): 25-45. (Open access). Covered on: BBC 2 (Daily Politics); Blogs at LSE EUROPP Blog; Democratic Audit UK.
  • Bakker, B.N., Hopmann, D.N., & Persson, M. (2015). Personality traits and party identification over time. European Journal of Political Research 54(2), 197-215. (Open access)

Book chapters

  • Bakker, B.N. (2022). Personality Approaches to Political Behavior. In Leonie Huddy, Jennifer Jerit, Levy and David Sears (eds). Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Preprint
  • Bakker, B.N., & Lelkes, Y. (2022). The structure, prevelance and nature of mass belief systems (pp. 89-103). In Danny Osborne and Chris Sibley (eds.). Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Preprint
  • Rosema, M., & Bakker, B.N. (2017). Social psychology and the study of politics. In Linda Steg, Bram Buunk and Kees Keizer (eds.). Applied Social Psychology. Understanding and Managing Social Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bakker, B.N., Rooduijn, M., & Schumacher, G. (2016). The populist personality. In John Sides and Henry Farrell (eds). The science of Trump: Explaining the rise of an unlikely candidate. Revised and updated essays from the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog.

Publications in Dutch

  • Vliegenthart, R., Bakker, B.N., & de Vreese, C.H. (2021). Verschuivingen in informatieverziening tijdens Covid-19. Gevolgen voor vertrouwen en democratische processen. Beleid & Maatschappij, 48(1), 75-83.
  • Schumacher, G., Bakker, B.N., Rooduijn, M., & Homan, M.D. (2021) Politiek: zweten, fronsen en walgen. Sociologie Magazine, pp. 6-9.
  • Van der Velden, P., van Wilsem, J., Bakker, B.N., Crutzen, R., Meuleman, R., & Lahlah, E. (2017). Voor voor psychologen: Het Longitudinale Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel. De Pyscholoog.

Special issue

  • Jonason, P. K., Weinschenk, A. C., Bakker, B.N., Dawes, C. T., Finchilescu, G., & Klemmensen, R. (2020). Introduction to the special issue from personality to politics. Personality and Individual Differences, 158.

 Non-peer reviewed publications

  • Brandt, M.J., & Bakker, B.N. (2022). Threat-politics perceptions are intertwined with emotional processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(9), 733-734
  • Bakker, B.N. (2018). With an Open Mind: A Review of “Open versus Closed. Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution” by Johnston, Lavine and Federico. Social Justice Research, 31(4), 386-399