Matt Motyl
- Media Contact
- SPN Mentor
I'm an assistant professor in the Social and Personality area of the Psychology Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
I study political psychology, social ecology, and intergroup conflict. I am currently studying how people's moral, political, and religious ideologies steer them into segregated ideological enclaves -- into "Red" and "Blue" communities -- and how this enhances individual well-being and intragroup cooperation, while exacerbating intergroup conflict. I am a political psychologist (or, a psychological political scientist), and I blog about it at PsychoPolitics.
I also apply research in the "real world." To do this, my colleagues (namely, Jon Haidt and Ravi Iyer) and I created CivilPolitics.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public on evidence-based methods for improving intergroup civility. Together, we help community organizations understand which social psychological interventions are most likely to improve intergroup civility and then help them develop measurement tools to assess the effectiveness of those interventions.
Primary Interests:
- Aggression, Conflict, Peace
- Applied Social Psychology
- Ethics and Morality
- Group Processes
- Intergroup Relations
- Personality, Individual Differences
- Political Psychology
- Self and Identity
- Social Cognition
- Sociology, Social Networks
Research Group or Laboratory:
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Image Gallery
Video Gallery
How to Fix Politics: Lessons from Political Psychology
Select video to watch
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1:13:54 How to Fix Politics: Lessons from Political Psychology
Length: 1:13:54
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7:19 The Psychology of Polarization and Demonization: Part 1
Length: 7:19
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6:20 The Psychology of Polarization and Demonization: Part 2
Length: 6:20
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9:58 The Psychology of Polarization and Demonization: Part 3
Length: 9:58
Journal Articles:
- Clifford, S., Jerit, J., Rainey, C., & Motyl, M. (in press). Moral concerns and policy attitudes: Investigating the influence of elite rhetoric. Political Communication.
- Crawford, J. T., Modri, S., & Motyl, M. (2013). Bleeding-heart liberals and hard-hearted conservatives: Subtle political dehumanization through differential attributions of human nature and human uniqueness traits. Journal of Social and Political Psychology.
- Goldenberg, J. L., Heflick, N. A., Vaes, J., Motyl, M., & Greenberg, J. (2009). Of mice and men, and objectified women: Terror management as an explanatory framework for infrahumanization effects. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 12, 1-14.
- Motyl, M. (2014). "If he wins, I'm moving to Canada": Ideological migration threats following the 2012 U.S. Presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy.
- Motyl, M., Hart, J., Goldenberg, J., Heflick, N., Pyszczynski, T., & Cooper, D. (2013). Creatureliness priming undermines aggression and support for war. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52, 648-666.
- Motyl, M., Hart, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2010). When animals attack: The effects of mortality salience, infrahumanization of violence, and authoritarianism on support for war. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 200-203.
- Motyl, M., Hart, J., Pyszczynski, T., Weise, D., Cox, C., Maxfield, M., & Siedel, A. (2011). Subtle priming of shared human experiences eliminates threat-induced negativity toward Arabs, immigrants, and peace-making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1179-1184.
- Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Oishi, S., Trawalter, S., & Nosek, B. A. (2014). How ideological migration geographically segregates groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 1-14.
- Motyl, M., & Pyszczynski, T. (2010). The existential underpinnings of the cycle of terrorist and counterterrorist violence and pathways to peaceful resolutions. International Review of Social Psychology, 3, 267-291.
- Nosek, B. A., Spies, J. R., & Motyl, M. (2012). Scientific utopia II. Restructuring incentives and practices to promote truth over publishability. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 615-631.
- Pyszczynski, T., Henthorn, C., & Motyl, M. (2010). Is Obama the Anti-Christ? Racial priming, extreme criticisms of Barack Obama, and attitudes toward the 2008 US presidential candidates. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 863-866.
- Pyszczynski, T., Motyl, M., Vail, K., Hirschberger, G., Arndt, J., & Kesebir, P. (2012). Drawing attention to global climate change decreases support for war. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 18, 354-368.
- Vail III, K. E., Arndt, J., Motyl, M., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Compassionate values and presidential politics: Mortality salience, compassionate values, and support for Barack Obama and John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 9, 255-268.
- Vail, K. E., Arndt, J., Motyl, M., & Pyszczynski, T. (2012). The aftermath of destruction: Images of destroyed buildings increase support for war, dogmatism, and death thought accessibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 1069-1081.
Other Publications:
- Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral Foundations Theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 55-130.
- Motyl, M., Vail III, K. E., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Waging terror: Psychological motivations in cultural violence and peacemaking. In M. Morgan and P. Zimbardo (Ed.), The day that changed everything: The impact of 9/11 (pp. 23-36). Boston, MA: Praeger/Greenwood Press.
Courses Taught:
- Social Psychology
Matt Motyl
Department of Psychology
University of Illinois at Chicago
1007 West Harrison Street (m/c 285)
Chicago, Illinois 60601
United States of America
- Phone: (312) 413-5838
- Fax: (312) 413-4122
- Skype Name: mattmotyl
