معرفی
Paul Maher is an Associate Professor at the University of Limerick's Department of Psychology and Centre for Social Issues Research. His research focuses on emotions, attitudes, and political orientation, particularly the role of epistemic emotions in shaping political polarization and group identity. He investigates disillusionment as an affective response to meaning-threatening events and its link to ideological rigidity and nostalgic tendencies. His work employs bipartite network visualizations to map political attitude clusters, with notable contributions during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic analyzing how public health attitudes predict behavioral outcomes. Maher holds a PhD awarded in 2017.
- Education: PhD in Psychology (2017)
- Key Research Areas: Political Psychology, Epistemic Emotions, Attitude Networks, Misinformation, Identity Dynamics
- Collaborations: Extensive work with institutions including the University of Limerick's Centre for Social Issues Research and international teams on computational social science models.
His recent studies explore how social norms and opinion-sharing behaviors reinforce group identities, with applications in understanding polarization during crises. He has contributed to UN Sustainable Development Goals related to education and societal resilience through his work on trust in science and pandemic responses.
Publications highlight interdisciplinary approaches, integrating agent-based modeling, network analysis, and experimental psychology. His work on disillusionment's role in Brexit and Trump phenomena demonstrates real-world policy relevance.
