Lotte Thomsen

Thomsen, L. & Carey, S. (2013). Core Cognition of Social Relations. IN M.Banaji & Gelman, S. (Eds.). Navigating the Social World: What infants, children and other species can teach us. New York: Oxford University Press.

IJzerman, H., Karremans, J., Thomsen, L., & Schubert, T. (2013). Sharing forCaring: Warmth embodies communal sharing among young children. Journal of Social Psychology.

Ho, A. K., Sidanius, J., Pratto, F., Levin, S., & Thomsen, L. (2012) Social Dominance Orientation: Revisiting the structure and function of a variablepredicting social and political attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology  Bulletin, 38, 583

Thomsen, L., Frankenhuis, W. E., Ingold-Smith, M., & Carey. S. (2011). Big & Mighty: Preverbal infants mentally represent social dominance. Science, 331, 477-480

Thomsen, L. Green, E., Ho, A., Levin, S., van Laar, C., Sinclair, S. & Sidanius, J. (2010). Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: SDO Asymmetrically Predicts Perceived Ethnic Victimization among White and Latino Students Across Three Years. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 225-238.

Green, E., Thomsen, L., & Sidanius, J. , Staerkle, C., & Potanina, P.(2009).Reactions to crime as a hierarchy-regulating strategy: The moderating role of social dominance orientation. Social Justice Research, 22, 416-436.

Fiske, A.P., Thomsen, L., & Thein, S. M. (2009). Differently embodying different relationships, European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 1294-1297.

Navarette, D., Olson, A., Ho, A., Mendes, W., Thomsen, L., & Sidanius, J.(2009) Fear Extinction to an Outgroup Face: The Role of Target Gender. Psychological Science, 20, 155-158.

Ho, A. Thomsen, L, & Sidanius, J. (2009). Perceived Academic Competenceand Overall Job Evaluations: The Case of Afro- and Euro-American students' evaluations of Afro- and Euro- American professors. Journal of Applied Social  Psychology, 39, 389-400.

Thomsen, L., Green, E., & Sidanius, J. (2008). We Will Hunt Them Down: How social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism fuel ethnic persecution of immigrants in fundamentally different ways. Journal of  Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1455-1464.

Thomsen, L., Sidanius, J. & Fiske, A. (2007). Interpersonal leveling, independence, & self-enhancement: A comparison between Denmark and the US and relational practice framework for cultural psychology. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 445-469.

• Fonn, Erik K.; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Kristensen, Bjørn D. & Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Gendered motives for group formidability among children and adults. Nature Human Behaviour. doi: 10.1038/s41562-026-02606-1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Recent decades have seen a surge of research revealing the core, early emerging psychological building blocks for navigating human societies. Yet, how such core motives operate across life, undergirding political ideology, remains unknown. Here we use the same kind of minimal, abstract group stimuli across the lifespan to show that gendered preferences for majority groups manifest among preschoolers and adults alike (but not among preverbal infants) and that they motivate support for sustaining intergroup hierarchies (for example, ethnic persecution, militarism and social welfare opposition) among adults. Preschool (N = 317) boys, but not girls, preferred majority rather than minority members, whereas infants (N = 180) chose randomly between the two. Among adults (N = 3,467), males also liked the majority more than females, and these coalitional preferences correlated robustly with political ideology. These results indicate that gendered motives for intergroup formidability are rooted in earliest childhood once children begin navigating peer relationships independently.

• Margoni, Francesco; Surian, Luca; Hadjichristidis, Constantinos & Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Toddlers show heightened attention to selective distributors. Cognitive Psychology. ISSN 0010-0285. 166, p. 1–14. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2026.101831. Full text in Research Archive
• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Curry, Oliver Scott & Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Infants use physical size, but not prior possession, to predict conflict outcomes, and do not prefer prior possessors over contenders. Evolution and human behavior. ISSN 1090-5138. 47(5). doi: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2026.106952. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Ownership is a pervasive feature of human social life, yet its developmental origins remain unknown. One influential proposal is that human ownership psychology is built on an early-developing and evolutionary ancient sensitivity to first possession: Across species, conflicts over resources are often settled in favor of whoever held a resource first. Among humans, individuals who take what others already possess are often devalued as cooperative partners. Here, we focused on the inferences and preferences infants and toddlers form based on first possession. Across six laboratory experiments (N = 227), we found positive Bayesian evidence that 10–18-month-old infants and young toddlers do not expect intruders will defer to first possessors in territorial conflict, and that 10–13-month-old infants do not prefer prior possessors over those who take (or attempt to take) possessions from others by force. In contrast, we found that infants do expect that larger, more physically formidable agents will prevail in territorial conflict, using identical methods. Hence, prior possession alone is not sufficient for shaping infants' expectations and evaluations in dyadic conflict, though physical formidability is.

• Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Relational core cognition is for understanding the meaning of social life, not just enduring interpersonal relationships. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. ISSN 0140-525X. 49, p. e52–e52. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X25101167. Full text in Research Archive
• Fonn, Erik K; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl & Thomsen, Lotte (2026). If you can’t beat them, join them: Preverbal infants expect novel agents to choose the majority group. Child Development. ISSN 0009-3920. 97(3), p. 868–880. doi: 10.1093/chidev/aacag019. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Society is characterized by negotiation of group interests, often favoring stronger majority groups. Preverbal infants expect members of larger coalitions to prevail in concrete conflicts, but it remains unknown if infants parse the social world by ascribing general default coalitional formidability motives to others, even in the absence of intergroup conflict. Here we show that 9–13-month-old Norwegian infants (N = 168, 83 girls, ethnicity unrecorded, data collected 2018–2025) expected an agent to approach the larger of two separate, coordinated groups (Cohen's g = .15-.17). So did North American and Norwegian adults across explicit (N = 1,704, d > .11) and implicit measures (N = 33, Cohen's g = .23). Humans infer third-party group formidability motives across ontogeny.

• Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem; Kleppestø, Thomas Haarklau; Czajkowski, Nikolai Olavi; Eilertsen, Espen Moen; Røysamb, Espen & Vassend, Olav Mandt [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2026). The Relationship Between Educational Attainment and Right-Wing Authoritarianism: A Discordant Twin Study. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. ISSN 0146-1672. doi: 10.1177/01461672251407779. Full text in Research Archive
• Merrell, Wilson N.; Fan, Lei; Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer & Thomsen, Lotte (2025). Resource Possession in the Mind’s Eye: Ideological Convergence and Divergence in the Perceptions of Poor People. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. ISSN 0146-1672. 52(10), p. 3480–3480. doi: 10.1177/01461672251371787. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Social hierarchies ultimately concern resource possession, yet psychological processes for regulating resource-related tensions remain underexplored. We examine how support for intergroup equality (egalitarianism) relates to explicit attitudes toward, and mental images of, the resource poor. In Study 1 ( N = 625), egalitarians report more favorable attitudes toward the resource poor than anti-egalitarians. However, using the reverse correlation paradigm, both groups generate similarly negative mental images of this group, as shown by pixel luminance comparisons (Study 1) and evaluated by independent raters of person-perceptual (Study 2, N = 394) and coalitional traits (Study 3, N = 348). While ideology did not shape image generation, it did influence image evaluation: egalitarian raters showed less polarization between resource-poor and resource-rich faces than anti-egalitarian raters. These findings suggest that despite ideological differences in explicit attitudes (divergence), egalitarians, and anti-egalitarians share similarly negative mental representations (convergence) of the resource poor, highlighting a nuanced interplay between social perception and hierarchy regulation.

• Filesi, Flavia; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Massenet, Mathilde & Bryant, Gregory A. [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2025). Toddlers Use Vocal Cues to Infer Male Dominance Over Females in Right-of-Way Conflict. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. 47, p. 5924–5932. doi: https:/escholarship.org/uc/item/6033h88p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Men hold more power compared to women, a phenomenon that is globally evident and widely documented. Preverbal infants mentally represent social dominance, and by the age of 18 months can distinguish male and female voices and associate them with faces of the corresponding gender. Here, we investigated whether 18- to 24- month-old toddlers (N=48) expected male-voiced agents to prevail over female-voiced ones in a right-of-way conflict. Using a violation-of-expectation paradigm, we found that toddlers looked longest when female-voiced characters prevailed in dominance conflicts, suggesting they expected that male-voiced agents would prevail instead. Acoustic features of male voices that perceptually suggest greater formidability/physical size (i.e., lower fundamental frequency) may account for this effect. Alternatively, vocal indicators of speaker sex might trigger very early conceptualizations about gender and dominance.

• Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2025). Infants and Toddlers Expect Others Will Shun the Previously Excluded and Instead Approach the Previously Included. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. 47, p. 5895–5903. doi: https:/escholarship.org/uc/item/05f1k5q9. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Navigating social affiliation adaptively is a critical task of human life. If parsing the social world into affiliative groups forms a core, generative mechanism of the evolved human mind, even infants may differentiate between minimal depictions of inclusion and exclusion. Furthermore, whether groups include or exclude others may cue their individual value as social partners. If so, infants may expect third-party observers to continue avoiding those others exclude and prefer those they include, further perpetuating discrimination of the already marginalized. Here, we show that 10-18 m.o. infants (n=96) look longer when a neutral observer approaches a novel agent whom an abstract group previously excluded, rather than included, in an animated violation-of-expectation paradigm. We found no effect of participant age. Movements were identical across scenarios, differing only in a delay between the excluded agent and the group. These findings indicate that even infants infer that observed exclusion versus inclusion will generalize to other interactions with new social partners.

• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2025). Do infants prefer owners over thieves? Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. 47, p. 4650–4656. doi: https:/escholarship.org/content/qt73w7z3tp/qt73w7z3tp.pdf. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Normative concerns for ownership fundamentally regulate social interaction regarding resources in humans, but little is known about origins of ownership inferences and evaluations tin earliest human development. Here, we ask if normative evaluations of ownership respect are rooted in an early-developing protomoral dispreference for those who violate ownership. Across two studies (N = 66) infants saw puppet shows where an owner was approached by a non-owner who attempted to take the owner's resource. Infants were subsequently allowed to choose between the two puppets. We controlled for the dominance implications of the outcomes of resource competition by systematically varying whether the non-owner or owner prevailed in attaining the resource. Both studies yielded clear Bayesian evidence that infants did not preferentially reach towards either the owner or ownership violator. These results suggest that infants do not hold strong negative evaluations of those who violate ownership.

• Ho, Arnold K.; Kteily, Nour S.; Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer & Thomsen, Lotte (2025). Social dominance orientation: The motivational basis of intergroup inequality. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. ISSN 0065-2601. doi: 10.1016/bs.aesp.2025.04.003. Full text in Research Archive
• Kleppestø, Thomas Haarklau; Czajkowski, Nikolai Olavi; Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer; Vassend, Olav; Røysamb, Espen & Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem [Show all 9 contributors for this article] (2024). The genetic underpinnings of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation explain political attitudes beyond Big Five personality. Journal of Personality. ISSN 0022-3506. 92(6), p. 1744–1758. doi: 10.1111/jopy.12921. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Objective: Political attitudes are predicted by the key ideological variables of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), as well as some of the Big Five personality traits. Past research indicates that personality and ideological traits are correlated for genetic reasons. A question that has yet to be tested concerns whether the genetic variation underlying the ideological traits of RWA and SDO has distinct contributions to political attitudes, or if genetic variation in political attitudes is subsumed under the genetic variation underlying standard Big Five personality traits. Method: We use data from a sample of 1987 Norwegian twins to assess the genetic and environmental relationships between the Big Five personality traits, RWA, SDO, and their separate contributions to political policy attitudes. Results: RWA and SDO exhibit very high genetic correlation (r = 0.78) with each other and some genetic overlap with the personality traits of openness and agreeableness. Importantly, they share a larger genetic substrate with political attitudes (e.g., deporting an ethnic minority) than do Big Five personality traits, a relationship that persists even when controlling for the genetic foundations underlying personality traits. Conclusion: Our results suggest that the genetic foundations of ideological traits and political attitudes are largely non-overlapping with the genetic foundations of Big Five personality traits.

• Margoni, Francesco & Thomsen, Lotte (2024). How infants predict respect-based power. Cognitive Psychology. ISSN 0010-0285. 152. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101671. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Research has shown that infants represent legitimate leadership and predict continued obedience to authority, but which cues they use to do so remains unknown. Across eight pre-registered experiments varying the cue provided, we tested if Norwegian 21-month-olds (N=128) expected three protagonists to obey a character even in her absence. We assessed whether bowing for the character, receiving a tribute from or conferring a benefit to the protagonists, imposing a cost on them (forcefully taking a resource or hitting them), or relative physical size were used as cues to generate the expectation of continued obedience that marks legitimate leadership. Whereas bowing sufficed in generating such an expectation, we found positive Bayesian evidence that all the other cues did not. Norwegian infants unlikely have witnessed bowing in their everyday life. Hence, bowing/prostration as cue for continued obedience may form part of an early-developing capacity to represent leadership built by evolution.

• Kleppestø, Thomas Haarklau; Czajkowski, Nikolai Olavi; Vassend, Olav Mandt; Røysamb, Espen; Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem & Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2024). Attachment and Political Personality are Heritable and Distinct Systems, and Both Share Genetics with Interpersonal Trust and Altruism. Behavior Genetics. ISSN 0001-8244. 54, p. 321–332. doi: 10.1007/s10519-024-10185-y. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The attachment and caregiving domains maintain proximity and care-giving behavior between parents and offspring, in a way that has been argued to shape people’s mental models of how relationships work, resulting in secure, anxious or avoidant interpersonal styles in adulthood. Several theorists have suggested that the attachment system is closely connected to orientations and behaviors in social and political domains, which should be grounded in the same set of familial experiences as are the different attachment styles. We use a sample of Norwegian twins (N = 1987) to assess the genetic and environmental relationship between attachment, trust, altruism, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and social dominance orientation (SDO). Results indicate no shared environmental overlap between attachment and ideology, nor even between the attachment styles or between the ideological traits, challenging conventional wisdom in developmental, social, and political psychology. Rather, evidence supports two functionally distinct systems, one for navigating intimate relationships (attachment) and one for navigating social hierarchies (RWA/SDO), with genetic overlap between traits within each system, and two distinct genetic linkages to trust and altruism. This is counter-posed to theoretical perspectives that link attachment, ideology, and interpersonal orientations through early relational experiences.

• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Margoni, Francesco & Thomsen, Lotte (2023). No single notion of cooperation explains when we respect ownership. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. ISSN 0140-525X. 46. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X23001310. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Cooperation is fundamentally moderated by the form of relationship between the actors involved, as is normative resource distribution. We argue that possessions are likely treated differently across different types of cooperative relationships. Whereas Boyer's computational model might in principle account for this, the theory would benefit from a specification of how different cooperative contexts can shape the representation of ownership.

• Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem & Thomsen, Lotte (2023). Where not to look for targets of social reforms and interventions, according to behavioral genetics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. ISSN 0140-525X. 46. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X22002059. Full text in Research Archive
• Sheehy-Skefffinton, Jennifer & Thomsen, Lotte (2023). Ideology as a Moral- Relational Language. Psychological Inquiry. ISSN 1047-840X. 34(1), p. 35–42. doi: 10.1080/1047840X.2023.2192649. Full text in Research Archive
• Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem; Kleppestø, Thomas Haarklau; Czajkowski, Nikolai Olavi; Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer; Røysamb, Espen & Vassend, Olav Mandt [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2022). Justice sensitivity is undergirded by separate heritable motivations to be morally principled and opportunistic. Scientific Reports. 12. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-09253-2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Abstract Injustice typically involves some people benefitting at the expense of others. An opportunist might then be selectively motivated to amend only the injustice that is harmful to them, while someone more principled would respond consistently regardless of whether they stand to gain or lose. Here, we disentangle such principled and opportunistic motives towards injustice. With a sample of 312 monozygotic- and 298 dizygotic twin pairs (N = 1220), we measured people’s propensity to perceive injustice as victims, observers, beneficiaries, and perpetrators of injustice, using the Justice Sensitivity scale. With a biometric approach to factor analysis, that provides increased stringency in inferring latent psychological traits, we find evidence for two substantially heritable factors explaining correlations between Justice Sensitivity facets. We interpret these factors as principled justice sensitivity (h 2  = 0.45) leading to increased sensitivity to injustices of all categories, and opportunistic justice sensitivity (h 2  = 0.69) associated with increased sensitivity to being a victim and a decreased propensity to see oneself as a perpetrator. These novel latent constructs share genetic substrate with psychological characteristics that sustain broad coordination strategies that capture the dynamic tension between honest cooperation versus dominance and defection, namely altruism, interpersonal trust, agreeableness, Social Dominance Orientation and opposition to immigration and foreign aid.

• Thomsen, Lotte (2022). How do we know who may replace each other in triadic conflict roles? Behavioral and Brain Sciences. ISSN 0140-525X. 45. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X21001473. Full text in Research Archive
• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2022). The boss is not always right: Norwegian preschoolers do not selectively endorse the testimony of a novel dominant agent. Child Development. ISSN 0009-3920. 93(3), p. 831–844. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13722. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Theories of cultural evolution posit that cues of competence-based prestige, rather than formidability-based dominance, should guide culturally transmitted learning, but recent work suggested that French and Kaqchikel Guatamalan preschoolers place their epistemic trust in dominant others. In contrast, this study shows that 249 three- to six-year-olds (116 girls, tested between 2016 and 2018 across metropolitan locations with varying ethnic composition and socioeconomic status) randomly endorsed the word-labels of dominant and subordinate agents in the egalitarian culture of Norway, using stimuli which solicit dominance inferences among infants and manipulating anonymity across studies to control for egalitarian desirability bias. A meta-analysis estimated that 48% endorsed the dominant's testimony. This demonstrates that the tendency to endorse the epistemic claims of dominant individuals does not emerge reliably in early childhood.

• Lyshol, Johanna Katarina Blomster; Seibt, Beate; Oliver, Mary Beth & Thomsen, Lotte (2022). Moving political opponents closer: How kama muta can contribute to reducing the partisan divide in the US. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. ISSN 1368-4302. 26(2), p. 493–511. doi: 10.1177/13684302211067152. Full text in Research Archive
• Eftedal, Nikloai Haahjem & Thomsen, Lotte (2021). Motivated moral judgments about freedom of speech are constrained by a need to maintain consistency. Cognition. ISSN 0010-0277. 211, p. 1–18. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104623. Full text in Research Archive
• Blomster, Johanna Katarina; Thomsen, Lotte & Seibt, Beate (2020). Moved by Observing the Love of Others: Kama Muta Evoked Through Media Fosters Humanization of Out-Groups. Frontiers in Psychology. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01240. Full text in Research Archive
• Jennifer, Sheehy-Skeffington & Thomsen, Lotte (2020). Egalitarianism: psychological and socio-ecological foundations. Current Opinion in Psychology. ISSN 2352-250X. 32, p. 146–152. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.08.014. Full text in Research Archive
• Kleppestø, Thomas Haarklau; Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Social Dominance Orientation(SDO). In K., Shackelford Todd & Weekes-Shackelford, Viviana A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer. ISSN 9783319169996. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R.; Thomsen, Lotte & Dovidio, John F. (2019). Divided Loyalties: Perceptions of Disloyalty Underpin Bias Toward Dually-Identified Minority-Group Members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. ISSN 0022-3514. 117(4), p. 807–838. doi: 10.1037/pspi0000168. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Majority-group members often hold negative attitudes toward minority-group members who identify with both the majority and their minority group. Integrating perspectives from social identity theory and acculturation research with a coalitional psychology framework, we show that an underlying mechanism for such bias is the perception that dual identifiers are disloyal to the majority group. In Study 1, majority-group participants in the U.S. questioned the loyalty of a dually identified Arab immigrant more than one who identified solely with the (American) majority group, especially under intergroup threat, which in turn predicted less favorable feelings toward the immigrant. Study 2 conceptually replicated the effect of the identity manipulation and the mediating influence of perceived loyalty on judgments about an immigrant being allowed to enlist in the U.S. military. Study 3, partially replicated the findings in Poland, focusing on Russian immigrants as targets. In Study 4, which independently manipulated both the identity expressed by immigrants and their loyalty, a dually identified immigrant whose loyalty to the majority group was portrayed as high was not judged as less qualified than an immigrant who identified only with the majority group for jobs with the potential to inflict damage on the majority group. Study 5, replicated and extended the previous studies in the context of fans of allied or rival soccer teams in Germany, revealing the moderating role of existing group relations on the hypothesized loyalty processes. In summary, coalitionally driven perceptions of (dis)loyalty appear to undergird bias toward minority-group members who hold dual identifications.

• Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Egalitarianism: Psychological and socio-ecological foundations. Current Opinion in Psychology. ISSN 2352-250X. 32, p. 146–152. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.08.014. Full text in Research Archive
• Kleppestø, Thomas Haarklau; Czajkowski, Nikolai Olavi; Vassend, Olav; Røysamb, Espen; Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem & Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2019). Correlations between social dominance orientation and political attitudes reflect common genetic underpinnings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). ISSN 0027-8424. 116(36), p. 17741–17746. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1818711116. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  A foundational question in the social sciences concerns the interplay of underlying causes in the formation of people’s political beliefs and prejudices. What role, if any, do genes, environmental influences, or personality dispositions play? Social dominance orientation (SDO), an influential index of people’s general attitudes toward intergroup hierarchy, correlates robustly with political beliefs. SDO consists of the subdimensions SDO-dominance (SDO-D), which is the desire people have for some groups to be actively oppressed by others, and SDO-egalitarianism (SDO-E), a preference for intergroup inequality. Using a twin design (n = 1,987), we investigate whether the desire for intergroup dominance and inequality makes up a genetically grounded behavioral syndrome. Specifically, we investigate the heritability of SDO, in addition to whether it genetically correlates with support for political policies concerning the distribution of power and resources to different social groups. In addition to moderate heritability estimates for SDO-D and SDO-E (37% and 24%, respectively), we find that the genetic correlation between these subdimensions and political attitudes was overall high (mean genetic correlation 0.51), while the environmental correlation was very low (mean environmental correlation 0.08). This suggests that the relationship between political attitudes and SDO-D and SDO-E is grounded in common genetics, such that the desire for (versus opposition to) intergroup inequality and support for political attitudes that serve to enhance (versus attenuate) societal disparities form convergent strategies for navigating group-based dominance hierarchies.

• Thomsen, Lotte (2019). The developmental origins of social hierarchy: how infants and young children mentally represent and respond to power and status. Current Opinion in Psychology. ISSN 2352-250X. 33, p. 201–208. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.044. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R.; Dovidio, John F. & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Fusion with political leaders predicts willingness to persecute immigrants and political opponents. Nature Human Behaviour. p. 1–13. doi: 10.1038/s41562-019-0708-1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  From the 2016 US presidential election and into 2019, we demonstrate that a visceral feeling of oneness (that is, psychological fusion) with a political leader can fuel partisans’ willingness to actively participate in political violence. In studies 1 and 2, fusion with Donald Trump predicted Republicans’ willingness to violently persecute Muslims (over and above other established predictors). In study 3, relative deprivation increased fusion with Trump and, subsequently, willingness to violently challenge election results. In study 4, fusion with Trump increased after his election and predicted immigrant persecution over time. Further revealing its independent effects, this fusion with Trump predicted a willingness to persecute Iranians (independent of identification with him, study 5); a willingness to persecute immigrants (study 6); and a willingness to personally protect the US border from an immigrant caravan (study 7), even over and above fusion with the group of Trump’s followers. These findings echo past political movements and suggest critical future research.

• Kunst, Jonas R.; Kimel, Sasha; Shani, Maor; Alayan, Ramzi & Thomsen, Lotte (2018). Can Abraham bring peace? The relationship between acknowledging shared religious roots and intergroup conflict. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. ISSN 1941-1022. 11(4), p. 417–432. doi: 10.1037/rel0000192. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Although the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rooted in contesting ethno-national narratives, it is often also framed and perceived in religious terms. While all 3 groups who consider the region a holy land, namely Jews, Muslims and Christians, have theological roots in common, the potential of emphasizing such commonalities among more than 2 groups and—most importantly—whether acknowledging such shared Abrahamic lineage generally may be an asset for actual peacemaking in the region remains unknown. Focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we aimed to fill this gap by using diverse groups and contexts. In Study 1, American Jews acknowledging their shared Abrahamic lineage with Muslims were more supportive of aid to, and peacemaking with, Palestinians. Next, we broadened this categorization to also include Christians. In Study 2, the more American Jews acknowledged this extended categorization including all 3 groups, the less biased they were toward Muslims and Christians and the more they supported political and territorial conflict solutions. We then took the paradigm to the Middle East. In Study 3, Israeli Jews acknowledging the Abrahamic category showed less bias toward Muslims and Christians and were more supportive of peacemaking, intergroup contact and the two-state solution. Finally, in Study 4, Palestinian-Muslims living in the Palestinian Territories who acknowledged this shared religious lineage showed less bias toward Jews, yet more bias toward Christians. In all studies, findings held when controlling for political orientation or social dominance orientation. Implications for using religious and Abrahamic categorizations for conflict resolution and intergroup relations are discussed.

• Obaidi, Milan; Bergh, Robin; Sidanius, Jim & Thomsen, Lotte (2018). The mistreatment of my people: Victimization by proxy and behavioral intentions to commit violence among Muslims in Denmark. Political Psychology. ISSN 0162-895X. doi: 10.1111/pops.12435. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R.; Boos, Beverly Karen; Kimel, Sasha Y.; Obaidi, Milan; Shani, Maor & Thomsen, Lotte (2018). Engaging in extreme activism in support of others’ political struggles: The role of politically motivated fusion with out-groups. PLOS ONE. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190639. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R.; Boos, Beverly Karen; Kimel, Sasha; Obaidi, Milan; Shani, Maor & Thomsen, Lotte (2018). Engaging in extreme activism in support of others’ political struggles: The role of politically motivated fusion with out-groups. PLOS ONE. 13(1). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190639. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte & Fiske, Alan P. (2018). Communal Sharing/Identity Fusion Does Not Require Reflection on Episodic Memory of Shared Experience, or Trauma - and Usually Generates Kindness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. ISSN 0140-525X. doi: 10.1017/s0140525x18001784. Full text in Research Archive
• Obaidi, Milan; Bergh, Robin; Sidanius, Jim & Thomsen, Lotte (2018). The Mistreatment of My People: Victimization by Proxy and Behavioral Intentions to Commit Violence Among Muslims in Denmark. Political Psychology. ISSN 0162-895X. 39(3), p. 577–593. doi: 10.1111/pops.12435. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte & Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer (2018). A theory of how evolved psychology underpins attitudes towards societal economics must go beyond exchanges and averages. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. ISSN 0140-525X. doi: 10.1017/s0140525x18000535. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomas, Ashley J.; Thomsen, Lotte; Lukowski, Angela F.; Abramyan, Meline & Sarnecka, Barbara W. (2018). Toddlers prefer those who win but not when they win by force. Nature Human Behaviour. 2(9), p. 662–669. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0415-3. Full text in Research Archive
• Obaidi, Milan; Kunst, Jonas R.; Kteily, Nour; Thomsen, Lotte & Sidanius, Jim (2018). Living Under Threat: Mutual Threat Perception Drives Anti-Muslim and Anti-Western Hostility in the Age of Terrorism. European Journal of Social Psychology. ISSN 0046-2772. 48(5), p. 567–584. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2362. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This research demonstrates a common psychology of outgroup hostility driven by perceived intergroup threat among three groups and seven cultural contexts: non‐Muslim Westerners, Muslims in Western societies, and Muslims in the Middle East. In Study 1, symbolic, but not realistic and terroristic threats, predicted non‐Muslim Norwegians' intentions to join anti‐Islamic movements. In Study 2, symbolic and realistic, but not terroristic threat, predicted non‐Muslim Americans' willingness to persecute Muslims. In Studies 3 and 4, symbolic threat predicted support and behavioral intentions against the West among Swedish and Turkish Muslims. Finally, in Study 5, a comparison demonstrated that symbolic and realistic threats had the same effects on violent intentions among non‐Muslim and Muslim Danes, and Muslims in Afghanistan. Meta‐analysis showed that symbolic threat was most strongly associated with intergroup hostility. Across studies, participants with high religious group identification experienced higher levels of threat. Implications for intergroup research and prejudice reduction are discussed.

• Obaidi, Milan; Thomsen, Lotte & Bergh, Robin (2018). "They Think We Are a Threat to Their Culture”: Meta-Cultural Threat Fuels Willingness and Endorsement of Extremist Violence against the Cultural Outgroup. International Journal of Conflict and Violence. 12. doi: 10.4119/UNIBI/IJCV.647. Full text in Research Archive
• Eikemo, Marie Helene; Biele, Guido; Willoch, Frode; Thomsen, Lotte & Leknes, Siri (2017). Opioid modulation of value-based decision-making in healthy humans. Neuropsychopharmacology. ISSN 0893-133X. 42(9), p. 1833–1840. doi: 10.1038/npp.2017.58. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R.; Ronald, Fischer; Sidanius, Jim & Thomsen, Lotte (2017). Preferences for group dominance track and mediate the effects of macro-level social inequality and violence across societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). ISSN 0027-8424. 114(21), p. 5407–5412. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1616572114. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R.; Kteily, Nour & Thomsen, Lotte (2017). “You Little Creep”: Evidence of Blatant Dehumanization of Short Groups. Social Psychological and Personality Science. ISSN 1948-5506. doi: 10.1177/1948550617740613. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Physical cues influence social judgments of others. For example, shorter individuals are evaluated less positively than taller individuals. Here, we demonstrate that height also impacts one of the most consequential intergroup judgments—attributions of humanity—and explore whether this effect is modulated by the tendency to value hierarchy maintenance. In Study 1, the shorter participants perceived a range of out-groups to be, the more they dehumanized them, and this tended to be particularly pronounced among those scoring high on social dominance orientation (SDO). In Study 2, participants dehumanized an out-group more when they were led to believe that it was relatively short. Finally, Study 3 applied a reverse correlation approach, demonstrating that participants in general, and especially those scoring high on SDO, represented shorter groups in ways less consistent with full humanity than they represented taller groups. Together, this research demonstrates that basic physical height cues shape the perceived humanity of out-groups. This research has been accepted and published in Social Psychology and Personality Science. © 2017 SAGE Publications

• Kunst, Jonas R.; Sadeghi, Talieh; Tahir, Hajra; Sam, David Lackland & Thomsen, Lotte (2016). The vicious circle of religious prejudice: Islamophobia makes the acculturation attitudes of majority and minority members clash. European Journal of Social Psychology. ISSN 0046-2772. 46(2), p. 249–259. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2174. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R.; Thomsen, Lotte; Sam, David Lackland & Berry, John W. (2015). “We Are in This Together”: Common Group Identity Predicts Majority Members’ Active Acculturation Efforts to Integrate Immigrants. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. ISSN 0146-1672. 41(10), p. 1438–1453. doi: 10.1177/0146167215599349. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R. & Thomsen, Lotte (2015). Prodigal Sons: Dual Abrahamic Categorization Mediates the Detrimental Effects of Religious Fundamentalism on Christian–Muslim Relations. The international journal for the psychology of religion. ISSN 1050-8619. 25(4), p. 293–306. doi: 10.1080/10508619.2014.937965. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Religious fundamentalism is associated with Christian–Islamic conflicts globally, but the psychological reasons remain unexplored. Here, we show that fundamentalism is detrimental to interreligious relations because it makes Christians and Muslims alike reject common theological grounds and Abrahamic origins. Specifically, Study 1 demonstrated that such dual Abrahamic categories mediated the negative effects of fundamentalism on real monetary donations to outgroup children desperately in need (i.e., Save the Children Syria) among Christians but not Atheists. Of importance, this was the case only to the degree that Syrian children were perceived as Muslims and, hence, as part of an Abrahamic outgroup. Using a double-randomized experimental design, Study 2 demonstrated the causal effects of religious fundamentalism on Abrahamic categorization and of Abrahamic categorization on mutual resource distribution bias among Muslims and Christians. Together, these studies suggest that religious fundamentalism fuels interreligious conflicts because it crucially impacts basic categorization processes, with subsequent negative effects on intergroup relations. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal for the Psychology of Religion on 03 Jul 2014, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10508619.2014.937965

• Thomsen, Lotte; Obaidi, Milan; Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer; Kteily, Nour & Jim, Sidanius (2014). Individual differences in relational motives interact with the political context to produce terrorism and terrorism-support. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. ISSN 0140-525X. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13003579. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte; Obaidi, Milan; Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer; Kteily, Nour & Sidanius, Jim (2014). Individual differences in relational motives interact with the political context to produce terrorism and terrorism-support. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. ISSN 0140-525X. 37(4), p. 377–378. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13003579. Full text in Research Archive
• Kunst, Jonas R.; Thomsen, Lotte & Sam, David Lackland (2014). Late Abrahamic reunion? Religious fundamentalism negatively predicts dual Abrahamic group categorization among Muslims and Christians. European Journal of Social Psychology. ISSN 0046-2772. 44(4), p. 337–348. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2014. Full text in Research Archive
• IJzerman, Hans; Karremans, Johan; Thomsen, Lotte & Schubert, Thomas (2013). Caring for sharing: How attachment styles modulate communal cues of physical warmth. Social Psychology. ISSN 1864-9335. 44, p. 160–166. doi: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000142. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte & Carey, Susan (2013). Core Cognition of Social Relations. In R., Banaji Mahzarin & Gelman, Susan A. (Ed.), Navigating the Social World: What infants, children and other species can teach us. Oxford University Press. ISSN 9780199890712. p. 17–23. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780199890712.003.0004. Full text in Research Archive
• Ho, Arnold K.; Pratto, Felicia; Levin, Shana & Thomsen, Lotte (2012). Social Dominance Orientation: Revisiting the structure and function of a variablepredicting social and political attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. ISSN 0146-1672. 38(5), p. 583–606. doi: 10.1177/0146167211432765. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte; Frankenhuis, Willem; Ingold-Smith, McCaila & Carey, Susan (2011). Big & Mighty: Preverbal infants mentally represent social dominance. Science. ISSN 0036-8075. 331, p. 477–480. doi: 10.1126/science.1199198. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte; Green, Eva G. T.; Ho, Arnold K.; Levin, Shana; Laar, Colette van & Sinclair, Stacey [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2010). Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: SDO Asymmetrically Predicts Perceived Ethnic Victimization among White and Latino Students Across Three Years. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. ISSN 0146-1672. 36, p. 225–238. doi: 10.1177/0146167209348617. Full text in Research Archive
• Green, Eva G. T.; Thomsen, Lotte; Sidanius, Jim; Staerklé, Christian & Potanina, Polina (2009). Reactions to crime as a hierarchy-regulating strategy: The moderating role of social dominance orientation. Social justice research. ISSN 0885-7466. 22, p. 416–436. doi: 10.1007/s11211-009-0106-3. Full text in Research Archive
• Fiske, Alan Page; Thomsen, Lotte & Thein, Seinenu M. (2009). Differently embodying different relationships. European Journal of Social Psychology. ISSN 0046-2772. 39, p. 1294–1297. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.697. Full text in Research Archive
• Ho, Arnold K.; Thomsen, Lotte & Sidanius, Jim (2009). Perceived Academic Competenceand Overall Job Evaluations: The Case of Afro- and Euro-American students' evaluations of Afro- and Euro- American professors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. ISSN 0021-9029. 39, p. 389–400. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00443.x. Full text in Research Archive
• Navarette, Carlos David; Olsson, Andreas; K, Ho Arnold; Mendes, Wendy Berry; Thomsen, Lotte & Sidanius, James (2009). Fear Extinction to an Outgroup Face: The Role of Target Gender. Psychological Science. ISSN 0956-7976. 20, p. 155–158. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02273.x. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte; Green, Eva G. T. & Sidanius, Jim (2008). We Will Hunt Them Down: How social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism fuel ethnic persecution of immigrants in fundamentally different ways. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. ISSN 0022-1031. 44, p. 1455–1464. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2008.06.011. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte; Sidanius, Jim & Fiske, Alan Page (2007). Interpersonal leveling, independence, & self-enhancement: A comparison between Denmark and the US and relational practice framework for cultural psychology. European Journal of Social Psychology. ISSN 0046-2772. 37, p. 445–469. Full text in Research Archive

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• Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Relational Core Cognition and Intergroup Inequality. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl (2026). Intergroup Formidability Motives Manifest Among Preverbal Infants and Preschoolers and Relate to Adult Political Ideology. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Core Cognition of Reciprocal Altruism. Full text in Research Archive
• Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Born, Victoria de Leon & Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Return the Favor: Preverbal Infants Represent and Emotionally Value Direct Reciprocity. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The distribution of scarce resources, priority rights, help, and care are central dilemmas of human life. Seminal proposals hold that reciprocity is key for the evolution of cooperation among non-kin, and norms of reciprocity permeate human society. Yet, it remains unknown if human infants are prepared to represent and respond appropriately to direct reciprocity prior to extensive socialization. Here we show that preverbal infants (N=340) predict, postdict, and respond emotionally whether novel agents selectively donate scarce resources to former benefactors, triangulating measures of anticipatory-looking, violation-of-expectation, and emotional responses across six experiments. These results indicate that dedicated psychological coordination mechanisms for direct reciprocity form such basic building-blocks of the human mind that they help humans recognize and appropriately navigate reciprocal coordination already from preverbal infancy onwards.

• Brekke, Lars Kolstad; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Prior Help and Reciprocity Judgments. Full text in Research Archive
• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl & Thomsen, Lotte (2026). If you can’t beat them, join them: Preverbal infants expect novel agents to choose the majority group. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Society is characterized by the negotiation of group interests, often favoring stronger majority groups. Preverbal infants expect members of larger coalitions to prevail in concrete conflicts, but it remains unknown whether infants parse the social world by ascribing general default coalitional formidability motives to oth- ers, even in the absence of intergroup conflict. Here we show that 9–13-month- old Norwegian infants (N = 97) expected an agent to approach the larger of two separate, coordinated groups (Cohen’s g = .15–.17), directing their anticipatory gaze toward the larger of two groups as a third-party agent began moving to- ward them. Supporting the specificity of this looking pattern to group-choice prediction, the effect did not extend to larger sets of objects (Cohen’s g = −.11, N = 38), nor to larger groups when the third-party agent moved away from the groups rather than approaching them (Cohen’s g = −.05, N = 33). North American and Norwegian adults similarly predicted that a third-party agent would choose the larger group across explicit (N = 1704, d > .11) and implicit measures (N = 33, Cohen’s g = .23). Humans infer third-party group formidability motives across ontogeny.

• Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2026). Infants and Adults Expect Others to Perpetuate Social Inclusion. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte (2025). Psychological Perspectives on Social Arrangements. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte (2025). Core Cognition of Social Dominance. Full text in Research Archive
• Filesi, Flavia; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Massenet, Mathilde & Bryant, Gregory A. [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2025). Toddlers Use Vocal Cues to Infer Male Dominance Over Females in Right-of-Way Conflict. Full text in Research Archive
• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2025). Do infants prefer owners over thieves? Full text in Research Archive
• Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2025). Infants and Toddlers Expect Others Will Shun the Previously Excluded and Instead Approach the Previously Included. Full text in Research Archive
• Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Margoni, Francesco; Fonn, Erik Kjos & Thomsen, Lotte (2024). Preschoolers Selectively Invest in Grateful Recipients in a Trust Game. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  To sustain the evolution of cooperation, individuals must recognize and discriminate against non-cooperators. Trivers (1971) posited that gratitude is part of the reciprocal system, moving individuals to return favors. We hypothesize that displays of gratitude engender trust, thereby increasing benefactors' willingness to invest in individuals who express gratitude, even in the face of the potential risk of not receiving a return on their investment. We tested this by implementing a modified Trust Game for preschoolers. Children aged 4 - 6 decided whether to give candies to grateful, ungrateful, or neutral characters. If the child chose to give candy, the recipient received three additional candies, which could either be retained or shared back with the child, presenting an investment risk - losing their candy or gaining more than if they kept their candy for themselves. Two studies involving Italian (N = 56) and Norwegian (N = 70) preschoolers showed that they preferentially invested in the grateful recipient over ungrateful or neutral characters. No significant difference was observed between ungrateful and neutral characters. This suggests that gratitude signals altruistic intent, fostering trust and promoting further cooperation.

• Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2024). Preverbal infants differentiate between socially included and excluded agents. Full text in Research Archive
• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Kristensen, Bjørn Dahl & Thomsen, Lotte (2024). Ownership as contingent cooperation: Infants expect cooperators but not competitors to respect each other’s possessions. Full text in Research Archive
• Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem & Thomsen, Lotte (2023). Corrigendum to “Motivated moral judgments about freedom of speech are constrained by a need to maintain consistency” [Cognition, Volume 211, June 2021, 104623] (Cognition (2021) 211, (S0010027721000421), (10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104623)). Cognition. ISSN 0010-0277. 239. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105562. Full text in Research Archive
• Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Eidjar, Oda & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Return the Favor: Preverbal Infants Represent Direct Reciprocity under Resource Scarcity, Full text in Research Archive
• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Eidjar, Oda & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Early-developing Coalitional Preferences: Most male, but not female, pre-verbal infants and pre-schoolers prefer members of larger groups. Full text in Research Archive
• Eidjar, Oda; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Seeking out the majority: Preverbal expectations whether third parties will join the larger group. Full text in Research Archive
• Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Eidjar, Oda & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Early-developing Coalitional Preferences: Most male, but not female, pre-verbal infants and pre-schoolers prefer members of larger groups. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Eidjar, Oda & Carey, Susan (2019). The structure of dominance: Preverbal infants map pyramidal position to social dominance. Full text in Research Archive
• Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem; Kleppestø, Thomas Haarklau; Røysamb, Espen; Vassend, Olav; Ystrøm, Eivind & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Moral opportunism: A unique genetic grounding associates lesser guilt from perpetrating injustice with greater sensitivity to being the victim of it. Full text in Research Archive
• Kleppestø, Thomas Haarklau; Czajkowski, Nikolai Olavi; Vassend, Olav; Røysamb, Espen; Eftedal, Nikolai Haahjem & Kunst, Jonas R. [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2019). Social dominance orientation has both genetic and unique environmental influences, but only genetic pleiotropy accounts for its correlation with political attitudes. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Innate Building-blocks of Political Psychology. Full text in Research Archive
• Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Fonn, Erik Kjos; Eidjar, Oda & Thomsen, Lotte (2019). Return the Favor: Preverbal Infants Represent Direct Reciprocity under Resource Scarcity. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte; Zahl, Joakim Haugane; Fonn, Erik Kjos & Born, Victoria de (2018). Preschoolers use gratitude as a cue for future altruism. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte (2018). Innate Relational Representations and Motives. Full text in Research Archive
• Prendergast, Claire Nicole & Thomsen, Lotte (2017). ‘Selvations’ in Social Motivation. Social justice research. ISSN 0885-7466. 30(3), p. 1–8. doi: 10.1007/s11211-017-0289-y. Full text in Research Archive
• Kleppestø, Thomas H.; Czajkowski, Nikolai Olavi; Vassend, Olav; Røysamb, Espen; Kunst, Jonas R. & Thomsen, Lotte (2017). Preferring domination or egalitarianism: Genetic and environmental structure of Social Dominance Orientation. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte (2017). Core Relational Cognition. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte (2017). Core Relational Motives. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomas, Ashley J.; Abramyan, Meline; Lukowski, Angela & Thomsen, Lotte (2016). Preferring the Mighty to the Meek: Toddlers Prefer Novel Dominant Agents. Full text in Research Archive
• Thomsen, Lotte (2015). Fundamental Intergroup Relational Orientations. Full text in Research Archive

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