Research

Journal Articles

[6] Erol, F., Micatka, N. K., & Ksiazkiewicz, A. (2026). Waking up to politics: How sleep quality relates to political participation. Political Psychology. DOI: 10.1111/pops.70124
Abstract Getting restful sleep is essential to people’s academic achievement, cognitive functioning, life satisfaction, mental and physical health, pro-sociality, and vigilance. Our study translates these insights for political science by examining the relationship of sleep quality with turnout and non-electoral participation across multiple countries in four major datasets. Using a multilevel approach, we find that getting good sleep is strongly linked with a higher likelihood of turnout. Conversely, we observe that poor sleep quality motivates greater non-electoral political participation. Additional analyses indicate that the previously documented curvilinear relationship between sleep duration and turnout emerges primarily among those with poor sleep quality, while duration shows no association with turnout among well-rested individuals, suggesting duration may serve a compensatory function when quality is compromised. We also find that these results are robust to asynchronous timing between sleep quality and civic participation measures. We argue that creating societies where high-quality sleep is accessible to the public is vital to the sustainability of democratic regimes.

[5] Erol, F., Ecevit, Y. A., & Kocapınar, G. (2024). Polarization congruence and satisfaction with democracy: A multinational investigation. Electoral Studies. DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102796
Abstract The mass-elite congruence in politics is key to a healthy democracy. Existing research uses the match between citizens’ ideological positions and those of political elites and parties to assess satisfaction with democracy over time and across countries. However, mass-elite ideological congruence does not necessarily guarantee mass-elite overlap in ideological polarization, the implications of which for democratic satisfaction are little known. Accordingly, our article examines the link between the mass-elite ideological polarization congruence and democratic satisfaction in a multinational context. We reason that when polarized electorates feel let down by their parties’ depolarization, these ideologically polarized people would grow frustrated with the disconnected democratic system (seen as ineffective in meeting citizens’ expectations and delivering meaningful political alternatives). Then, we find that electorates who do not consider their affiliated parties to be as ideologically polarized as themselves tend to be dissatisfied with the way democracy works in their countries. Our additional inquiries suggest that this democratic dissatisfaction parallels ambivalence in democratic commitment. We also find that the perception of no differences between parties, and affiliation with populist and losing parties amplifies these disappointed polarized electorates’ dissatisfaction with democracy.

[4] Erol, F. (2024). Threats and the conservative shift in public opinion: Comparative causal mediation analyses from Turkey. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. DOI: 10.1080/14683857.2023.2189541
Abstract How do mortality reminders and aroused mortality fear affect people’s conservatism? Threats-politics studies assume that life-threatening dangers, fear of death, and conservatism go together, overlooking the distinction between threat exposure and mortality fear arousal. Further, these studies commonly fixate on the conventional threat of terrorism and predominantly employ samples from Western countries. Complementing past research, I use three survey experiments in Turkey to investigate the relationship between a broad array of threats (terrorism, health risks, moral hazards, and daily thoughts of death’s inevitability), mortality fear induced by the threats, and self-rated conservative orientation in a causal mediation analysis framework, using the terror management theory and non-representative Facebook samples (2018, 2020). The results reveal that the respondents receiving threatening stimuli (particularly terrorism mortality reminder) become less conservative as the mortality fear elevates. The length of mortality priming and the broader study context influence this indirect effect’s significance and replicability.

[3] Ksiazkiewicz, A., & Erol, F. (2022). Linking sleep, political ideology, and religious observance: A multi-national comparison. International Journal of Public Opinion Research. DOI: 10.1093/ijpor/edac020
Abstract Sleep is fundamental to life and essential to one’s health behavior, scholastic achievement, and work performance. Recent years have seen an increase in empirical investigations incorporating sleep research into political science. This study complements existing sleep-politics studies by examining the associations between chronotype (a person’s preferred time to sleep and wake up) and attitudinal and behavioral political outcomes (left–right ideology and social conservatism proxied by religious service attendance). We analyze representative samples from 10 national contexts (Finland, Greece, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, and Switzerland) to test our hypotheses. The results demonstrate that morning chronotype has significant links with political conservatism in six national contexts depending on model specification (most robustly in Switzerland). Unexpectedly, the morning chronotype may have links to liberalism in three other countries depending on model specification (most robustly in Russia). The results for religious observance are more uniform, indicating a link between morningness and greater religious observance across all cases in many specifications (excepting a reversed relationship in New Zealand in some models). Urbanization, seasonal effects, geographical characteristics, and religious denominations are explored as potential confounders.

[2] Ksiazkiewicz, A., & Erol, F. (2022). Too tired to vote: A multi-national comparison of election turnout with sleep preferences and behaviors. Electoral Studies. DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2022.102491
Abstract Receiving a healthy amount of sleep is essential to one’s quality of life. Both sleep-wake timing preferences (chronotype) and sleep duration are implicated in health, academic achievement, and workplace performance. This study complements the existing sleep–politics literature by examining the associations between sleep duration, chronotype, and turnout with a representative cross-national survey dataset from nine national contexts. Our analyses demonstrate that greater sleep duration is non-linearly related to higher turnout; those who sleep too little or too much are less likely to vote. The results also show that morning chronotype is associated with higher turnout, but controlling for religiosity attenuates this relationship. We argue that healthy sleep duration and chronotype lay at the intersection of the socioeconomic and psychological resources necessary to participate in elections.

[1] Erol, F. (2022). Terrorism mortality salience manipulation: A causal mediation analysis. Terrorism and Political Violence. DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2022.2060081
Abstract Building upon past findings on terrorism and individual-level politically conservative self-identification, I evaluate the effect of terrorism mortality reminders on conservative self-placement with three survey experiments, using non-representative Facebook samples in Turkey (2018, 2020). The scant existing experimental findings outside the usual Northwestern European and North American environment make it difficult to assess how the context (e.g., the longevity and diversity of terrorism problems in a country) can explain the alignment between terrorism threats and conservatism. In non-Western areas such as Turkey, with various types of terrorism over time, the link between terrorism threat and conservatism may remain uniform. However, the fear of death in a terrorist attack elicited by the terrorism mortality salience would create psychological strain and make individuals suppress terrorism-related death-thoughts by moving away from conservatism, reminding them of the human body’s vulnerability to threats and igniting fearfulness. Using the Terror Management Theory perspective, this study explored the causal mechanism running from terrorism mortality reminder to terrorism mortality fear to conservative self-identification. In all three studies, conservatism decreased when the respondents felt fearful of terrorism mortality and the treated respondents became more conservative if the terrorism mortality fear was kept at its average value (as a covariate).

Books

[1] Ksiazkiewicz, A., & Erol, F. (Publishing Agreement signed). Sleepy citizenship: The biopolitics of rest in American democracy. Oxford University Press (Series in Political Psychology).
Synopsis This book project argues that sleep represents an overlooked but critical resource in democratic life, comparable to money, time, and civic skills in determining who participates in politics and how they form political beliefs. The research investigates how America’s widespread sleep crisis may have profound consequences for democratic participation and political polarization, operating through multiple pathways where sleep-deprived citizens potentially lack the cognitive capacity for effective political engagement while individual sleep preferences systematically relate to ideological orientation. The study examines how morning types, who align with society’s 9-to-5 schedule, appear more likely to hold conservative attitudes that support existing systems, while evening types experience temporal displacement that may foster more liberal, change-oriented politics. The democratic implications are significant as sleep inequality mirrors and amplifies existing social disparities, creating compounding disadvantages where already marginalized communities face additional barriers to political participation through declining sleep quality and quantity, representing a new dimension of political inequality that has received little scholarly attention. The research employs multi-level analyses, experimental interventions, twin studies, panel data analyses, and original representative cross-sectional surveys with comprehensive measures of chronotype, sleep quality, quantity, health indicators, and political attitudes covering ideology, polarization, and civic participation to establish causal direction, spanning from aggregate electoral patterns to individual political development and demonstrating how sleep deficits relate to reduced democratic engagement while chronotype aligns with ideological formation from adolescence through adulthood. The final chapters explore policy solutions, examining how workplace reforms, extended voting access, and public health interventions could strengthen democratic participation by addressing sleep inequality, ultimately introducing chronobiology to political science and opening new frontiers for understanding how biological rhythms and social institutions interact to shape democratic citizenship in contemporary America.

Book Chapters

[1] Çarkoğlu, A., & Erol, F. (2021). A text-as-data study of political communication in the 2018 Turkish elections. In A. Çarkoğlu & E. Kalaycıoğlu (Eds.), Elections and public opinion in Turkey: Through the prism of the 2018 elections (pp. 70-102). London: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003166047-5
Abstract Which parties use simple language in their election manifestoes, and do simple election documents resonate with voters’ most pressing problems? This chapter displays the alignment between the political parties’ wordings in the election documents and citizens’ responses concerning Turkey’s most pressing issues. Theoretically, it is expected that parties with populist leanings are more likely to simplify their election documents to appeal to a broader public. In turn, voters should perceive and process more straightforward election documents to have an idea of what are the country’s problems. As a way forward, we find the 2018 Turkish elections puzzling because there are two electoral alliances with populist entitlements to the people and the nation, the People’s Alliance by AKP and MHP, and the Nation Alliance by CHP, IYIP, and SP. We evaluate whether political parties’ endeavors to stand for the people/nation have any implications for Turkish election manifestoes’ and voters’ language, precisely the level of sophistication in argumentation and the ability to communicate the arguments. To this end, our research presents a measure of complexity and communication to assess the language of parties’ election documents and voters’ open-ended survey responses before the 2018 presidential and parliamentary elections. Our results show that most of the political parties borrow wordings from each other’s manifestoes. Besides, partisans carefully check what other partisan citizens say or do not say when naming the country’s problems. We observe that the easier readability of a party’s manifesto affects a party’s access to a broader audience to define the most critical issues during the campaign period. The findings lead to a greater understanding of mass-elite linkages during election campaigns and have significant consequences for the future analyses of manifesto and survey data.

Other Works in Turkish

[1] Çarkoğlu, A., Elçi, E., Erol, F., & Paksoy, C. (2022). Popülizm teorileri ışığında Türkiye’de popülizmin tarihsel gelişimi: Siyasi partiler üzerine bir inceleme [The historical development of populism in Turkey in the light of populism theories: An analysis on political parties]. Anadolu Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi [Anadolu University Journal of Social Sciences]. DOI: 10.18037/ausbd.1095197
Abstract This study examines how political parties in Turkey have embraced populism from the late Ottoman Empire to present day, challenging the notion that populism belongs to any single party or ideology. Through comparative historical analysis, we trace three key dimensions of populism—people-centrism, anti-elitism, and appeals to popular will—across Turkey’s political spectrum. Our research reveals that Russian populism (Narodism) initially inspired late 19th-century Ottoman intellectuals, particularly the Committee of Union and Progress, who cultivated peasant populism in Turkey. The founders of the Turkish Republic later institutionalized these ideas through the Republican People’s Party (CHP), making populism a defining feature of Turkish politics that persisted through democratic transition. Different political traditions have defined “the people” distinctly: center-right parties like the Democratic Party emphasized “people as sovereigns,” the CHP in the 1970s focused on “common people” oppressed by economic elites, while Milli Görüş parties promoted “people as Islamic nation.” The AK Party has synthesized these approaches, positioning itself as defender of Turkey’s authentic people and oppressed Muslims globally. Elite definitions have similarly evolved based on parties’ ideological positions and power status—from economic exploiters to civil-military bureaucracy to foreign powers and domestic collaborators. This historical pervasiveness across the ideological spectrum suggests that populist turns can emerge from various political crises, offering insights for understanding populism beyond Western European contexts and enriching comparative populism literature.