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ZMERLI SONJA

UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

Research fields

  • Comparative policy
  • Political psychology

Reporting structure(s)

PACT

Responsibilities


  • Chair of Research Committee 29/Political Psychology of the International Political Science Association

  • Co-editor together with Ofer Feldman of the Nomos Publisher Book Series "Political Psychology".

  • French co-ordinator (with Frédéric Gonthier) of the International Social Survey Programme - ISSP

  • Member of the FORS Scientific Advisory Board

  • Scientific Board Member of TrustGov Project

  • Co-editor of Asian Journal of Political Opinion

  • Member of the IEP Comité de documentation

  • Elected member of CNU 04

  • Elected member of Conseil d'Unité de PACTE

  • Elected member of the Board of Directors

  • Elected member of UGA's social sciences pole

  • Official Representative of Sciences Po Grenoble UGA on the Council of ECPR (European Consortium of Political Research)

  • Vice-president of the disciplinary section of the Institut d'Études Politiques de Grenoble with jurisdiction over users

Courses

  • Political Science

Publications

Magazine article

  • Sonja Zmerli,
  • Daniel Walsh
Publication date: 01/01/2025

Conference papers

  • Sonja Zmerli
Publication date: 14/11/2024

Conference papers

  • Sonja Zmerli
Publication date: 10/10/2024

Conference papers

  • Sonja Zmerli,
  • Franco Bastias
Publication date: 08/10/2024

Conference papers

  • Franco Bastias,
  • Sonja Zmerli
Publication date: 25/09/2024

Our presented research findings on the impact of emotions elicited in the face of economic inequalities on redistributive preferences report on an integral part of our comparative research project POLINEQUAL, which examines the politicisation of economic inequality in political and media discourse and its individual behavioural correlates in three different welfare regimes (France, Great Britain, and Sweden). In this vein, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of the hitherto overlooked affective foundations of citizens' inequality perceptions and redistributive preferences, which are only partially-as past research has amply demonstrated-determined by material self-interest. We posit that economic inequality in its different dimensions and aspects, i.e., income, wealth, the poor, the rich, social beneficiaries and taxpayers, triggers different sets of emotional responses, which, in turn, are differently and meaningfully associated with individuals' redistributive preferences while concomitantly interacting with individuals' subjective social status and ideological orientations, as well as reflecting the predominant national institutional context of welfare. Our empirical insights are based on two representative online surveys (N=6,000) collected shortly before the general elections in France and Great Britain in the summer of 2024. The selection of eight types of emotions, administered in these surveys, derives from several pre-tests, including quantitative and qualitative measurement instruments. We will present new insights into the breadth of emotions at play when perceptions of inequality are at stake. We also might offer new clues as to why demands for more redistribution are less vocal than societal levels of economic inequality would suggest.