David J. Young

Publications

Young, D. J., Madsen, J. K., & de-Wit, L. H. (2025). Belief Polarization Can Be Caused by Disagreements Over Source Independence: Computational Modelling, Experimental Evidence, and Applicability to Real-World Politics. Cognition, 259, 106126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106126 (Open Access)

Young, D. J., & de-Wit, L. H. (2025). The Bias-and-Expertise Model: A Bayesian Network Model of Political Source Characteristics. Cognitive Science, 49(11), e70141. https://doi-org.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/10.1111/cogs.70141 (Open Access)

Buchanan, T., Young, D. J., Ackland, J. A., Renwick, A., & de-Wit, L. H. (2025). An authoritarianism-compatible text changes British attitudes towards EU immigration. Scientific Reports, 15, 31724. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598025-11491-z (Open Access)

Roozenbeek, J., Young, D. J., & Madsen, J. K. (2025). The wilful rejection of psychological and behavioural interventions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 66, 102138. https://doi-org.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102138 

Young, D. J., & de-Wit, L. H. (2024). Affective polarization within parties. Political Psychology, 00, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12973 
Open access pre-print:  PsyArXiv Preprints | Affective Polarization Within Parties (osf.io) 

Young, D. J., Madsen, J. K., & Yousefi, S. (2023). The Epistemic Weight of Silence. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 45. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/57h4j672 (Open Access)

In Press

Young, D. J., Ackland, J. A., Kapounek, A., Madsen, J. K., & de-Wit, L. H. (2026). A new measure of issue polarization using k-means clustering: US trends 1988-2024 and predictors of polarization across the world. Royal Society Open Science. 

Young, D. J. (2026). Counter-Intuitive Findings on Affect and Ideology Likely Reflect Collider Bias: Commentary on Turner-Zwinkels et al., 2023. Social Psychological Bulletin.

About me

I am a postdoc at Birkbeck College (University of London) working with Professor Ulrike Hahn on the Percyles project, investigating threats to deliberation in digital democracy platforms.

I am also an incoming Affiliated Lecturer at Cambridge, where I am finishing up a postdoctoral project with Dr Lee de-Wit, co-supervised with Dr Jens K. Madsen at LSE. The project looks at perceptions of media independence and rational polarisation, and is funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. 

I am also Lead Researcher on the MHP Polarisation Tracker, a bi-annual survey of polarisation in the UK funded by MHP Group and the Political Psychology Lab. Research from the tracker has been covered by the Sunday Times, and has fed into several publications.

Research Interests

I am interested in applying theories and methods from cognitive science to political psychology, which more normally draws upon social psychology. My research combines computational modelling, experiments, and analysis of large-N survey data. I have a particular interests in studying polarisation and using Bayesian Networks and Agent-Based Simulations. I have a firm commitment to Open Science.

I enjoy teaching, with experience teaching Judgment and Decision Making, Statistics, and programming, particularly R. 

Awards

In 2025 I was awarded the Anne Treisman Prize by the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge for the best paper by a postdoctoral researcher for the article Young, Madsen and de-Wit (2025) Belief Polarization Can Be Caused by Disagreements Over Source Independence: Computational Modelling, Experimental Evidence, and Applicability to Real-World Politics. Cognition, 259, 106126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106126 

In 2019 I was awarded the Plotkin Prize by the Department of Psychology, University College London for best undergraduate dissertation. 

Blogposts

Faith and demographics: unveiling seemingly paradoxical trends in the UK for the King's College Policy Institute: Faith and demographics: unveiling seemingly paradoxical trends in the UK (uk-values.org)  

An overlooked type of polarization: Factional feuds within parties for Character & Context, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology's blog: An Overlooked Type of Polarization: Factional Feuds Within Parties | SPSP 

Labour's factions: more toxic than Brexit? for UK in a Changing Europe's blog: Labour’s factions: more toxic than Brexit? - UK in a changing Europe (ukandeu.ac.uk)