Marek Vranka
Biographic Data
| ID | 697602 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marek Vranka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marek |
| FAMILY NAME | Vranka |
| SIGNATURE | VRANKA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Charles University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3413-9062 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 228 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Allied commitments and public support for military interventions: A cross-national experiment
Recent survey experiments have found that the public in NATO member states is more supportive of intervening militarily on behalf of formal allies than non-allies. However, we lack empirical evidence on whether this effect of alliance treaties generalizes to non-NATO and non-Western countries. To fill this gap, we conducted a preregistered cross-national survey experiment on population samples ( N = 7200) in two Western NATO countries (the United…
How to React in the Case of Powerful Transgressors: Kill Them With Kindness or Punishment
When wrongdoing is committed by a powerful superior, victims face a strategic dilemma: punish (e.g., confront and report), avoid or forgive. Moral‐repair and restorative‐justice perspectives suggest that conciliatory responses can elicit guilt and restore cooperation, whereas punitive responses may deter misconduct but risk backlash, especially in situations of power asymmetry. Across four studies, we examined both sides of this dyadic process: h…
Mind over Metal: Public Opinion on Autonomous Weapons in the United States, Brazil, Germany, and China
Autonomous weapons exemplify the tension between technology and ethics in modern warfare. While observational studies suggest that the public holds negative attitudes toward the use of these weapons, experimental evidence from the United States shows that their acceptance is context dependent. This suggests that Americans may hold only a weak preference for “mind over metal,” and the aversion observed in polls may not reflect deeply held moral co…
Atomic responsiveness: How public opinion shapes elite beliefs and preferences on nuclear weapon use
A recent wave of survey experiments has advanced scholarly understanding of public attitudes towards the use of nuclear weapons. In this article, we address the central question: can public opinion influence decision-makers’ views on nuclear weapon use? We bridge this critical gap in the literature with a survey experiment conducted on samples of UK parliamentarians and US and UK government employees in official policy roles. We varied public sup…
Reward Perception, But Not Reward Inequality Is Associated With Increased Dishonesty
The present experiment explores the link between perceived unfairness of low rewards for work and propensity for dishonest actions. Participants engaged in a sorting task where they had the opportunity to break rules to increase their rewards while harming a third party. While manipulation of reward unfairness did not significantly increase dishonesty, dissatisfaction with absolute reward levels and the emphasis on proportionality as a moral foun…
Elite-public gaps in attitudes towards Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: New evidence from a survey of Czech parliamentarians and citizens
Public support for arms control in the third nuclear age: Cross-national survey and elite cues experiment in Nato countries
Scholars argue that the world has entered the “third nuclear age,” defined by profound technological change, destabilizing arms races among great powers, and the unraveling of existing arms control structures. In this paper, we introduce a new theory of the sources and strength of public attitudes toward nuclear arms control in this new era of global nuclear politics. We propose that, due to the complex and overly technicist nature of arms contro…
Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Effectiveness of Ex-Ante Honesty Oaths in Reducing Dishonesty Depends on Content
Dishonest behaviors such as tax evasion impose significant societal costs. Ex-ante honesty oaths—commitments to honesty before action—have been proposed as interventions to counteract dishonest behavior, but the heterogeneity in findings across operationalizations calls their effectiveness into question. We tested 21 honesty oaths (including a baseline oath)—proposed, evaluated, and selected by 44 expert researchers—and a no-oath condition in a m…
Elite-public gaps in support for nuclear and chemical strikes: New evidence from a survey of British parliamentarians and citizens
In this research article, we provide empirical evidence for the hypothesis that there are substantial elite-public gaps in attitudes toward the military use of nuclear and chemical weapons. We designed and preregistered an original survey investigating support for nuclear and chemical strikes in a hypothetical scenario and fielded it to representative samples of British citizens and parliamentarians. Our results provide strong empirical support f…
Moral hypocrisy and the dichotomy of hypothetical versus real choices in prosocial behavior
Algorithmic Aversion? Experimental Evidence on the Elasticity of Public Attitudes to “Killer Robots
Lethal autonomous weapon systems present a prominent yet controversial military innovation.While previous studies have indicated that the deployment of "killer robots" would face considerable public opposition, our understanding of the elasticity of these attitudes, contingent on different factors, remains limited.In this article, we aim to explore the sensitivity of public attitudes to three specific factors: concerns about the accident-prone na…
Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content
The “Commitment Trap” Revisited: Experimental Evidence on Ambiguous Nuclear Threats
In this paper, we provide an empirical test for the theoretical claim that ambiguous nuclear threats create a “commitment trap” for American leaders: when deterrence fails, supposedly they are more likely to order the use of nuclear weapons to avoid domestic audience costs for backing down. We designed an original survey experiment and fielded it to a sample of 1,000 U.S. citizens. We found no evidence of a commitment trap when ambiguous nuclear …
Autonomous weapons and ethical judgments: Experimental evidence on attitudes toward the military use of “killer robots”
The lesser evil? Experimental evidence on the strength of nuclear and chemical weapon “taboos”
We present findings of a survey experiment on a sample of 2350 American and British citizens, in which we examined attitudes towards nuclear and chemical strikes. Our findings demonstrate that even though the public accurately judges nuclear weapons as more destructive and indiscriminate, it is still more averse to the use of chemical than nuclear weapons. Our follow up study has shown that individuals are significantly more likely to associate c…
Author Correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
The globalizability of temporal discounting
Economic inequality is associated with preferences for smaller, immediate gains over larger, delayed ones. Such temporal discounting may feed into rising global inequality, yet it is unclear whether it is a function of choice preferences or norms, or rather the absence of sufficient resources for immediate needs. It is also not clear whether these reflect true differences in choice patterns between income groups. We tested temporal discounting an…
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
Disarming Arguments: Public Opinion and Nuclear Abolition
While many consider the threat posed by nuclear weapons to be greater than ever, the general public has largely lost interest in the issue of nuclear disarmament. To reinvigorate public support for a nuclear-weapons-free world, disarmament advocates have presented a range of arguments about the necessity of nuclear abolition. This article presents original data from a public-opinion survey of US citizens to examine the relative effectiveness of t…
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
The general fault in our fault lines
The Challenge of Human Psychology to Effective Management of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Sacrificing Oneself or Another: The Difference Between Prescriptive and Normative Judgments in Moral Evaluation
When asked whether to sacrifice oneself or another person to save others, one might think that people would consider sacrificing themselves rather than someone else as the right and appropriate course of action-thus showing an other-serving bias. So far however, most studies found instances of a self-serving bias-people say they would rather sacrifice others. In three experiments using trolley-like dilemmas, we tested whether an other-serving bia…
How moral foundations shape public approval of nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes: New evidence from experimental surveys
In this article, we present the results of two survey experiments on public support for nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes. We examined how moral values of individuals interact with the approval of different kinds of strikes and with the effects of information about the ingroup and out-group fatalities. Our results show that while the public is more averse to the employment of chemical weapons than to the conduct of nuclear or convention…
Investigating Variation in Replicability: A “Many Labs” Replication Project
Although replication is a central tenet of science, direct replications are rare in psychology. This research tested variation in the replicability of 13 classic and contemporary effects across 36 independent samples totaling 6,344 participants. In the aggregate, 10 effects replicated consistently. One effect – imagined contact reducing prejudice – showed weak support for replicability. And two effects – flag priming influencing conservatism and …
The general fault in our fault lines
How moral foundations shape public approval of nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes: New evidence from experimental surveys
In this article, we present the results of two survey experiments on public support for nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes. We examined how moral values of individuals interact with the approval of different kinds of strikes and with the effects of information about the ingroup and out-group fatalities. Our results show that while the public is more averse to the employment of chemical weapons than to the conduct of nuclear or convention…
Commentaries and Rejoinder on
While direct replications such as the “Many Labs” project are extremely valuable in testing the reliability of published findings across laboratories, they reflect the common reliance in psychology on single vignettes or stimuli, which limits the scope of the conclusions that can be reached. New experimental tools and statistical techniques make it easier to routinely sample stimuli, and to appropriately treat them as random factors. We encourage…
Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries
The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries ( N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status a…
The lesser evil? Experimental evidence on the strength of nuclear and chemical weapon “taboos”
We present findings of a survey experiment on a sample of 2350 American and British citizens, in which we examined attitudes towards nuclear and chemical strikes. Our findings demonstrate that even though the public accurately judges nuclear weapons as more destructive and indiscriminate, it is still more averse to the use of chemical than nuclear weapons. Our follow up study has shown that individuals are significantly more likely to associate c…
The globalizability of temporal discounting
Economic inequality is associated with preferences for smaller, immediate gains over larger, delayed ones. Such temporal discounting may feed into rising global inequality, yet it is unclear whether it is a function of choice preferences or norms, or rather the absence of sufficient resources for immediate needs. It is also not clear whether these reflect true differences in choice patterns between income groups. We tested temporal discounting an…
Disarming Arguments: Public Opinion and Nuclear Abolition
While many consider the threat posed by nuclear weapons to be greater than ever, the general public has largely lost interest in the issue of nuclear disarmament. To reinvigorate public support for a nuclear-weapons-free world, disarmament advocates have presented a range of arguments about the necessity of nuclear abolition. This article presents original data from a public-opinion survey of US citizens to examine the relative effectiveness of t…
Elite-public gaps in support for nuclear and chemical strikes: New evidence from a survey of British parliamentarians and citizens
In this research article, we provide empirical evidence for the hypothesis that there are substantial elite-public gaps in attitudes toward the military use of nuclear and chemical weapons. We designed and preregistered an original survey investigating support for nuclear and chemical strikes in a hypothetical scenario and fielded it to representative samples of British citizens and parliamentarians. Our results provide strong empirical support f…
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
Moral hypocrisy and the dichotomy of hypothetical versus real choices in prosocial behavior
The “Commitment Trap” Revisited: Experimental Evidence on Ambiguous Nuclear Threats
In this paper, we provide an empirical test for the theoretical claim that ambiguous nuclear threats create a “commitment trap” for American leaders: when deterrence fails, supposedly they are more likely to order the use of nuclear weapons to avoid domestic audience costs for backing down. We designed an original survey experiment and fielded it to a sample of 1,000 U.S. citizens. We found no evidence of a commitment trap when ambiguous nuclear …
Autonomous weapons and ethical judgments: Experimental evidence on attitudes toward the military use of “killer robots”
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
Elite-public gaps in attitudes towards Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: New evidence from a survey of Czech parliamentarians and citizens
Algorithmic Aversion? Experimental Evidence on the Elasticity of Public Attitudes to “Killer Robots
Lethal autonomous weapon systems present a prominent yet controversial military innovation.While previous studies have indicated that the deployment of "killer robots" would face considerable public opposition, our understanding of the elasticity of these attitudes, contingent on different factors, remains limited.In this article, we aim to explore the sensitivity of public attitudes to three specific factors: concerns about the accident-prone na…
Consumer Decision Making in the Information Age
Atomic responsiveness: How public opinion shapes elite beliefs and preferences on nuclear weapon use
A recent wave of survey experiments has advanced scholarly understanding of public attitudes towards the use of nuclear weapons. In this article, we address the central question: can public opinion influence decision-makers’ views on nuclear weapon use? We bridge this critical gap in the literature with a survey experiment conducted on samples of UK parliamentarians and US and UK government employees in official policy roles. We varied public sup…
Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content
What makes euthanasia justifiable? The role of symptoms’ characteristics and interindividual differences
The consideration of laypeople's views of conditions under which euthanasia is justifiable is important for policy decisions. In an online survey of US respondents, we examined how patient's symptoms influence justifiability of euthanasia. Euthanasia was judged more justifiable for conditions associated with physical suffering and negative impact on other people. The weight given to physical suffering and negative impact on others in evaluation o…
Investigating Variation in Replicability: A “Many Labs” Replication Project
Although replication is a central tenet of science, direct replications are rare in psychology. This research tested variation in the replicability of 13 classic and contemporary effects across 36 independent samples totaling 6,344 participants. In the aggregate, 10 effects replicated consistently. One effect – imagined contact reducing prejudice – showed weak support for replicability. And two effects – flag priming influencing conservatism and …
Commentaries and Rejoinder on
While direct replications such as the “Many Labs” project are extremely valuable in testing the reliability of published findings across laboratories, they reflect the common reliance in psychology on single vignettes or stimuli, which limits the scope of the conclusions that can be reached. New experimental tools and statistical techniques make it easier to routinely sample stimuli, and to appropriately treat them as random factors. We encourage…
X good things in life: Processing fluency effects in the “Three good things in life” exercise
Consumer Decision Making in the Information Age
What makes euthanasia justifiable? The role of symptoms’ characteristics and interindividual differences
The consideration of laypeople's views of conditions under which euthanasia is justifiable is important for policy decisions. In an online survey of US respondents, we examined how patient's symptoms influence justifiability of euthanasia. Euthanasia was judged more justifiable for conditions associated with physical suffering and negative impact on other people. The weight given to physical suffering and negative impact on others in evaluation o…
Sacrificing Oneself or Another: The Difference Between Prescriptive and Normative Judgments in Moral Evaluation
When asked whether to sacrifice oneself or another person to save others, one might think that people would consider sacrificing themselves rather than someone else as the right and appropriate course of action-thus showing an other-serving bias. So far however, most studies found instances of a self-serving bias-people say they would rather sacrifice others. In three experiments using trolley-like dilemmas, we tested whether an other-serving bia…
How moral foundations shape public approval of nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes: New evidence from experimental surveys
In this article, we present the results of two survey experiments on public support for nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes. We examined how moral values of individuals interact with the approval of different kinds of strikes and with the effects of information about the ingroup and out-group fatalities. Our results show that while the public is more averse to the employment of chemical weapons than to the conduct of nuclear or convention…
Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries
The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries ( N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status a…
Disarming Arguments: Public Opinion and Nuclear Abolition
While many consider the threat posed by nuclear weapons to be greater than ever, the general public has largely lost interest in the issue of nuclear disarmament. To reinvigorate public support for a nuclear-weapons-free world, disarmament advocates have presented a range of arguments about the necessity of nuclear abolition. This article presents original data from a public-opinion survey of US citizens to examine the relative effectiveness of t…
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
The general fault in our fault lines
The Challenge of Human Psychology to Effective Management of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Autonomous weapons and ethical judgments: Experimental evidence on attitudes toward the military use of “killer robots”
The lesser evil? Experimental evidence on the strength of nuclear and chemical weapon “taboos”
We present findings of a survey experiment on a sample of 2350 American and British citizens, in which we examined attitudes towards nuclear and chemical strikes. Our findings demonstrate that even though the public accurately judges nuclear weapons as more destructive and indiscriminate, it is still more averse to the use of chemical than nuclear weapons. Our follow up study has shown that individuals are significantly more likely to associate c…
Author Correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
The globalizability of temporal discounting
Economic inequality is associated with preferences for smaller, immediate gains over larger, delayed ones. Such temporal discounting may feed into rising global inequality, yet it is unclear whether it is a function of choice preferences or norms, or rather the absence of sufficient resources for immediate needs. It is also not clear whether these reflect true differences in choice patterns between income groups. We tested temporal discounting an…
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
The “Commitment Trap” Revisited: Experimental Evidence on Ambiguous Nuclear Threats
In this paper, we provide an empirical test for the theoretical claim that ambiguous nuclear threats create a “commitment trap” for American leaders: when deterrence fails, supposedly they are more likely to order the use of nuclear weapons to avoid domestic audience costs for backing down. We designed an original survey experiment and fielded it to a sample of 1,000 U.S. citizens. We found no evidence of a commitment trap when ambiguous nuclear …
Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Effectiveness of Ex-Ante Honesty Oaths in Reducing Dishonesty Depends on Content
Dishonest behaviors such as tax evasion impose significant societal costs. Ex-ante honesty oaths—commitments to honesty before action—have been proposed as interventions to counteract dishonest behavior, but the heterogeneity in findings across operationalizations calls their effectiveness into question. We tested 21 honesty oaths (including a baseline oath)—proposed, evaluated, and selected by 44 expert researchers—and a no-oath condition in a m…
Elite-public gaps in support for nuclear and chemical strikes: New evidence from a survey of British parliamentarians and citizens
In this research article, we provide empirical evidence for the hypothesis that there are substantial elite-public gaps in attitudes toward the military use of nuclear and chemical weapons. We designed and preregistered an original survey investigating support for nuclear and chemical strikes in a hypothetical scenario and fielded it to representative samples of British citizens and parliamentarians. Our results provide strong empirical support f…
Moral hypocrisy and the dichotomy of hypothetical versus real choices in prosocial behavior
Algorithmic Aversion? Experimental Evidence on the Elasticity of Public Attitudes to “Killer Robots
Lethal autonomous weapon systems present a prominent yet controversial military innovation.While previous studies have indicated that the deployment of "killer robots" would face considerable public opposition, our understanding of the elasticity of these attitudes, contingent on different factors, remains limited.In this article, we aim to explore the sensitivity of public attitudes to three specific factors: concerns about the accident-prone na…
Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content
Atomic responsiveness: How public opinion shapes elite beliefs and preferences on nuclear weapon use
A recent wave of survey experiments has advanced scholarly understanding of public attitudes towards the use of nuclear weapons. In this article, we address the central question: can public opinion influence decision-makers’ views on nuclear weapon use? We bridge this critical gap in the literature with a survey experiment conducted on samples of UK parliamentarians and US and UK government employees in official policy roles. We varied public sup…
Psychology (19 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (9 works) · Public opinion (9 works) · Economics (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)