Research

I am a scholar of American political behavior whose research examines how citizens navigate information environments, form political judgments, and fulfill their democratic roles. My dissertation investigates how partisan identity, cognitive resources, and media environments shape perceptions of fact and opinion. By examining how political motivation influences the classification of empirical claims, this project offers insight into the erosion of shared factual foundations in democratic discourse.

My broader research agenda spans political behavior and political methodology. Across several projects, I study how citizens respond to political information, how they remember and evaluate governing performance, and how their judgments shape democratic accountability. This work includes research on the multidimensional structure of mass response tendencies on information tasks, the relationship between citizens’ understanding of unemployment and inflation and their sociotropic economic perceptions, and the implications of those perceptions for voting. Additional projects examine retrospective voting beyond the domain of economic performance, how religious voters reconcile candidates’ moral standing with their own beliefs, citizens’ capacity to act as democratic guardrails against undemocratic leaders, and the role of negativity predispositions in political judgment.

Working Papers

Conceptualizing and Measuring the Multidimensional Structure of Mass Response Tendencies

• Abstract: Conceptualizations of information status in the mass public often differentiate between the states of being informed, misinformed, and uninformed. Acknowledgment of this conceptual multidimensionality has helped spark valuable exploration of the nature and significance of political misinformation. Despite this multidimensional structure, empirical research on information status typically employs unidimensional measurement and estimation approaches. To facilitate alignment of conceptual, measurement, and modeling strategies, we develop and test an integrated multidimensional strategy. We implement and explore this strategy with data drawn from 2019 and 2024 U.S. national surveys on which respondents were asked to assess the veracity of public claims by prominent Democrats and Republicans. Our exercises show the integrated approach is easily implemented and supports valid inferences about information status. Substantive implications emerge regarding the forms of information response and the scope, antecedents, and symmetry of partisan response bias.

There but for Misfortune: The Impact of Economic Information and Misinformation on Voting in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election

• Abstract: We examine the link between people’s understandings of trends in unemployment and inflation and their sociotropic perceptions, and the connection between those perceptions and the 2024 presidential vote. To gauge information effects, we contrast observed patterns with results from simulations in which respondents’ levels of judgmental accuracy about unemployment and inflation are varied. Two key findings emerge. First, for partisans, economic information is inconsequential for sociotropic perceptions, and thus for electoral preferences. Second, independents connect economic information and misinformation to sociotropic judgments and the vote choice. Had independents possessed weaker understandings of economic data, Donald Trump may have won two additional states. Conversely, had independents possessed more economic knowledge, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris could have carried all or most of the swing states. These findings indicate that while polarization pushes partisans into positions of inconsequentiality, political information and misinformation yield profound impact via the actions of nonpartisans.

Creating measures of retrospective perceptions beyond economic indicators

• Abstract:

Guardrails, Accomplices, or Bystanders? Citizen Response to Undemocratic Elite Action

• Abstract: Democratic backsliding occurs when public officials win office through legitimate means and use the powers and resources available to them to erode democratic institutions and values. A nation’s citizens can be guardrails against such backsliding, accomplices in the process, or uncommitted bystanders. The greatest risk would occur if citizens prioritize fealty to specific leaders above the stability of democratic governance and defer to leaders’ endorsements of undemocratic individuals and actions. Prior research has demonstrated that short-term self-interest may motivate such deference, with citizens accepting democratic erosions in exchange for tangible policy gains. Conceiving of citizen response to elite messaging from the perspective of psychological theories of cue-taking, we assess whether policy benefits are needed for the mass public to accede to undemocratic elite positions. Data are obtained from two series of survey experiments fielded in the U.S. Across both sets of experiments, elite cues produce strong substantive effects, raising serious doubts regarding the capacity of citizens to function as guardrails against democratic backsliding.

A Targeted Strategy for Improving the Mass Public’s Capacity to Identify True and False Political Claims

• Abstract: As a complement to research on misinformation correction, we propose a targeted form of misinformation prevention. We develop a protocol for targeted prebunking based on Donald Trump’s fact-checked claims and validated with data on a broader presidential cohort. After identifying elements of Trump’s rhetoric that correspond with variation in veracity, we embedded an experiment in a national YouGov survey. Respondents assessed whether twelve statements made by Trump were true, with half of respondents randomly assigned to receive instruction regarding the identified indicators of veracity. Results demonstrate the utility of targeted interventions based on linguistic markers. Where training applied to all twelve statements, the count of correct responses increased by nearly 20 percent versus the control group and nearly tripled above-chance performance on true-false statements. These gains varied only minimally as a function of political sophistication and affective partisan bias, suggesting they may have broad utility among the mass public.

Moral tradeoffs for candidate choices: When do Evangelical voters excuse misconduct

• Abstract: This paper examines the shift in evangelical Republicans’ perceptions of the personal immorality of elected officials before and after Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence, as well as the factors influencing these moral perceptions. We draw guidance from the theory of situational morality, which posits that one’s moral standards are context-dependent and can shift according to situational demands. Our analysis reveals that in 2016, evangelicals had become significantly more tolerant of moral failings compared to 2011, and also in contrast with nonevangelicals. The 2018 survey analysis identifies a crucial factor shaping immorality tolerance: partisan cues. Evangelical Republicans demonstrate greater tolerance for the immorality of elected officials when primed to think about Trump, compared to other priming conditions. This research emphasizes the primacy of partisan identity over moral convictions, providing insights into how evangelicals reconcile their ethical values with support for candidates whose personal conduct challenges those values.

Does Partisan Preference Moderate the Impact of Dispositional Negativity?

• Abstract: A negativity bias exists when individuals react more intensely to a negative stimulus than to a positive stimulus of similar magnitude. This bias has been shown to vary in strength at the individual level. This trait-like variation, dispositional negativity, means that some individuals characteristically respond modestly more intensely to negative than to positive stimuli, while much sharper effects occur for other individuals. We conduct three survey experiments to test the impact of dispositional negativity on support for incumbent officials in partisan contexts. Results reveal strong effects of dispositional negativity along with evidence that those effects are neither muted nor magnified by partisan preference.