Who do we blame when bad things happen? Has division in American society made us less sympathetic to victims of tragedies? In previous trying times (e.g., 9/11 and Columbine), Americans rallied together to support victims and seek government solutions. In a highly polarized era, however, we have witnessed further division rather than unity. In this paper, I leverage original, pre-registered survey experiments to examine how much Americans blame and sympathize with someone who has tragically died from COVID-19. The studies find consistent evidence that partisans blame victims who hold an anti-vaccine perspective, regardless of partisanship. Less consistent evidence suggests that Democrats also blame victims who were Republican, but less than they do victims who held anti-vaccination views. Further, partisans are less sympathetic when the victim was anti-vaccine, but Democrats and Republicans are also less sympathetic when the person who died was an outpartisan. These results indicate that animosity towards outpartisans persists even through tragedy, but demonstrates limits to affective partisan polarization paired with evidence of rational blame and sympathy responses.

This Registered Report examines urban-rural tensions in Sweden – a historically egalitarian, multi-party welfare state with strong geographical equalization schemes, making it a least-likely case for place-based resentment theories. Using an online survey experiment (n = 2,051), we measured resentment through perceptions of in-group and out-group, and by experimentally varying whether political statements came from rural or urban politicians. Rural respondents showed stronger in-group identification, greater place-based resentment, and more negative stereotypes of their out-group than urban respondents. However, we find no evidence of place-based bias – that is, that rural respondents are less receptive to urban politicians’ statements, or vice versa. These findings reveal clear urban-rural tensions in a context often considered unlikely for such divides, underscoring the role of regional identities in political discourse and policy in multi-party welfare states beyond Anglo-Saxon settings, while indicating that these tensions do not translate into systematic bias in evaluating political statements.

Americans increasingly confront policy messages not from high-profile political figures but from everyday citizens. Much is known about the effects of racial source cues from well-known political figures with salient racial identities. Less is known about how subtle racial cues from non-recognizable sources affect Americans’ support for policies that are race-targeted and those that are not. In this paper, I conduct a randomized experiment that varies a cue of the source’s racial identity and the type of policy for which the source advocates. I uncover little evidence for the hypothesis that subtle racial source cues activate racial attitudes that lead Americans to racialize policies that are (at least explicitly) race-neutral. I find instead that subtle cues of a Black vs. White source decrease support only for race-targeted policies. I reason that two mechanisms possibly driving this effect are: (1) subtle racial source cues become salient for only race-targeted policies, thereby activating racial stereotypes for these policies but not others, and (2) Black sources are perceived as less objective policy messengers when the policy explicitly aims to rectify injustices against Black Americans. More generally, the paper’s overall findings suggest that subtle racial cues of who advocates for race-targeted policies matter for whether such policies can garner the public support they presumably need to come to fruition.

Solar geoengineering offers a speculative means to cool the planet by reflecting solar radiation into space. While some research suggests that awareness of solar geoengineering could reduce public support for decarbonization through a moral hazard mechanism, other studies indicate that it could serve as a “clarion call” that motivates further action. Using a pre-registered factorial design, we assess how sharing balanced information on solar geoengineering affects attitudes toward decarbonization policies and climate attitudes among 2,509 US residents. We do not find that solar geoengineering information affects support for decarbonization on average, though it may increase support among initially less supportive subgroups; moreover, this information tends to increase the perception that climate change is a daunting problem that cannot be resolved without decarbonization. Our results suggest that concerns about moral hazard should not discourage research on solar geoengineering – as long as the public encounters realistic messages about solar geoengineering’s role.

Scholars increasingly conceptualize populism by whether politicians use people-centric and anti-elite appeals that pit a homogeneous people against a corrupt elite. These appeals reflect “thin” ideology because they offer no programmatic content and thus politicians must pair these appeals with more substantive positions, termed their “host” (or thick) ideology, which often consists of nativism on the right (e.g., espousing anti-immigrant positions) and socialism on the left (e.g., prioritizing redistribution). An emerging literature has thus sought to estimate whether populists garner support due to their thin ideology or their substantive host ideology. To date, no research has validated whether populism treatments (1) truly operationalize populist thin ideology, and (2) do so without manipulating host ideology. Results from three conjoint validation experiments fielded in both the United States and the United Kingdom show that thin ideology treatments successfully manipulate the underlying concepts but caution that some operationalizations also affect perceptions of host ideology.

As digital platforms become a key channel for political advertising, there are continued calls for expanding regulation of digital political ads as a distinct content category. However, designing policies to meet these demands requires us first to decipher what the public perceives a “political” ad to be. In this article, we report two preregistered experiments to understand factors that drive public perceptions of what makes an ad political. We find that both advertiser-level cues and content-level cues play an independent role in shaping perceptions. To a lesser extent, participants also attribute political meaning to ads that clash with their own preferences. These patterns were replicated in a conjoint study using artificial ads and in an experiment using real-world ads drawn from the Facebook Ad Library. Our findings serve as an important benchmark for evaluating proposed definitions of political ads from policymakers and platforms.

Despite general public support, efforts to build affordable housing often encounter stiff resistance due to “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) attitudes, which are often rooted in false or unsupported beliefs about affordable housing and its impacts on surrounding communities. Would correcting these misperceptions increase support for building affordable housing? To answer this question, we conducted a preregistered survey experiment measuring how support for affordable housing in the U.S. varies at different distances from where respondents live (one-eighth of a mile away, two miles away, or in their state). Our results indicate that correcting stereotypes about affordable housing and misperceptions about its effects increase support for affordable housing. Contrary to expectations, these effects are often larger for affordable housing near the respondent’s home (rather than at the state level), suggesting that debunking myths about affordable housing may help to counter NIMBY attitudes.

This paper examines the effectiveness of media literacy interventions in countering misinformation among in-transit migrants in Mexico and Colombia. We conducted experiments to assess whether well-known strategies for fighting misinformation are effective for this understudied yet particularly vulnerable population. We evaluate the impact of digital media literacy tips on migrants’ ability to identify false information and their intentions to share migration-related content. We find that these interventions can effectively decrease migrants’ intentions to share misinformation. We also find suggestive evidence that asking participants to consider accuracy may inadvertently influence their sharing behavior by acting as a behavioral nudge, rather than simply eliciting their sharing intentions. Additionally, the interventions reduced trust in social media as an information source while maintaining trust in official channels. The findings suggest that incorporating digital literacy tips into official websites could be a cost-effective strategy to reduce misinformation circulation among migrant populations.

This study examines whether Americans are more supportive of immigration when migrants share their partisan preferences. To address this question, we embedded a preregistered experiment in a nationally representative survey that was fielded the week before the 2024 US Presidential Election. The main experimental treatment provided information that some immigrant groups tend to favor Donald Trump and the Republican Party. This information reduced support for immigration among Democrats and increased support for immigration among Republicans. Our findings suggest that immigrants’ political identities impact public support for immigration. They also suggest that Trump’s apparent gains among immigrant voters in the 2024 election have the potential to reduce partisan polarization over immigration in the future.

Scholarship has identified key determinants of people’s belief in misinformation predominantly from English-language contexts. However, multilingual citizens often consume news media in multiple languages. We study how the language of consumption affects belief in misinformation and true news articles in multilingual environments. We suggest that language may pass on specific cues affecting how bilinguals evaluate information. In a ten-week survey experiment with bilingual adults in Ukraine, we measured if subjects evaluating information in their less-preferred language were less likely to believe it. We find those who prefer Ukrainian are less likely to believe both false and true stories written in Russian by approximately 0.2 standard deviation units. Conversely, those who prefer Russian show increased belief in false stories in Ukrainian, though this effect is less robust. A secondary digital media literacy intervention does not increase discernment as it reduces belief in both true and false stories equally.

Why do some politicians face greater backlash for using insensitive language against identity groups while others do not? Existing explanations focus either on the content of speech or the context in which it occurs. In this article, we propose an integrated framework that considers both and test it using a preregistered conjoint survey on a national U.S. sample. Our findings provide partial support for our expectations. Subjects react most negatively to insensitive speech when the target belongs to their own identity group, when aggravating circumstances exist, and when politicians are of an opposing political party. Our article extends growing scholarship on speech scandals, which has largely explained the fates of politicians as a function of a small number of causative variables in isolation.

Globally, prejudicial attitudes toward women persist. By taking anti-discriminatory stances, value-oriented organizations – e.g., political parties and religious denominations – can tap into group identities to shape their members’ attitudes. We know much less about the role of organizations that are not inherently value-oriented – such as sports teams – in accomplishing the same. Yet, as various campaigns by sports teams worldwide indicate, this is precisely what non-value-oriented organizations increasingly attempt to do. Can football team fandom be leveraged to promote gender-egalitarian attitudes? We address this question with data from a national survey in Brazil and a survey experiment conducted in partnership with a major Brazilian football club. We find that while football team identity is salient and may be leveraged to change displayed social attitudes, the Club’s anti-sexism campaign inadvertently increased men’s expressed prejudice toward women in football – although it may have also improved institutional trust among women.

Radical right behavior and support for radical right parties have increased across many countries in recent decades. A growing body of research has argued that, similar to the spread of other extremist behaviors, this is due to an erosion of political norms. This suggests that re-stigmatizing radical right parties might be an effective way of countering their growth. We use a survey experiment in Spain that compares the effectiveness of three theory-driven interventions aimed at increasing political stigma against a radical right party. Contrary to expectations, we fail to validate the efficacy of vignette-based attempts at stigmatization, instead identifying some backlash effects. Methodologically, our findings underscore the importance of validating treatments, as we show that simple attempts at re-stigmatization can produce null or opposing effects to their intended purpose. Theoretically, our results support the idea that normalization is a “one-way street,” in that re-stigmatizing parties is difficult after a party has become normalized.

This study examines how racial identity affects legislative responsiveness in Mexico using an email-based audit experiment. Emails from simulated Indigenous, Mestiza, and European-White constituents were sent to all 626 federal legislators to test whether perceived identity shapes replies and their quality. Contrary to expectations, Indigenous-named constituents received significantly higher response rates that were more personalized and helpful than their European-White counterparts, while Mestiza-named constituents showed no significant differences in response rates. We found no coalition-based differences, though power was limited, and responsiveness declined in districts with larger Indigenous populations, revealing how national inclusion norms may be moderated by local demographic and political dynamics.

Past research indicates that support for conservatism increases when individuals perceive threat to their group’s social status – i.e., prestige and respect. However, the causal link between status threat and increased electoral support for conservative candidates has not been established. Most prior studies rely on observational data, and it remains unclear how the effect of status threat on candidate support varies depending on the specific conservative policies adopted by candidates. Additionally, previous research has not fully addressed whether and how these effects are constrained by voters’ party loyalty. This article investigates these questions by conducting a joint experiment combining vignette and conjoint designs. White Americans were randomly exposed to status threat communication, and then choose between different hypothetical candidates with varying degrees of conservatism on various issues. The results show large effects of candidates’ issue positions and partisanship, but very little effect of status threat.

How can states credibly commit to peace and assure other countries? One source of credible assurance identified in previous studies is the cost to a state’s international reputation. When a state violates a prior commitment to peace, it suffers reputational damage, which can be costly in various ways. These reputational costs, in turn, serve as a tying-hands signal that enhances the credibility of peaceful commitments. Nonetheless, empirical research on whether and under what conditions such reputation costs arise remains limited. To address this gap, this study conducts a preregistered survey experiment in the United States, using a hypothetical scenario involving military buildups by China and Japan. The results indicate that violating commitments to peace undermines the credibility of future commitments, particularly when the violator is a rival country. These findings suggest that, with some limitations, international reputation costs can serve as a reliable mechanism for ensuring the credibility of assurances.

A key challenge when surveying political elites is recruitment. Low response rates can lead to biased samples and underpowered designs, threatening the validity of descriptive and experimental scholarship. In a randomized control trial, we test the effects of sending postal invitations in a large survey of local elected officials. We find that German and UK local politicians are more likely to complete the survey if invited by postal mail, rather than simply by email. Recruitment mode does not impact the quality of responses but shapes the population of local officials recruited. Officials invited via postal letter were more likely to come from smaller municipalities and less likely to have a college degree. Costs per response are relatively high but can be reduced as we learn more about selection into elite surveys.

The justifiably famous “Asian disease” experiment (ADE) by Tversky and Kahneman established that choices involving uncertainty can be dependent on framing. Description emphasizing gains induced much higher preference for choices in which outcomes were described as certain rather than probabilistic, as compared to description emphasizing losses. The vignette for the ADE involved disease mitigation, and the COVID pandemic gave it much-enhanced realism and immediacy. An attempt to replicate the ADE during the pandemic, however, failed to produce the original results. Other, contemporaneous replications, by contrast, matched the original, leaving open the question of when such framing effects occur.