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Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (78)
This study examines voting in the 2022 United States congressional elections, contests that were widely expected to produce a sizable defeat for Democratic candidates for largely economic reasons. Based on a representative national probability sample of voters interviewed in both 2020 and 2022, individuals who changed their vote from one party's co...
Using a measure designed to capture intolerance on both sides of the political spectrum, I find that opinions favoring the abridgement of free speech rights are overwhelmingly targeted at right-leaning groups, and racist groups in particular. Consistent with recent studies, Democrats are found to be less tolerant than Republicans of speech they dis...
This study examines whether rising polarization in Americans’ partisan judgments has positive implications for political participation. Drawing on cross-sectional and panel survey data, we find evidence that polarized judgments are related to pre-election intent to vote, as well as to post-election self-reported voter turnout. Polarized evaluations...
Vallier’s analysis of the empirical literature on social trust and political polarization is an admirable attempt to integrate empirical findings into political philosophy. Nonetheless, it may not go far enough toward explicating what is and what is not the problem. The popular understanding of increasing political polarization does not distinguish...
What difference does it make if people attribute the loss of manufacturing jobs to trade as opposed to automation? Attributions of responsibility for social problems help shape mass opinion. In this study I use two experiments, including one nationally representative probability survey-experiment, to examine the consequences of attributing job loss...
What effect does seeing a member of a historically marginalized group in high-level office have on attitudes toward government among those who identify with that group? We hypothesize that, when salient, increased descriptive representation will increase feelings of government responsiveness among members of historically marginalized groups. Moreov...
Despite their less vulnerable economic status, white individuals' attitudes toward overseas trade in the United States may have become more protectionist than those of economically disadvantaged minorities. We present results from five different studies examining two different ways in which trade may have become racialized. First, we examine the ex...
Opinions toward gay marriage, also known as same-sex marriage, have become dramatically more favorable in the last 20 years. Given the more accepting attitudes of younger Americans, generational replacement is one widely noted engine of change. However, the pace of shifts in public attitudes has been too rapid for this to be the sole explanation. I...
Are liberals truly more likely to drink lattes than conservatives? In this study, we first use a representative national survey to address this unanswered question. On confirmation, we examine three hypotheses about why this relationship exists. Our results led to a fundamental reinterpretation of what it means to be a “latte liberal.”
Significance
Support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 election was widely attributed to citizens who were “left behind” economically. These claims were based on the strong cross-sectional relationship between Trump support and lacking a college education. Using a representative panel from 2012 to 2016, I find that change in financial wellbeing had l...
I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to Morgan’s article, which is a critique of my recent publication (Mutz 2018). I will restrict my response to matters concerning the data and analysis, excluding issues such as whether the journal PNAS is appropriately named (Morgan this issue:3) as well as Morgan’s views about how this work was cov...
Using a population-based survey experiment, this study evaluates the role of in-group favoritism in influencing American attitudes toward international trade. By systematically altering which countries gain or lose from a given trade policy (Americans and/or people in trading partner countries), we vary the role that in-group favoritism should play...
Widespread concern over the credibility of published results has led to scrutiny of statistical practices. We address one aspect of this problem that stems from the use of balance tests in conjunction with experimental data. When random assignment is botched, due either to mistakes in implementation or differential attrition, balance tests can be a...
The Positive Case for Negative Campaigning. By Mattes Kyle and Redlawsk David P. . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 256p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. - Volume 15 Issue 1 - Diana Mutz
Response to Kyle Mattes and David P. Redlawsk’s review of In—Your-Face Politics: The Consequences of Uncivil Media - Volume 15 Issue 1 - Diana Mutz
The only long term trend data on trust in the American press comes from the General Social Survey (GSS). The erosion of trust in the press as measured by the GSS indicator is indisputable, but its implications for the functioning of American democracy depend on what, precisely, is being measured. In this study we use an experimental design embedded...
Did the American public become more protectionist during the Great Recession of 2007–09? If so, why? During this period, many observers expressed concern that rising unemployment would stimulate protectionist pressures. The results of this study indicate that although increased unemployment did not affect the trade preferences of most Americans, in...
Few empirical studies suggest that fictional stories can influence political opinions. Nonetheless, in this study I demonstrate the relevance of Harry Potter consumption to oppositional attitudes toward Donald Trump and his worldview. Using multivariate observational models and panel data from 2014 to 2016, results suggest that the lessons of the H...
In this essay, we closely examine three aspects of the Reporting Guidelines for this journal, as described by Gerber et al. (2014,
Journal of Experimental Political Science
1(1): 81–98) in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Experimental Political Science. These include manipulation checks and when the reporting of response rates is appropriate....
Incentivizing the Manuscript-Review System Using REX - Volume 48 Issue S1 - Diana C. Mutz
Americans are disgusted with watching politicians screaming and yelling at one another on television. But does all the noise really make a difference? Drawing on numerous studies, Diana Mutz provides the first comprehensive look at the consequences of in-your-face politics. Her book contradicts the conventional wisdom by documenting both the benefi...
In this paper, we provide one of the first systematic analyses of gender's effect on trade attitudes. We draw on a unique representative national survey of American workers that allows us to evaluate a variety of potential explanations for gender differences in attitudes toward free trade and open markets more generally. We find that existing expla...
Synthesizing several theories about the likely impact of case reports in the news, we propose that the impact of featuring identified victims in a news story is contingent on the degree of similarity between the audience member and the identified victims. We execute a population-based survey experiment involving immigration policy to examine our th...
Economists have argued that outsourcing is another form of international trade. However, based on a representative national survey of Americans conducted in 2007 and 2009, the distribution of preferences on these two issues appears to be quite different. This article examines the origins of attitudes toward outsourcing, focusing on the extent to wh...
In “The Challenge of Measuring Media Exposure: Reply to Dilliplane, Goldman, and Mutz,” Markus Prior suggests that scholars should avoid using a new method of measuring exposure to political television that we evaluated in a recent article published in the American Journal of Political Science. We respond to each of his criticisms, concluding that...
In response to my book's finding that there is a tradeoff between two apparently desirable traits—a propensity to participate in politics, on the one hand, and to expose oneself to disagreeable political ideas, on the other—symposium participants suggest a number of reasons why this tradeoff should not trouble participatory democratic theorists. On...
For many research purposes, scholars need reliable and valid survey measures of the extent to which people have been exposed to various kinds of political content in mass media. Nonetheless, good measures of media exposure, and of exposure to political television in particular, have proven elusive. Increasingly fragmented audiences for political te...
There is a huge difference between public perceptions of the power of media in elections and academic evidence of its influence. This gap stems from the fact that the public uses different forms of evidence than academics use to infer media power. This essay outlines the reasons for this great divide, then highlights the seriousness of its conseque...
In the analysis of experimental data, randomization checks, also known as balance tests, are used to indicate whether a randomization has produced balance on various characteristics across experimental conditions. Randomization checks are popular in many fields although their merits have yet to be established. The grounds on which balance tests are...
Three central themes that have persisted throughout the history of research on communication and public opinion are examined
in light of past, present, and future research. These themes include (1) ongoing concerns surrounding the political diversity
of the communication environment; (2) selective exposure to political communication; and (3) the in...
This chapter focuses on the occasion of Republican John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential running mate because this event signaled to many voters an abrupt change in McCain's ideological position. In other words, Palin served as an exogenous shock, with the potential to “send a message” to the public about McCain's ideologica...
Citizens are political simpletons—that is only a modest exaggeration of a common characterization of voters. Certainly, there is no shortage of evidence of citizens' limited political knowledge, even about matters of the highest importance, along with inconsistencies in their thinking, some glaring by any standard. But this picture of citizens all...
Population-based survey experiments have become an invaluable tool for social scientists struggling to generalize laboratory-based results, and for survey researchers besieged by uncertainties about causality. Thanks to technological advances in recent years, experiments can now be administered to random samples of the population to which a theory...
We hypothesize that in the real world, as opposed to the lab, the norm is for people to experience friendly media that favor their political predispositions when political favoritism is perceived at all. For this reason, media are generally limited in their ability to create cross-cutting exposure. We test this hypothesis using representative surve...
Using the most extensive dataset available on the 2008 election, I examine the impact of dog ownership on presidential vote preference. Canines were elevated to the status of a campaign issue when, during the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama publicly promised his daughters a dog after the election was over, a campaign promise that has since been fulfill...
Both political leaders and the general public frequently express concerns about the influence of fictional programming on public attitudes toward real world political issues. Nonetheless, fictional television has been assumed by scholars to have limited consequences for real world policy views. Our study re-examines this assumption using an experim...
In this chapter we draw on evidence from the 2008 general election to evaluate the effects of Republican John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential running mate. Our interest is not in Palin, nor in vice-presidential candidates, per se, but rather in what this particular case tells us about the electoral effects of an abrupt chan...
As of the early 21st century, one of the most popular uses of the internet is for online shopping. In this study I examine
how online purchasing affects levels of generalized social trust, a quality widely believed to be central to the health and
well-being of contemporary societies. Drawing on two original studies, including an experiment embedded...
Although it is widely acknowledged that an understanding of mass attitudes about trade is crucial to the political economy of foreign commerce, only a handful of studies have addressed this topic. These studies have focused largely on testing two models, both of which emphasize that trade preferences are shaped by how trade affects an individual's...
To what extent do online discussion spaces expose participants to political talk and to cross-cutting political views in particular? Drawing on a representative national sample of over 1000 Americans reporting participation in chat rooms or message boards, we examine the types of online discussion spaces that create opportunities for cross-cutting...
When and how can institutions lead public opinion? Scholarly controversy exists over whether even a highly esteemed institution such as the Supreme Court can move mass opinion. In this study we use an experimental design embedded within a representative national survey to examine these questions in a context involving multiple institutions and mult...
To further dialogue between theory and research on deliberative democracy, I advocate abandoning tests of deliberative theory per se and instead developing "middle-range" theories that are each important, specifiable, and falsifiable parts of deliberative democratic theory. By replacing vaguely defined entities with more concrete, circumscribed con...
How do Americans acquire the impression that their political foes have some understandable basis for their views, and thus represent a legitimate opposition? How do they come to believe that reasonable people may disagree on any given political controversy? Given that few people talk regularly to those of opposing perspectives, some theorize that m...
Political dialogue among citizens offers numerous potential contributions to American politics, but attainment of these benefits hinges largely on the extent to which conversations cross lines of political difference. In what contexts are cross-cutting interactions most likely to thrive? Using data from five surveys, we find consistent evidence tha...
The chapters in this book suggest that scholars are nowhere near a consensus on whether the mass public is more polarized than it has been in the past and, if it is, relative to precisely when. Nonetheless, among those who believe the mass public has, indeed, become increasingly polarized in its views, mass media are very likely to be invoked as a...
‘Religion and politics’, as the old saying goes, ‘should never be discussed in mixed company.’And yet fostering discussions that cross lines of political difference has long been a central concern of political theorists. More recently, it has also become a cause célèbre for pundits and civic-minded citizens wanting to improve the health of American...
In this study, an experimental design embedded in a national survey is used to examine the impact of social trust on participation in e-commerce. To what extent does generalized trust in people influence economic behavior, particularly in newly established realms such as the Internet? Although some previous work has posited a role for social trust...
oes incivility in political discourse have adverse effects on public regard for politics? If so, why? In this study we present a theory suggesting that when viewers are exposed to televised political disagreement,itoftenviolateswell-establishedface-to-facesocialnormsforthepoliteexpression ofopposingviews.Asaresult,incivilityinpublicdiscourseadverse...
This study advances our understanding of "cross-pressures," a concept recognized in the earliest studies of American voting, but for which empirical evidence and theoretical development has been sorely lacking. Although the current consensus suggests that political cross-pressures are of little, if any, consequence for political participation, I fi...
Exposure to conflicting political viewpoints is widely assumed to benefit the citizens of a democratic polity. Nonetheless, the benefits of exposure to heterogeneous political viewpoints have yet to be demonstrated empirically. Drawing on national survey data that tap characteristics of people’s political discussion networks, I examine the impact o...
We use national survey data to examine the extent to which various sources of political information expose people to dissimilar political views. We hypothesize that the individual's ability and desire to exercise selective exposure is a key factor in determining whether a given source produces exposure to dissimilar views. Although a lack of divers...
List of figures List of tables Preface Acknowledgments Part I. Theory and Historical Context: 1. The generalized other: social influence in contemporary American politics 2. Beyond personal Influence: the rise of impersonal associations 3. The origin of perceptions of mass collectives: mass media's role Part II. Effects of Perceptions of Mass Exper...
The definition of news has changed in the 20th century. Content analysis of the traditional five Ws in three American newspapers found that stories grew longer, included more analysis, expanded from specific locations to broader regions, placed more emphasis on time frames other than the present, and named fewer individuals and more groups, officia...
This study traces the effects of a purposefully chosen news agenda on the perceived and actual issue opinions of members of the mass public. Using a year-long, quasi-experimental design, we analyzed a newspaper's attempt to move community opinion and bring about policy change. We examined the success of these efforts from the perspective of their i...
The purpose of this study is to evaluate several potential theoretical frameworks for understanding the social psychological processes underlying the effects of momentum. Using an experimental design embedded within a national survey conducted during the 1992 Democratic presidential primary season, I examined several potential explanations for chan...
Theory: Drawing on theories of group-based effects on political judgments, we argue that group-level economic perceptions may complement the familiar pocketbook and sociotropic indicators as determinants of political evaluations. We examine three processes by which groups may influence political judgement: group membership, group identification, an...
Political Persuasion and Attitude Change defines and introduces a new field of research, one that investigates the alteration of people's attitudes: when people can be moved, and when they cannot. Each chapter synopsizes a major area of political persuasion and provides an update on the latest findings as well as overviews of past research in each...
The quantity of "horse-race" coverage of political campaigns has been amply documented, but its consequences for the dynamics of campaigns are less well understood. This study examines the effects of media portrayals of public support for candidates on the behavior of potential campaign contributors. This relationship is tested in the context of th...
This study considers competing theories concerning the role of mass media in hindering or facilitating the translation of personal experience into political preferences. Using national survey and media content data that allows evaluations of both media coverage and individual patterns of media use, this study evaluates the influence of mass media o...
This study examines the effects of issue-specific knowledge on the extent to which personal unemployment experiences influence
presidential approval. The well informed are found to be more likely to connect personal experiences directly to political
preferences, yet less likely to generalize from their own personal experiences in assessing the stat...
This study addresses continuing concern over television's displacement of other leisure activities form both substantive and methodological perspectives. It examines past conceptualizations of the mechanism by which television is assumed to displace other activities. Following a critical review of the displacement literature, the authors examine da...
This study combines contemporary research on the effects of mass communication with findings on sociotropic voting to build a general model that explains the origins and effects of economic perceptions. This model is then tested in the context of retrospective personal and social concerns about unemployment. Survey evidence suggests that retrospect...
Many phenomena of interest to political scientists involve what may be termed impersonal influence; that is, influence that derives from individuals'' perceptions of others'' attitudes, beliefs, or experiences. Others in this case refers not to the close friends and acquaintances that concerned the authors of classics such asThe People''s Choice an...
This paper explores the role of perceptions of the opinions of others as they relate to the formation of public opinion. Two interrelated theories involving such perceptions, the third person effect and the spiral of silence, are tested in the context of public opinion regarding divestment of financial interests in South Africa.
As hypothesized by...
This paper explores the intersection of libel law and communication theory that occurs when libel juries assess the effect
of a defamatory communication on others. The third-person hypothesis suggests that people often assume others will be more
affected by potentially persuasive communications than they are themselves. An experiment was conducted...
Abstract will be provided by author.