Donald P. Haider-Markel

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• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Kansas

Numerous institutions, such as the police, public schools, legislatures, and the courts face criticism for a lack of diversity and representation. According to various political theorists, the lack of representation of marginalized groups in public institutions worsens citizen attitudes. In response, some advocate for increasing passive representat...

Objective Many state legislatures have moved to restrict LGBT students’ rights, and the Supreme Court has veered toward greater protection of religious free exercise protection over LGBT nondiscrimination policies. Some studies have found that rights framings are associated with heightened affective and attitudinal polarization, while others have a...

Scholars often highlight the roles that group threat and intergroup solidarity play in shaping attitudes toward outgroups. Competition among social groups, including over values and culture, can underlie negative attitudes toward outgroups. Meanwhile, perceptions of discrimination against outgroups can drive feelings of solidarity, sympathy, or emp...

Social science interest in LGBTQI+ politics and policy has grown in the 21st century. Likewise, the political opportunity structure for LGBTQI+ activists has changed significantly, with historical expansions of legal protections only to be followed by the current period of backlash and retrenchment. In this article, we outline existing and potentia...

Christian nationalism, the fusion of religious and national identities, has emerged as an important factor shaping public opinion on a range of issues. However, debates in the existing literature on the motivations behind support for Christian nationalism remain unresolved: Is Christian nationalism a response to secularization and/or a cover for di...

Interest groups are an important influence in the subnational policymaking process. Previously, environmental policy scholars measured the strength of environmental groups in the American policymaking subnational process by using proxies like state-level group membership in major nationwide environmental organizations (e.g., Sierra Club). Although...

Can racial primes influence support for public expressions of religion? While a growing body of research demonstrates correlations between racial attitudes and support for public religion among White Americans, experimental tests of subconscious connections between the two concepts have been lacking. We utilize a novel survey experiment to prime ra...

The development of transgender rights in the United States has been hobbled by a patchwork of inconsistent state laws. The irregularity is a function of the political opportunity structure in the United States, which is defined by a sharp partisan divide and by the federal system’s division of power. National policymaking on transgender rights has...

A growing body of research suggests that representation among elected and bureaucratic officials can shape the attitudes and behavior of constituents and clients. We explore the impact of race and gender representation in public schools using a unique survey of students and school personnel from 44 different schools in an Ohio county about school d...

Our project uses the narrative policy framework (NPF) to explore narrative effects on attitudes about transgender rights. The framework focuses on the stories that are told about public policy. As opposed to conceptualizing communications as informational, NPF suggests that getting lost in the story is primary for attitude change. We also incorpora...

Our project uses the narrative policy framework (NPF) to explore narrative effects on attitudes about transgender rights. The framework focuses on the stories that are told about public policy. As opposed to conceptualizing communications as informational, NPF suggests that getting lost in the story is primary for attitude change. We also incorpora...

Our project investigates the impact of minority bureaucratic and political representation on the distribution of disciplinary measures in public schools, in contrast with its impact on gifted and talented class placement. It is motivated by the contrast in accumulating research on the consequences of minority bureaucratic representation between fin...

Objective Although it is clear that gun issues often shape the electoral preferences of some voters and the electoral success of some candidates, there has been little effort to examine the factors that shape electoral outcomes in direct democracy contests involving gun rights. Methods We use weighted ordinary least squares analysis of county‐leve...

Few public opinion surveys addressed transgender rights prior to 2015, but scholarly attention to these issues began to proliferate with a series of surveys from 2015 and 2016 that identified a number of important variables shaping attitudes toward transgender people and policies. Yet, the political environment surrounding transgender rights has ch...

Researchers have considered the role of perceived threat and fear of crime in shaping attitudes about gun regulation. We contribute to this literature by examining whether gun owners, who tend to oppose gun regulations, moderate their gun views when exposed to a gun-related threat. We argue that although exposure to threat can increase the desire t...

In American politics, the truth is rapidly losing relevance. The public square is teeming with misinformation, conspiracy theories, cynicism and hubris. Why has this happened? What does it mean? What can we do about it? In this volume, leading scholars offer multiple perspectives on these questions, and others, to provide the first comprehensive em...

In American politics, the truth is rapidly losing relevance. The public square is teeming with misinformation, conspiracy theories, cynicism and hubris. Why has this happened? What does it mean? What can we do about it? In this volume, leading scholars offer multiple perspectives on these questions, and others, to provide the first comprehensive em...

The Local Power & Politics Review is an annual publication focusing on the impact of state preemption on local policymaking power and authority. The articles are written as advocate-researcher teams, each focusing on a specific policy arena that has recently been targeted by state leaders for preemption.

Political advertisements can shift attitudes and behaviors to become more exclusionary toward social out-groups. However, people who engage in an antidiscrimination exercise in the context of an experiment may respond differently to such ads. What interventions might foster inclusive attitudes in the presence of political communications about socia...

This encyclopedia reviews and interprets a broad array of social science and humanities research on LGBT people, politics, and public policy around the world. The articles are organized around six major themes of the study of identity politics, with a focus on movement politics, public attitudes, political institutions, elections, and the broader c...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Americans face a fragmented policy landscape across the country. Some states and localities have taken the lead and adopted policies to protect LGBTQ citizens, while others have sought to undermine LGBTQ equality. As such, the rights of LGBTQ citizens are very much dependent on the politics of...

We examine the roles of gender, gender attitudes, and interest in sports on public attitudes about transgender people's participation in athletics. Using a representative survey of 1020 adults in the United States from 2015 and after controlling for a variety of demographic, political, and attitudinal factors, we find that women, consistent with th...

This article reviews the literature featuring quantitative interest group research at the national and subnational level in the United States. We direct scholars to existing resources and techniques. Additionally, we make recommendations on methods and discuss the limitations of prevailing measures. The appropriate measure is driven by the research...

In 2017, transgender woman Danica Roem stunned political observers in Virginia by unseating a long-time anti-LGBTQ legislator from a conservative district in the Virginia House of Delegates. ¹ She was the first openly transgender person elected and seated to a state legislature. Delegate Roem’s election was historic in LGBTQ political representatio...

Celebrities saturate American culture and often become relevant in politics, yet political science has largely left unstudied how celebrities affect mass political behavior. We focus on the 2015 story of Caitlyn Jenner revealing her transgender identity. Using an original nationally representative survey from that summer, we examine whether followi...

This A–Z encyclopedia homes in on the moral arguments that provide the foundation for virtually all of the most important and/or divisive laws and policies in the United States. The work discusses controversial and important issues, such as abortion, civil rights, drugs and alcohol, euthanasia, guns, hate crimes, immigration, immunization, natural...

Research suggests that the ability of the president to influence public attention to issues and shape public opinion is limited. Recently, presidential efforts at persuasion have expanded to social media, but presidential persuasion has yet to be explored in this medium. We address two relevant questions. First, what effects does a presidential twe...

The Trump era has facilitated the emergence of a strong backlash against the successes of the LGBTQ movement. However, the politics of this era also motivated a record number of LGBTQ candidates to run for public office. We examine the electoral performance of these candidates in the 2018 election cycle relative to non-LGBTQ candidates employing st...

Objective We hypothesize that gun ownership among women is an important determinant of political engagement. Methods First, using 2013 Pew Research Center data, we examine different types of political participation concerning gun policy. Next, we examine data from a survey experiment embedded in a unique June 2017 national survey of nearly 900 gun...

Policy regarding the inclusion of transgender soldiers in the U.S. Military has shifted back and forth in recent years, with public opinion likely a significant factor shaping the eventual policy outcome. As such, this study examines the factors that shape public attitudes toward military service by transgender people. In particular, we examine the...

Recent political debate over transgender military service and gendered bathroom use highlights a dramatic increase in salience over transgender issues in the US. In this essay, we examine a potential new front in the culture wars by reviewing recent empirical research in social science on the politics of transgender rights in the context of moralit...

Attempts to assess the influence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) groups on LGBT-related policy are hampered by imprecise measurement of LGBT group strength and activity. This research note examines the problems with existing measures of state-level LGBT advocacy strength and it develops an alternative measure of LGBT advocacy grou...

Rationale: Although obesity represents a potential public health crisis, our understanding of public perceptions of obesity, emotional responses to the obese, and related policy preferences is limited. Objective: We employed Weiner's attribution theory of controllability (Weiner, 1988, 2011) to examine perceived causes of obesity, emotional resp...

Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Change Attitudes about LGBT Rights. By Brian F. Harrison and Melissa R. Michelson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 240p. $105.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. - Volume 16 Issue 4 - Donald P. Haider-Markel

Past research suggests that people substantially overestimate the size of minority populations. Labeled “innumeracy,” inflated estimates of minority populations can have a negative impact on intergroup relations and influence policy attitudes toward minority groups. Our research examines people’s estimates of the gun owner population in the United...

While medical identification and treatment of gender dysphoria have existed for decades, the development of transgender as a "collective political identity" is a recent construct. Over the past twenty-five years, the transgender movement has gained statutory nondiscrimination protections at the state and local levels, hate crimes protections in a n...

In this article, we examine the effects of individual anxiety after the 2016 Orlando, Florida, mass shooting, which killed 49 people and wounded 58 others. Similar to prior research on the influence of anxiety, after the Orlando shooting anxious citizens supported policies and institutions perceived as protective and capable of minimizing future ri...

Civil unrest and riots in the U.S. engender considerable attention. Much of the civil unrest from the 1960s, and recent incidents, likely result from many factors, including poverty, police practices, and negative motivations of some unrest participants. However, not all observers view these events from the same perspective. We contend that individ...

Gun Owner Population Appendix

Prior research indicates cognitive ability, perceived threats and context cues influence people’s estimates about the size of minority populations. This article extends the literature in three ways. First, the analyses focuses on gun owners. Ironically, this minority group receives significant political attention yet most people substantially overe...

Existing literature connects military service to regional characteristics and family traditions, creating real distinctions between those who serve and those who do not. We engage this discussion by examining military service as a function of personality. In the second portion, we examine military service as predisposed by genetics. Our findings in...

Fears, phobias, and dislikes about minorities should be strong determinants of whether Americans support policies protecting such minorities. Studies suggest that discussions and information about transgender people can reduce transphobia. However, these studies also indicate that experimental treatments do not necessarily affect individual attitud...

Most of the public opinion research about sexual and gender minorities has focused on attitudes about lesbians and gay men, support for gay rights policies, and the factors that affect these attitudes. In particular, interpersonal contact with gay and lesbian individuals consistently is shown to positively affect attitudes toward these groups. Comp...

Numerous recent encounters between police officers and Black citizens have resulted in the deaths of African American men and have drawn renewed public scrutiny of police practices. We examine the public’s attributions about these encounters. Does the public perceive violent confrontations between police officers and Black citizens as a result of b...

Home Rule Be Damned: Exploring Policy Conflicts between the Statehouse and City Hall - William D. Hicks, Carol Weissert, Jeffrey Swanson, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Vladimir Kogan, Lori Riverstone-Newell, Jaclyn Bunch, Katherine Levine Einstein, David Glick, Dorothy M. Daley, Jonathan M. Fisk, Jami K. Taylor, Donald P. Haider-Markel, Daniel C. Lewis

Existing literature on numeracy suggests that people are likely to perceive out-groups as larger if the group is perceived as threating. However, some studies also suggest that numeracy is a function of wishful thinking or even a lack of political knowledge. We engage the literature on numeracy of the gay and lesbian population by employing data fr...

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community includes a diverse set of groups, including distinct groups based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity, but it is not clear whether the public makes distinctions in their attitudes toward these subgroups. If they do, what factors motivate individuals to evaluate gays and lesbians diff...

Objectives The attitudes of gun owners and nongun owners appear more polarized in the last two decades. We posit that divisions between gun owners and nongun owners reflect emerging political identities, especially among gun owners. Methods Using data from the General Social Survey (1972–2012) we examine if and when this gun ownership divergence b...

Objective Individuals develop causal narratives that help explain events, behaviors, and conditions. Individuals ascribe events and behaviors to controllable components, such as individual choice, or uncontrollable components, such as broader forces in the environment. We join attribution theory with motivated reasoning and outline how gun ownershi...

The distinctly American fascination with guns and gun culture is perhaps most visible in modern entertainment. Yet, guns and gun-related issues seem to divide people, driving a wedge between rural and urban residents, women and men, less and more educated, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans. Our present understanding of social an...

We posit that individuals develop causal stories to explain the world around them, including events, behaviors, and conditions in society. These are narratives that attribute causes to controllable components, such as individual choices, or uncontrollable components, such as broader forces in the environment. We use attribution theory to understand...

Transgender identity inherently involves body politics, specifically how transgender people may physically represent gender in ways that do not match their assigned sex at birth and how some may alter their bodies. Yet, political behavior research on transgender rights attitudes leaves unaddressed the role of transgender bodies in shaping those att...

Of central importance to groups is the representation of their interests in government. A direct strategy for representation is to elect officials that identify with the group. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement has increasingly been successful in fielding LGB candidates for local, state, and national offices, even though t...

Social categorization processes may be initiated by physical appearance, which have the potential to influence how people evaluate others. Categorizations ground what stereotypes and prejudices, if any, become activated. Gender is one of the first features people notice about others. Much less is known about individuals who may transgress gender ex...

American policing faces a crisis of legitimacy. A key source of this crisis is a widespread police practice commonly endorsed by police leaders to fight crime. This is the investigatory stop, used to check out people who seem suspicious and to seize illegal drugs and guns and make arrests. Using data from an original scientific survey of drivers in...

The American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) political movement has its roots in the post–World War II era. Through the 1950s and 1960s early LGBT groups focused on social mobilization and education, with limited observable political activities. Political activity increased in the 1960s and caught fire after the rioting that broke ou...

This chapter explores some of the challenges in implementing marriage equality, including resistance from some government officials; the enactment of religious-based exemptions allowing public officials and private individuals to refuse to facilitate marriages by same-sex couples; and the absence of legal antidiscrimination protections for sexual m...

Objectives Individuals employ causal reasoning to explain the world around them, including political events, group behavior, and conditions in society. People may attribute causes of behavior to controllable components, such as individual choices, or uncontrollable elements, such as broader forces in the environment. To this, we add biological or g...

Appendix for “Genetic Attributions, Immutability and Stereotypical Judgments: An Analysis of Homosexuality” Social Science Quarterly, Forthcoming, 2016

In this chapter, we examine the future of LGBT rights advocacy now that same-sex couples have won full marriage rights across most of the nation. We will discuss potentially difficult issues in the implementation of marriage equality, such as the lack of supporting legal frameworks for gay people in many states, religious exemptions, and elder care...

Most states have adopted significant measures to reduce the incidence of driving under the influence (DUI) but a DUI death occurs about every 53 minutes; a significant portion of these accidents are the result of recidivist DUI drivers. A relatively new and novel way states can reduce DUI deaths from repeat offenders is to require offenders to inst...

An alert, informed electorate is considered vital to a robust democracy, and the main path to that electorate includes formal education. The educated citizen is politically attentive, knowledgeable, and participatory, and the uneducated citizen is not. However, this fact conceals a less favorable effect of education. Educated citizens possess the c...

Who is to blame for obesity or gun violence? When public policies are proposed regarding issues such as these, the topics quickly become politicized. These "politics of causes" are often rooted in our partisan predispositions. For this Science on Tap, political scientist Don Haider-Markel will discuss how the public thinks about causation when it c...

To date, media and scholarly attention to gay politics and policy has focused on the morality debates over sexual orientation and the legal aspects of rights for non-heterosexuals. However, transgender concerns as such have received little attention. With transgender activism becoming more visible, policymakers in the United States and around the w...

Integrating women into organizations that have historically been all male poses a number of problems from a policy implementation perspective. Under a directive issues by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, a variety of combat positions in the U.S. military must be open to women by January 2016 or exceptions must be requested; the order includes eli...

In sheer numbers, no form of government control comes close to the police stop. Each year, twelve percent of drivers in the United States are stopped by the police, and the figure is almost double among racial minorities. Police stops are among the most frequently criticized incidences of racial profiling, but while studies have shown that minoriti...

We offer an expanded version of attribution theory that incorporates macro- and micro-elements. We then use this theory on a test case and propose an explanation of how individual beliefs about the origins of homosexuality have changed over time and become polarized along partisan lines. We argue that attributions on the origins of homosexuality ha...

Objective We employ theories of causal reasoning to understand attributions about the 2007 Virginia Tech and 2011 Tucson shootings. We argue that attributions stem from two motives: (1) a partisan motivation to perceive events consistent with party attachments, and (2) a drive to minimize the cognitive burdens associated with extensive reasoning pr...

President Bush’s attempt to reform Social Security provides an opportunity to test the ability of presidents to shift public opinion on policy proposals. We argue that although the bully pulpit perspective offers a reasonable explanation of presidential efforts of public persuasion, modern presidents are more likely to engage in a selective attempt...

For this article, I built on previous studies of representation by exploring the potential positive and negative impacts of descriptive representation in the policy process. Specifically, I examined the influence of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) state legislators on the amount and types of LGBT-related state legislation in...

Individuals develop causal stories about the world around them that explain events, behaviors, and conditions. These stories may attribute causes to controllable components, such as individual choice, or uncontrollable components, such as broader forces in the environment. We employ attribution theory to outline how identities may shape causal attr...

As a political issue, death and dying topics only sometimes reach the political agenda. However, some issues, such as physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been highly salient. This article explores attitudes toward PAS by examining the malleability of opinion when respondents are exposed to issue frames and when specific messengers present those f...

Social scientists are increasingly taking a more complex theoretical approach to the role of stereotyping in the electorate's evaluation of political candidates. Within this literature, most studies investigate the impact of one stereotype on the public's evaluation of candidates from an underrepresented group. We build on and extend this literatur...

Out and Running is the first systematic analysis of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) political representation that explores the dynamics of state legislative campaigns and the influence of lesbian and gay legislators in the state policymaking process. By examining state legislative elections from 1992 to 2006 and state policymaking fr...

In his seminal 1908 book, The Process of Government, Arthur Bentley outlined a framework for understanding politics and policy that has directly or indirectly inspired a considerable amount of research for generations of social scientists. Bentley argued that in order to understand politics and what government does (and does not do) we should focus...

Individuals develop causal stories about the world around them that explain events, behaviors, and conditions. These stories may attribute causes to controllable components, such as individual choice, or uncontrollable components, such as broader forces in the environment. Here we employ motivated reasoning to understand causal attributions the 200...

In this study, we employ Weiner's attribution theory of controllability to examine beliefs about the origins of homosexuality. If the cause of homosexuality is perceived as controllable (learned, environmental, or an individual choice), negative affect toward homosexuals and reduced support for policies relevant to the group can be expected. If the...

Our understanding of representation by government employees has increased considerably in the past 30 years. Scholars have found that represented groups benefit from representative bureaucracies and conclude that this benefit is a function of active representation. However, due to the aggregate unit of observation used in most of these studies and...