RESEARCH

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS:

”The Effect of Protesters’ Gender on Public Reactions to Protests & Protest Repression” (the American Political Science Review)

This study examines how protesters’ gender shapes public reactions to protests and protest repression. I demonstrate experimentally that protests involving extensive participation by women are perceived as less violent and meriting of repression than male-dominated protests. But perceptions of female protesters vary. Patriarchy-defiant female protesters like feminists are deemed more deserving of repression despite being perceived as equally likely to be peaceful as female protesters who emphasize patriarchy-compliant femininities, such as women who highlight their roles as mothers and wives. This, I show, is because patriarchy-defiant women are viewed as more immoral, which renders their protest accounts less trustworthy when they clash with government propaganda seeking to legitimize repression. These findings underscore the value of disaggregating the binary category of man or woman when examining sentiments toward political agents and of considering stereotypes when studying perceptions, and ultimately the risks and effectiveness, of protest movements.

“Who’s Persuasive? Understanding Citizen-To-Citizen Efforts To Change Minds” With Timothy Ryan and Carlos Rueda-Canon (The Journal of Politics)

Political behavior researchers tend to view persuasion as a top-down enterprise: politicians, journalists, and other “elites” do the persuasion, and citizens listen. Consequently, much research focuses on what makes citizens persuadable. This study shifts our focus to what makes citizens persuasive. We developed an innovative survey design, incentivizing over 400 participants to write messages that would change the opinion of people they disagree with politically. We then presented these messages to survey participants with opposing views, and measured their persuasive impact. Our findings reveal that persuading the other side is possible, with a success rate of almost 30% and only 11% backfire. The most reliable predictors of persuasion success, we find, involve the ability to bridge identity divides through perspective-taking and personal narratives. Finally, we show that citizens are largely unaware of their persuasive potential: unsuccessful senders perceive themselves to be as persuasive as successful ones.

”The Right Kind of (Gay) Man? Sexuality, Gender Presentation, and Heteronormative Constraints on Electability” (The Journal of Politics)

This paper explores two key biases underpinning heteronormativity: those against homosexuality and gender atypicality. Through a novel experimental design deploying visual and audio stimuli to manipulate the sexuality and gender typicality of political candidates, I uncover persisting biases among American voters. Republicans and voters desiring order and certainty penalize gay candidates while Democrats prefer them. However, both Democrats and Republicans penalize gender atypicality. I show the acceptance of gay candidates by Democratic voters is paired with a demand for candidates to look and sound “straight.” Moreover, I find voters penalize gender atypicality in both gay and straight candidates, highlighting that heteronormative ideologies, while privileging heterosexuality over homosexuality, do not (dis)advantage all gay and straight candidates equally. Probing the contours of our egalitarianism and our understanding of who gets to walk the halls of power, these findings underscore the importance of considering status differentials both across and within census-style identity categories.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

“Identity As Ideology” (R&R, the American Journal of Political Science)

“Empathy Via Imitation: A Game to Elicit Understanding of Others’ Views” With Tim Ryan(UNC), Jaime Settle (William & Mary), and Erin Rossiter (University of Notre Dame)