Political Behavior 46(3): 1443–1465 [Link]
Abstract. How do people react to information that challenges their party’s policies? While most of the existing literature focuses on possible changes in issue opinions, we know less about other implicit and explicit ways in which people may contend with counter-attitudinal information. In an online experiment in India, I present participants with potentially incongruent information about a controversial economic policy and ask them to evaluate the quality of this information. Strong party supporters (non-supporters) feel that an article that criticizes (praises) the policy is of very poor quality. Further, people are much more likely to ignore the biased nature of an article if it reinforces their priors – but complain if it does not. Yet, although I observe strong affective reactions against information that is counter-attitudinal, there is no evidence of opinion backlash; instead, there is (weak) evidence of people updating in the direction of incongruent information. These findings reinforce the importance of studying reactions to counter-attitudinal information above and beyond issue-specific opinions.
Abstract. Can online conversations with a marginalized outgroup member improve majority group members’ attitudes about that outgroup? While the intergroup contact literature provides insights about the effects of extended interactions between groups, less is known about how relatively short and casual conversations may play out in highly polarized settings, or how conversation topic can affect outcomes. In an experiment in India, I bring together Hindus and Muslims for five days of conversations on WhatsApp, a popular messaging platform, to investigate the extent to which chatting with a Muslim about randomly assigned discussion prompts affects Hindus’ perceptions of Muslims and approval for mainstream religious nationalist statements. I find that intergroup conversations greatly reduce prejudice against Muslims and approval for religious nationalist statements at least two to three weeks post-conversation. Intergroup conversations about non-political issues are especially effective at reducing prejudice, while conversations about politics substantially decrease support for religious nationalism. I further show that political conversations and non-political conversations affect attitudes through distinct mechanisms, and that conversations also reduce discrimination against Muslims in two behavioral activities.
Winner of the MPSA Best Paper Award (2024), the MPSA Best Paper in Political Behavior Award (2024), and the APSA Experimental Research Section Best Paper Award (2023); Honorable Mention for the APSA Comparative Politics Section Sage Best Paper Award (2023) and the APSA Religion and Politics Section Weber Best Conference Paper Award (2023)
Paper available here.
Poster version here.
Abstract. When and why do citizens express support for extreme violence by their governments? Using a survey experiment in India, I examine how majority group citizens react to different justifications of state-sponsored demolitions of property belonging to members of a marginalized minority group. I find that (a) portrayals of demolition victims as security threats, (b) appeals to trust government authorities, and (c) "whataboutisms" referring to other incidents of violence all significantly increase support for demolitions, while a more direct justification on the basis of economic development does not. I also show that perceptions of the justifications as good or bad reasons for demolishing homes are not strongly correlated with support for the action, with participants expressing support for the action even as they acknowledge poor reasoning. Taken together, these findings provide a set of new insights on how different rhetorical strategies that Indian voters are regularly exposed to across a wide range of issue areas actually operate, and why otherwise controversial policies can easily gain popular support.
Paper available upon request.
(with Tiago Ventura, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker)
Abstract. In most advanced democracies, concerns about the spread of misinformation are most often associated with feed-based social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and these platforms also account for the vast majority of research on the topic. However, in most of the world, particularly in Global South countries, misinformation often reaches citizens through social media messaging apps, particularly WhatsApp. To fill the resulting gap in the literature, we conducted a multimedia deactivation experiment intended to test the impact of reduced exposure to potential sources of misinformation on WhatsApp during the weeks leading up to the 2022 Presidential election in Brazil. We find that this treatment significantly reduced subjects’ exposure to false rumors circulating widely during the election. However, consistent with theories of mass media minimal effects, a short-term reduction in exposure to misinformation ahead of the election did not lead to significant changes in belief accuracy or political polarization.
Winner of the APSA Political Communication Section Paul Lazarsfeld Best Paper Award (2024), the APSA Information Technology & Politics Section Best Paper Award (2024), and the Brazilian Political Science Association Best Paper Award (2024)
(with Tiago Ventura, Shelley Liu, Carolina Torreblanca, and Joshua A. Tucker)
Abstract. Recent scholarly work has investigated how social media platforms increase users' exposure to misinformation and harmful content, contributing to contemporary democratic ills such as increased levels of polarization, intergroup prejudice, and offline violence. This paper presents two distinct interventions to identify the causal effects of the most heavily used social media messaging app in the world – WhatsApp – on exposure to online misinformation and its downstream effects on political attitudes. We deploy simultaneous field experiments in India and South Africa, incentivizing participants to either (1) reduce exposure to multimedia on WhatsApp or (2) limit overall WhatsApp usage to up to 10 minutes per day for four weeks ahead of their 2024 general elections. Our intervention significantly reduced participants’ exposure to false rumors circulating widely during the election and to overall political news. These changes in the informational environment, however, did not significantly change belief accuracy. We also detected a significant reduction in ethnic-based prejudice in India when participants reduced their overall WhatsApp usage, but estimated precise nulls for polarization outcomes in South Africa.
Paper available upon request.
(with Nicholas Haas)
Abstract. Do ideology and partisanship matter in developing countries, or is extant scholarship correct to largely dismiss these factors in favor of an understanding of politics as fundamentally clientelist? We study ideology in an online sample (N=2,393) of citizens from across 10 states in India, the world's largest democracy. Applying ideal point estimation techniques commonly used in research on Western populations, we find firstly that Indian respondents can be placed along a single ideological dimension according to their views on Hindu nationalism, state intervention, and minority rights. In contrast, issues frequently used to capture ideological divides in Western countries perform poorly in the Indian context. Second, we observe that individuals' ideological placements correlate with their partisan affiliations and reported political behaviors. Third, we find in both correlational analyses and an embedded endorsement experiment evidence consistent with a one-party dominant system, wherein feelings toward the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party carry particular import. Our findings indicate that ideology is consequential for Indian politics and may differ in important ways from the West, and call for greater attention to the ideologies of those residing in developing country contexts.
Paper available upon request. Carnegie Endowment. Hindustan Times.