Research

kpathakis@tamu.edu

In My Humble Non-opinion: How differing information thresholds drive the gender gap in opinion reporting

Despite the recent increase in visibility of women in politics, equality remains elusive. I uncover an important and often overlooked way women’s policy preferences are underrepresented in American politics. Using representative survey data (i.e., ANES, CCES) and my own surveys, I show that women are more likely than men to select non-opinion responses (e.g., “don’t know”) on important questions of public policy. I further show that this gender gap is not attributable to conventional explanatory factors, like partisanship, employment, marital status, education, or income. Instead, I theorize and demonstrate that women require more information about an issue than men do before they are willing to report an opinion about it—possibly due to gender norms around speaking up. As a result, the survey results policymakers and academics rely on to understand public opinion are biased in favor of men’s views, impeding women’s impact on policy and the public discourse.

If You Don’t Know, Now You Know: Race gap in non-opinions drops after 2008 vote and jumps after 2016 vote

The 2016 presidential election was particularly polarizing for Americans. Many African Americans already feel unwelcome in the politics of the US, and Trump’s campaign rhetoric, full of dog whistles and outright racist comments likely exacerbated those feelings for some. Politics in the US are full of attempts to signal different things to different constituencies. I argue that not only can elites send signals to the population about how welcome targeted groups are in politics, but that the election results signal that the public agrees with these inclusive or exclusive messages, amplifying the effects of elite communication on political engagement for underrepresented groups. In this paper, I argue that election outcomes serve as powerful signals of the public’s orientation toward particular groups, and can act as commentary on their welcomeness in politics. Using the 2016 ANES, I observe a gap in opinion reporting between Blacks and Whites. This gap is larger after the 2016 election than before the election, and while both White and Black respondents offered fewer substantive opinions after the election, the decrease was more dramatic for Black Americans. Conversely, using the 2008 ANES, I show the opposite effect for pre- and post-election opinion responsiveness: Black Americans were more willing to give opinions after Obama was elected than they were before. I further show that Black respondents report lower levels of belonging than White respondents. With these data, I argue that belonging has a powerful impact on citizens’ willingness to engage in politics.

Bringing the Ghosts Back Home: The policy impacts of abolishing prison gerrymandering in US states (with Anna Gunderson)

At the end of 2020, US state and federal prisons incarcerated over 1.2 million people. Most of them are ineligible to vote, but in addition to this, their right to equal representation is curtailed in many states. This is because of the practice known as prison gerrymandering. Due to the vast racial disparities in US criminal justice, when the Census counts prisoners where they are incarcerated instead of their home addresses, it inflates representation in the primarily white, rural areas where prisons are located, and depresses representation in what tend to be low-income, high-minority areas. Surprisingly little research has been done in this area, aside from a few notable studies looking at the effects on representation and election outcomes. We argue that the impact goes beyond the more obvious representational effects. This study takes a comprehensive look at how eliminating prison gerrymandering affects the introduction of legislation relating to prisons and the incarcerated. Using new data from the Data Redistricting Hub, we compare bill introductions before and after this practice is abolished, and look at spillover effects in neighboring states.

The Shonda Rhimes Effect: Diversity in Popular TV Shapes Political Attitudes and Behaviors

In 2005, the hit drama Grey’s Anatomy, created by Shonda Rhimes, debuted to celebration for its diversity. Commentators noted the importance of seeing women and people of color in the medicine and leadership, applauding the empowering signals to underrepresented groups, leading to greater engagement with institutions that previously seemed closed. Recent movements, like #Oscarssowhite, continue highlighting problems with underrepresentation. That representation matters is not new to political science; much scholarship documents the powerful effects of seeing “people like me” in power. This research tests representational effects directly, exploring whether diverse casting in popular TV shapes attitudes and behaviors. While there is much research on the effects of news media, we conduct the first study to explore how popular, fictional media might shape the way people interact with politics. In a survey experiment, we expose individuals to ads for a variety of shows, like Grey’s Anatomy, varying the levels of diversity. We then test if descriptive representation influences ways that Americans view institutions and whether this influences engagement and affect towards politics. In short, we test whether diversity induces empowering effects.