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Abstract
Media coverage of affective polarization—partisans disliking and distrusting out-partisans while liking and trusting in-partisans—is abundant, both creating and reflecting a belief among the public that partisans are more affectively polarized than they are. These trends suggest that affective polarization among partisans could be viewed as socially desirable, which may then shape partisans' expressed attitudes and behavior. To examine this, I run four original surveys and study two broad research questions: (1) Does this social desirability exist?; and (2) Can it influence partisans' expressed affective polarization? I find that affective polarization among partisans is indeed socially desirable and that, largely motivated by self-presentation desires, this social desirability can shape partisans' expressed affective polarization. However, my results also suggest that affective polarization responses are rather ingrained in partisans, and that while partisans are aware of this social desirability and its effect on their behavior, small changes in survey context do not necessarily produce large changes in affective polarization responses. Overall, the results offer necessary nuance to our understanding of affective polarization, implying that social desirability—which can be shifted by contexts—can alter how affectively polarized people act.

Following a shift toward greater transparency, many academic journals across a variety of disciplines now require authors to post their data. At the same time, many university Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) have followed recent US federal guidelines and now require researchers to be more transparent with survey participants regarding what will happen to the collected data. In this paper, we take the first steps toward considering the interaction between these two survey research developments. Using a nationally representative panel, we show that informing survey participants that their de-identified data will be publicly shared by a researcher can affect how these participants answer certain questions. In some cases, public posting notifications can increase data quality (e.g., knowledge measures), but in other cases informing participants of the data's future use can exacerbate social desirability issues (e.g., turnout). Our results suggest conditional costs and benefits to the intersection between two critical ethical norms underlying survey research: data-sharing and informed consent.

Does interpersonal political communication improve the quality of individual decision making? While deliberative theorists offer reasons for hope, experimental researchers have demonstrated that biased messages can travel via interpersonal social networks. We argue that the value of interpersonal political communication depends on the motivations of the people involved, which can be shifted by different contexts. Using small-group experiments that randomly assign participants' motivations to seek or share information with others as well as their motivations for evaluating the information they receive, we demonstrate the importance of accounting for motivations in communication. We find that when individuals with more extreme preferences are motivated to acquire and share information, collective civic capacity is diminished. But if we can stimulate the exchange of information among individuals with stronger prosocial motivations, such communication can enhance collective civic capacity. We also provide advice for other researchers about conducting similar group-based experiments to study political communication.

In recent decades, the term "politics" has become almost synonymous with conflict. Results from eight studies show that individuals averse to conflict tend to select out of surveys and discussions explicitly labeled as "political." This suggests that the inferences researchers draw from "political" surveys, as well as the impressions average Americans draw from explicitly "political" discussions, will be systematically biased toward conflict. We find little evidence that these effects can be attenuated by emphasizing deliberative norms. However, conflict averse individuals are more willing to discuss ostensibly political topics such as the economy, climate change, and racial inequality, despite reluctance to discuss "politics" explicitly. Moreover, they express greater interest in politics when it is defined in terms of laws and policies and debate is deemphasized. Overall, these findings suggest the expectation of conflict may have a self-fulfilling effect, as contexts deemed explicitly "political" will be composed primarily of conflict seekers.

AbstractThere are a number of observed gender differences in the frequency of political discussion, perceived levels of expertise, and importantly, openness to persuasion. This article explores the consequences of these differences for political choices. Given the difficulty in separating influence from homophily with observational data, this paper relies on a group-based experiment. Results suggest that when selecting between candidates, women are more likely to accept information from others, even if the information in the signals is not helpful. Men, on the other hand, often ignore outside signals in favor of sticking with their own choices even when outside signals would be helpful to their decision-making. A reanalysis of a previously published experiment on social communication leads to similar gender differences.

AbstractThe health and economic outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic will in part be determined by how effectively experts can communicate information to the public and the degree to which people follow expert recommendation. Using a survey experiment conducted in May 2020 with almost 5,000 respondents, this paper examines the effect of source cues and message frames on perceptions of information credibility in the context of COVID-19. Each health recommendation was framed by expert or nonexpert sources, was fact- or experience-based, and suggested potential gain or loss to test if either the source cue or framing of issues affected responses to the pandemic. We find no evidence that either source cue or message framing influence people's responses – instead, respondents' ideological predispositions, media consumption, and age explain much of the variation in survey responses, suggesting that public health messaging may face challenges from growing ideological cleavages in American politics.