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AbstractEmotions feature prominently in political rhetoric and media frames, and they have potent effects on how people process information. Yet, existing research has largely overlooked the influence of disgust, which is a basic emotion that leads people to avoid contamination threats. We illustrate how disgust may impede learning, as compared to the more commonly studied emotion of anxiety. Disgust and anxiety are natural reactions to many kinds of political threats, but the two emotions influence political engagement in different ways. This study investigated the distinctive effects of disgust in a series of experiments that manipulated information about the outbreak of an infectious disease. People who felt disgusted by a health threat were less likely to learn crucial facts about the threat and less likely to seek additional information. Thus, disgust has the counterintuitive effect of decreasing public engagement in precisely those situations where it is most critical.

"Media, Electoral Accountability, and Issue Voting" published on by Oxford University Press.

Political knowledge is central to understanding citizens' engagement with politics. Yet, as surveys are increasingly conducted online, participants' ability to search the web may undermine the validity of factual knowledge measures. Recent research shows this search behavior is common, even when respondents are instructed otherwise. However, we know little about how outside search affects the validity of political knowledge measures. Using a series of experimental and observational studies, we provide consistent evidence that outside search degrades the validity of political knowledge measures. Our findings imply that researchers conducting online surveys need to take steps to discourage and diagnose search engine use.

National newspapers regularly report on public opinion as part of their political coverage. In addition to covering aggregate survey trends, journalists occasionally conduct follow-up interviews with respondents from those surveys to present the views of real people in news stories. The practice of reporting these "qualitative quotes" has existed for decades, yet, there has been little scrutiny of the voices that appear in news stories or their effect on public opinion. We examine this phenomenon in the context of the United States with a historical examination of New York Times stories and other major U.S. outlets that contain polling information and follow-up interviews. Consistent with past work on exemplars, there is considerable evidence for the nonrandom nature of the people invited to comment for news stories. In particular, the use of qualitative quotes reinforces some of the biases that exist in news sourcing more generally. Finally, we demonstrate in an experiment that qualitative quotes influence policy attitudes as least as much as aggregate polling figures.

We are excited and honored to be the editorial team for JEPS. We are indebted to Eric Dickson for his efforts as the journal's previous editor. He set a high bar for JEPS as an outlet for high quality experimental research. Lucky for us, the healthy state of experimental research means that we will continue to have a deep pool of well-crafted and important work. We also thank Nick Haas, who deftly guided us through the transition as Editorial Assistant. Without his help, it would have been a near impossible task to get up to speed.

In the interest of promoting open and reproducible science, the Journal of Experimental Political Science editorial team will pilot the pre-acceptance of preregistered reports. We note that the launch of this new submission option is a complement to, and does not replace, the option to submit other types of manuscripts. JEPS remains open to receiving and reviewing high quality manuscripts regardless of whether they are based on preregistered studies.