I received my Ph.D from the University of Minnesota. My research areas are public opinion and political psychology, mostly in the U.S. but also in a comparative context. I study policy attitudes, media effects, racial attitudes and political tolerance. My current research involves three projects:

1. I use survey experiments to study the complex way that racial attitudes influence public support for ostensibly "race-neutral" policies like welfare and crime, with Jon Hurwitz.  Our book manuscript, "Justice in America: Why Black and Whites See Separate Realities,” comparing Whites' and Blacks' views of the fairness of the criminal justice system, is under review.
2. I examine how changing threats to Israeli security over time influence citizens' support for the civil liberties of offensive domestic groups, with Michal Shamir and Marc Hutchison.
3. I am also exploring the impact of news coverage of welfare policy to explain why welfare reform in the late 1990s failed to improve public support for welfare.

My research has appeared in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Political Behavior, Political Communications, Political Research Quarterly and Public Opinion Quarterly. I coauthored and edited, Perception and Prejudice: Race and Politics in the U.S. (Yale University Press), and I'm co-editor of the journal, Political Behavior, with Jon Hurwitz.

Areas of Specialization - Public opinion, mass media, racial attitudes and political tolerance

• "Persuasion and Resistance: Race and the Death Penalty in America," (with Jon Hurwitz). American Journal of Political Science, 2007.
• "Explaining the Great Racial Divide: Perceptions of Fairness in the U.S. Criminal Justice System," (with Jon Hurwitz). Journal of Politics, 2005.
• "Playing the Race Card in the Post Willie Horton Era: The Impact of Racialized Code Words on Support for Punitive Crime Policy,"” (with Jon Hurwitz). Public Opinion Quarterly, 2005.
• "Democratization and Political Tolerance in Seventeen Countries: A Multi-level Model of Democratic Learning,” (with Robert Rohrschneider). Political Research Quarterly, 56(3), 2003.