The Northwestern Political Science Research Lab (PSRL) is located in Scott Hall 319. The lab includes 15 networked laptop stations with internet access, MediaLab, and Z-Tree software. (The laptops also can be used for studies off-site.) Use of the lab is available to political science faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students for conducting research and is available to other Northwestern affiliates upon request to Prof. Jamie Druckman.
PSRL also supports the Undergraduate Political Science Research Participation Requirement, which serves to provide a participant pool for those conducting research in the lab. The Research Pool Coordinator for the 2011-2012 academic year is Thomas Leeper. More information about the requirement can be found here.
PSRL participates in the Consortium for Laboratory Experiments in Political Science.
Brian Harrison (Political Science PhD Student) Dissertation Research
Thomas Leeper (Political Science PhD Student) Dissertation Research
Joshua Robison (Political Science PhD Student) Dissertation Research
Jonathan Caverley (Political Science Faculty) Research
Publications from PSRL Research
Druckman, James N., Jordan Fein, and Thomas J. Leeper. “A Source of Bias in Public Opinion Stability,” American Political Science Review, Forthcoming. PDF
Druckman, James N., and Thomas J. Leeper. “Is Public Opinion Stable?: Resolving the Micro-Macro Disconnect in Studies of Public Opinion,” Daedalus. Forthcoming. DOC
Druckman, James N., and Thomas J. Leeper. “Learning More from Political Communication Experiments: Pretreatment and Its Effects,” American Journal of Political Science, Forthcoming. DOC
Bolsen, Toby. “Norms, Threat Appeals, and Actions for the Public Good.” Unpublished Paper. DOCX
Druckman, James N., and Toby Bolsen. “How Scientific Evidence Links Attitudes to Behaviors,” in David Dana, ed., The Nanotechnology Challenge: Creating Law and Legal Institutions for Uncertain Risks. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming. PDF
Bolsen, Toby. 2011. “A Light Bulb Goes On: Invoking Norms in Appeals for Collective Action.” Forthcoming, Political Behavior. PDF
Druckman, James N., and Toby Bolsen. 2011. “Framing, Motivated Reasoning, and Opinions about Emergent Technologies,” Journal of Communication 61: 659-688. PDF
Chong, Dennis, and James N. Druckman. 2011. “Identifying Frames in Political News.” In Erik P. Bucy and R. Lance Holbert, eds., Sourcebook for Political Communication Research: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques. Routledge. PDF
Chong, Dennis, and James N. Druckman. 2010. “Dynamic Public Opinion: Communication Effects Over Time,” American Political Science Review 104: 663-680. PDF
Druckman, James N., Cari Lynn Hennessy, Kristi St. Charles, and Jonathan Weber. 2010. “Competing Rhetoric Over Time: Frames Versus Cues,” The Journal of Politics, 72: 136-148. PDF
Druckman, James N. 2010. “Competing Frames in a Political Campaign,” in Brian F. Schaffner and Patrick J. Sellers, eds., Winning with Words: The Origins and Impact of Framing, 101-120. New York: Routledge. PDF
Druckman, James N., Cari Lynn Hennessy, Martin J. Kifer, and Michael Parkin. 2010. “Issue Engagement on Congressional Candidate Websites (2002-2006),” Social Science Computer Review 28: 3-23. PDF
Druckman, James N., Martin Kifer, and Michael Parkin. 2010. “Timeless Strategy Meets New Medium: Going Negative on Congressional Campaign Websites, 2002-2006,” Political Communication, 27: 88-103. PDF
Druckman, James N., Martin Kifer, and Michael Parkin. 2009. “Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections,” American Political Science Review 103: 343-366. PDF
Brian Harrison. “The Partisan Pulpit: Motivated Reasoning and Partisan Evaluations of the President.” Political Science PhD Dissertation research (2011).
This experiment examines how partisanship affects attitudes and evaluations of the President and his communication. Integral to this experiment are statements priming partisanship (high or low) as well as videos of President Obama edited to either include or exclude partisan references. The expectation is that in the high partisanship conditions, since partisanship is made more salient by the prime, in-party and out-party partisans will diverge sharply in their evaluations of the issues and approval of the President depending on whether they identify with the same or opposing political party as the President. As the level of partisanship primed decreases in the prime and in the conditions where party mentions are not present, I expect the differences between partisans (out-party vs. in-party) to be smaller. In other words, as partisanship is primed more strongly, people should be more likely to engage in motivated reasoning, with their attitudes and behavior more heavily reliant on existing party cues and identities.Samara Klar. “Voices of Reason: The Moderating Influence of Diverse Discussion on Strong and Weak Partisans.” Political Science PhD Dissertation research (2011-12).
In this experiment, I demonstrate that deliberation within ideological diverse discussion groups has a strong moderating effect on biased decision-making — even among the strongest of partisans. By manipulating both party attachment and also group ideological composition in an experimental setting, I find that when strong partisans discuss political issues with those with whom they disagree, they are significantly more likely to give even-handed consideration to both sides of an issue. This experiment suggests that strong partisans in diverse social settings are perhaps more fair and balanced than existing political science literature would suggest.Thomas J. Leeper. “Mass Polarization: The Effects of Issue Importance and the Information Environment.” Political Science PhD Dissertation research (2011).
Recent theorizing on political communication has seen the political information environment as a central mechanism for polarization. But what effects does the information environment really have? If citizens are seen as capable of sampling information from the environment and updating their preferences in turn, then a diverse information environment should cause little polarization. If a directionally slanted environment provides credible information, the public should be responsive in the direction that information points them on policy issues. If, however, individuals select information from their environment and evaluate that information in a biased fashion, individuals may be much less likely to respond to the informational contents of their environment. Reinforcing their prior opinions and developing more extreme viewpoints would be much more likely. In fact, in this style of political cognition, the contents of the environment might matter very little. This researcher therefore examines how the contents of the information environment and the nature of individuals' attitudes affect polarization over time.Jon Caverley. Political Science faculty research (2012).
The objective of this project is to understand how military leaders can (and do) influence foreign policy debate through their influence on public opinion about military actions abroad. Military leaders are conceptualized as potentially biased sources of information who are uniquely expert (and therefore credible) about foreign policy. Given that military leaders are (and can be perceived as) partisan actors, the experiment examines how this partisanship can moderate the effect of their expertise on opinion. Additionally, military leaders — particularly if they are perceived as partisan — do not operate in isolation from the broader political context; therefore, the study additionally examines whether this perceived partisanship interacts with perceptions of Congressional policy preferences to influence public opinions about military engagement abroad.Seoyoon Choi. “How Americans Structure Political Attitudes.” PhD Dissertation Research (2011).
This study examines the relationship between an organizing principle of attitudes and attitude consistency of American voters. The study seeks to answer the following question: what belief or value do citizens employ as an organizing principle of their attitudes? To do this, this study tests whether a historically ingrained sentiment is the principle by which Americans develop their attitudes toward social and economic issues.Jason Seawright. Political Science faculty research (2011).
Research has shown that emotions can influence the way people think about risky propositions, including political issues. This study seeks to extend this line of inquiry to discover whether there is a relationship between mood and the process by which individuals form views about the likely severity of, and desirability of various remedies for, global warming. In addition to bringing ideas about emotion and decision-making into the discussion of a major new issue domain, this research will also permit exploration of interactions between preexisting cognitive belief systems (e.g., liberal or conservative ideologies) and emotion in preference formation.Kieran Bezila. Sociology PhD Dissertation Research (2011).
This research marries the classic "public goods game" with individualized trajectories for subjects in and out of groups over time in order to examine how anticipation of future social relationships may affect people's current decisions to cooperate or compete on joint projects.Thomas J. Leeper. “How Attentive Do Citizens Need to Be to 'Get' the News?” Ph.D. Dissertation Research (2011).
This research explores the various ways that people might be exposed to information about political issues. Political communication experiments typically rely on “captive exposure,” wherein research participants receive messages in a high-intensity, undistracted fashion. What happens if we break this experimental norm? Are citizens still affected by political communications when they search for information or when they just happen to be exposed to political information as a byproduct of other activity?Erik Peterson. “Competitive Partisan Issue Framing.” Undergraduate Honors Thesis (2011).
Stephanie Letzler. “The Post-Feminist Female Voter: Is 'Sisterhood' Still Powerful?” Undergraduate Honors Thesis (2011).
Popular opinion assumes that female voters will have a natural affinity for female candidates because of an in-group bias. However, this view fails to account for generational differences between women and whether or not they perceive their gender as a relevant political identity. My study seeks to evaluate whether or not college-aged women have internalized an individualist (postfeminist) female identity and to what extent they respond negatively to candidate appeals to a collectivist female identity.Monica Prasad. “The Influence of Recipient's Race on Altruism.” Sociology faculty Research.
Does the race of the recipient affect altruism? We conducted 133 trials of a laboratory experiment on college students to answer this question. We found that subjects gave slightly more money to black recipients, but this difference was not statistically significant. However, we also found that subjects who "strongly" or "moderately" favored European-American faces on the Implicit Association Test gave less money to a black recipient than others, and this difference was significant at the .05 level using a two-tailed test and at the .01 level using a one-tailed test. The mean amount given to a black recipient by those who showed a strong or moderate predisposition to favor European Americans (over half the sample) was $4.13. The mean amount given to a black recipient by all others was $7.30, or more than 75% more. This difference represents more than 15% of the total payoff that subjects were asked to split. We conclude that in this laboratory context, those with a measurable prejudice favoring European-Americans act on that prejudice in exchanges with African-Americans. A secondary conclusion of our study is that the Implicit Association Test does correlate with behavior.