2021. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (with Sanaz Talaifar, Gabriella Harari, and Samuel Gosling)

Socializing, moving, working, and leisure form the foundation of human experience. We examined whether these foundational, ostensibly nonpolitical behaviors are nevertheless bifurcated along political fault lines, revealing “lifestyle polarization.” Study 1 quantified the association between political identity and 61 social, movement, work, and leisure behaviors collected from smartphone sensors and logs (i.e., GPS, microphone, calls, texs, unlocks, activity recognition) and ecological momentary assessments (i.e., querying activity level, activity type, interaction partners, locations) at multiple temporal levels (i.e., daily, mornings, afternoon, evenings, nights, weekends, weekdays) in a sample of up to 1,229 students on a college campus. We found that liberals and conservatives behave differently in everyday life; the behavioral differences were small but robust, not accounted for by other plausible factors (e.g., demographics), and most pronounced in the leisure domain. Study 2 showed that the behavioral differences between liberals and conservatives were not accurately discerned by other students, who overestimated the extent of lifestyle polarization present on their campus. Together, these studies suggest that political identity has penetrated some of the most foundational aspects of everyday life, but not to the degree that people think. We discuss how communities may feel divided not only because of deep ideological disagreements across partisan lines but also because such disagreements are accompanied by distinct lifestyles—both real and (mis)perceived—that may prevent liberals and conservatives from engaging in cross-partisan contact and developing mutual understanding.

R&R at American Political Science Review (with Trent Ollerenshaw and Andrew Trexler)

We re-examine recent influential claims that repeated measure experimental designs do not introduce bias and offer large precision gains in survey research (Clifford, Sheagley, and Piston 2021). We test these claims by experimentally varying the design of six classic political science experiments across three distinct large samples of U.S. adults (total N = 13, 163). In contrast to the original study, we observe consistent attenuation of treatment effects in repeated measure designs. However, this average design effect is small enough, and the precision gains large enough, that we largely affirm the recommendation to employ repeated measure designs in many practical research applications. We additionally extend the literature on repeated measure designs by exploring how several design considerations affect the bias-precision trade-off, such as the use of within-subject versus between-groups designs, the relative separation of repeated measures within single surveys, and differences in respondent characteristics across sample types.

R&R at Political Behavior

Recent research on persuasion finds that messages containing narratives and evidence are particularly effective at shaping attitudes across various contexts, such as issue canvassing, video presentations, and survey experiments. This study examines how messages featuring personal narratives compare to those based on evidence in online discussions among everyday citizens. It analyzes surveys and text from 1,169 U.S. citizens engaged in political discussions on DiscussIt, a mobile chat platform. The results show that those receiving personal narratives in cross-partisan conversations were significantly more likely to say their chat partner influenced their views, whereas those receiving evidence were significantly less likely to say their views were influenced by their chat partner. However, comparing pre- and post-conversation attitudes finds no observable changes in actual political views associated with personal narratives or evidence. Unlike earlier studies that often rely on professionalized persuasive messages in controlled settings, this research examines unstructured online conversations. This research emphasizes the importance of examining both the context and content of persuasive techniques to fully understand their impact.

2024 James W. Protho Student Paper Award Honorable Mention