You can download below a copy of my most recent CV.

Here is a brief selection of research papers that I’m currently working on. About one third of the scholarship I produce through the REPS Lab consists of active collaborations with talented undergraduate students at UCLA, many of them in political science, psychology, or other analog disciplines. The papers below include some of these more recent collaborations.

“Partisans of Color: How Racialization and Polarization Shape Asian American and Latino Party ID” (with Jessica HyunJeong Lee and Gustavo Mártir Luna)

What influences partisan allegiance among Asian Americans and Latinos? These fast -growing demographics are heavily populated by immigrants who were raised outside the U.S., which limits parental socialization as the mechanism behind their partisan identities. We argue that contemporary Asian and Latino partisanship is shaped by two systemic forces: racialization and polarization. Asian and Latino adults regularly navigate the straits between their racial and American identities—two categories, sorted along partisan lines, that shape their sense of belonging in the U.S. We hypothesize that Asian and Latino adults generally prioritize their racial or national identity, which affects their intensity of identification as Democrats or Republicans. Leveraging major Asian and Latino surveys since 2006 (N=20,327), we uncover wide heterogeneity in identity prioritization, with 27% of Asian and Latino adults privileging their American identity over their racial one. Moreover, greater prioritization of one’s racial (national) identity is significantly associated with Democratic (Republican) allegiance (meta-analyzed d~.30). Across two experiments (N=2,920) we then isolate one possible mechanism: Asian and Latino adults who feel their prioritized identity is misconstrued signal their preferred attachment through their partisan allegiance.

“Taking Stock of Solidarity Between People of Color:  A Meta-Analysis of 5 Experiments” (with Bianca Vicuña and Alisson Ramos)

Recent work suggests that solidarity between people of color (PoC) is triggered when a minoritized ingroup believes they are discriminated similarly to another outgroup based on their alleged foreigness or inferiority. Heightened solidarity then boosts support for policies that benefit minoritized outgroups who are not one’s own. Available experiments on this pathway vary by participants (e.g., Asian, Black, and Latino adults), manipulations (discrimination as foreign vs. inferior), and pro-outgroup outcomes (support for undocumented immigrants, Black Lives Matter). We report a pre-registered meta-analysis of this “similar discrimination-to solidarity-to political opinion” mechanism. Across five experiments, sensed discrimination as foreign or inferior reliably triggers solidarity with PoC, which then substantially increases support for pro-outgroup policies. This pathway is robust to possible confounding and emerges across studies and planned subsets of them. We discuss what the viability of this mechanism implies for further theoretic and empirical innovation in a racially diversifying polity. 

Manifold Threats to White Identity and Their Political Effects on White Partisans (with Jessica HyunJeong Lee, Ana Luisa Oaxaca, Tania Solano Cervantes, Jasmine García Rodríguez, Kimberly Lam, and David McFall)

We investigate how threats to White identity operate among White Democrats and Republicans. We evaluate four identity threats that prior work conflates or overlooks: distinctiveness threat (an ingroup’s loss of unique attributes), power threat (an ingroup perceiving outgroup collusion), morality threat (impugning an ingroup’s integrity), and meritocratic threat (questioning an ingroup’s advantages). We pinpoint which threats catalyze White identity among specific partisans—and with what political consequences. Leveraging a pre-registered experiment with 4,000 White Democrats and Republicans, we find most identity threats significantly and additively catalyze White identity among all partisans at comparable intensity (d~.20). However, among Democrats, a heightened sense of racial identity generates more downstream opposition to pro-outgroup policies (e.g., pathway to immigrant citizenship) and greater support for pro-ingroup policies (i.e., legacy college admissions) than among White Republicans. These indirect effects are robust to confounding and highlight White identity’s viability as a key mechanism behind contemporary partisan politics.    

“Unexpected, but Consistent and Pre-Registered: Experimental Evidence on Latino Views of COVID-19” (with Jessica HyunJeong Lee, Ana Luisa Oaxaca, Cole Matthews, and Madison Ritsema)

Much uncertainty remains about effective messaging to boost public support for COVID-19 mitigation efforts, especially among people of color. We investigate the relationship between interview language and expressed support for COVID-19 public health protocols among Latinos: America’s largest ethnic group. Prior work establishes that interview language shapes opinions by structuring which considerations people draw on to form attitudes. Yet other work suggests interview language shapes opinions by activating cultural norms associated with a tongue. We reasoned that interviewing in Spanish (versus English) would boost support for COVID-19 protocols by activating pro-social norms associated with Spanish. Using a pre-registered experiment on bilingual Latino adults (N=1,700), we uncover little support for this prediction. Instead, we find that Spanish interviewees consistently report weaker levels of and changes in support for COVID-19 protocols, regardless of whether pro-social norms are primed. We discuss implications for COVID-19 attitudes in a linguistically diverse U.S. polity.