Research

My dissertation, The Usual Suspects: Identity, Media, and the Politics of Conspiracy, examines why some conspiracy beliefs remain passive expressions of suspicion while others become bases for political action. I combine survey experiments, longitudinal public-opinion data, and computational analyses of news and online communities to trace how conspiracy narratives acquire group meaning over time.

My job market paper asks how partisan ownership changes what people do with conspiracy beliefs. It argues that political identities give claims social meaning, shaping not only which claims people accept but how they respond to them. Using two surveys ans a preregistered experiment, I demonstrate that people report more behavior associated with partisan conspiracy claims, and find suggestive evidence that adding an identity cue to the same claim can increase measured behavior.

Suspecting and Motivated Reasoning:  Identity Filtering as a Unique Dimension of Conspiracism

Abstract:

Research finds that people vary in their tendency to be drawn to conspiratorial explanations. Belief in one conspiracy theory often predicts belief in others, suggesting a generalized dimension of conspiratorial receptivity rooted in suspicion. Research also shows that people are more receptive to party-congenial conspiracy claims. This paper shifts partisan selectivity from the claim to the person. Just as individuals differ in their receptiveness to conspiratorial explanations overall, they also differ in the degree to which their endorsement patterns are organized by partisan identity— their “Identity Filtering.” 

Using a quota-matched survey of U.S. adults, I find that conspiracy Proclivity and Identity Filtering are positively but weakly correlated, associated with different patterns of endorsement, and have distinct psychological correlates. Proclivity predicts broad endorsement across conspiracy claims and is associated with generalized distrust and unusual beliefs. Identity Filtering predicts selective endorsement of party-congenial claims beyond conspiratorial receptivity, remains distinct from party strength and partisan-identity centrality, and amplifies the relationship between general Proclivity and openness to unfamiliar claims. These findings suggest that conspiracy belief has a dual structure: it is organized not only by how much people are drawn to conspiratorial explanations, but by how strongly identity structures what becomes believable.