Research

Notes: * indicates graduate student co-author

Working Papers

Myers, C. D., & Hvidsten, T.* (n.d.). The Effects of Local Newspaper Coverage on Attitudes Towards Congress: A Panel Experiment. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZE9BA

Brief Abstract: How has the move towards consuming less local and more national news affected our view of Congress? This panel experiment tests how exposure to local versus national news coverage of Congress influences political attitudes. It finds that local reporting leads to more favorable views of individuals’ own representatives and reduces affective polarization, suggesting that the erosion of local journalism may contribute to growing political division and public distrust in political institutions.

Myers, C. D. (n.d.). Who is Congress in an Era of Nationalizing News? Comparing Coverage of Congress in National and Local Newspapers.

Brief Abstract: The decline of local journalism has raised concerns about how citizens learn about Congress. This paper compares the volume of coverage of individual members of Congress in national and local newspapers between 2001 and 2019. The results show that national, but not local, newspapers provide more coverage to members who are more extreme on at least some measures of congressional ideology. It also shows that the tendency of local newspapers to give more coverage to local members of Congress has declined over the past two decades.

Publications

Myers, C. D. (2025). Politicizing the Pandemic? Partisan Framing of the Early COVID-19 Pandemic was Infrequent, Particularly in Local Newspapers. Political Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2024.2372593

Was partisan news coverage responsible for polarizing Americans during COVID-19’s early months? This study analyzes local and national newspaper coverage, finding explicit partisan framing was rare overall but more common in national outlets. The results suggest that the decline of local news could contribute to greater politicization of crises.

Myers, C. D., & Hvidsten, T.* (Forthcoming). Who is the Party? The Effect of Counter-Stereotypical Partisan Exemplars on Inter-Party Stereotypes and Affect. Political Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-024-09991-1

Can individual politicians reshape how we see opposing parties? This experiment shows that exposure to counter-stereotypical partisan figures—politicians who defy their party’s usual image—reduces hostility and alters perceptions of the other party’s traits, suggesting that exemplars can soften partisan divides.

Busby, E., Howat, A., & Myers, C. D. (2024). Changing Partisan Stereotypes in the Trump Era. Political Science Research and Methods. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2023.30

How did Donald Trump’s presidency reshape partisan stereotypes? This study finds that both Democrats’ and Republicans’ images shifted substantially during his time in office, illustrating how leadership style and political events can rapidly alter group perceptions and influence polarization.

Myers, C. D., Zhirkov, K., & Trujillo, K. L. * (2024). Who is ‘On Welfare’? Validating the Use of Conjoint Experiments to Measure Stereotype Content. Political Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-022-09815-0

Can conjoint survey experiments accurately measure stereotypes? This study validates their use in studying perceptions of welfare recipients, showing that the method reliably captures multiple identity cues at once. It further finds that perceptions of deserving dominate stereotypes of welfare recipients, and also find evidence against recent claims that welfare has become assocated with immigrants. The findings offer a powerful approach for examining complex social attitudes.

Zhirkov, K., Trujillo, K. L., & Myers, C. D. (2024). Measuring Support for Welfare Policies: Implications for the Effects of Race and Deservingness Stereotypes. Journal of Experimental Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2023.31

Do racial and deservingness stereotypes influence welfare policy support? Using survey experiments, this study finds that perceptions of whether recipients are “deserving” strongly shape attitudes, and that racial cues interact with these judgments to influence public opinion.

Myers, C. D. (2023). Issues, Groups, Or Idiots? Comparing Theories of Partisan Stereotypes. Public Opinion Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad038

What drives partisan stereotypes—policy issues, social group associations, or competence judgments? This paper tests all three explanations using a conjoint experiment. Contrary to recent work that has emphasize the group-based nature of partisan stereotypes, I find that issue stances are the most central element of partisan steroetypes.

Myers, C. D. (2022). The Dynamics of Social Identity: Evidence from Deliberating Groups. Political Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12749

How does group discussion change the strength of social identities? Studying deliberative forums, this paper shows that deliberation succeeds because to creates a new group identity, identification with the deliberating groups itself, reducing the salience of other identities such as partisanship. I argue that this has ambivalent implications for the normative value of small group deliberation.

Myers, C. D. (2021). No Effect of Partisan Framing on Opinions about the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2021.1924747

Does partisan framing change public opinion during crises? Experimental tests in the pandemic’s early months show no measurable effects from linking COVID-19 to partisan actors, suggesting limits to framing power under certain conditions.

Myers, C. D., Gordon, H. G., Goold, S. D., Kim, H. M., & Rowe, Z. (2020). Does Group Deliberation Mobilize? The Effect of Public Deliberation on Willingness to Participate in Politics. Political Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9507-z

Can structured public deliberation boost civic participation? Despite a long history of claims that democracy, and deliberation in particular, has a mobilizing effect, we find no evidence that participating in small group deliberation increases participants’ willingness to engage in politics other forms of political participation.

Myers, C. D., Kieffer, E. C., Fendrick, A. M., Kim, H. M., Calhoun, K., Szymecko, L., Salman, C., LaHann, L., Ledon, C., Danis, M., Rowe, Z., & Goold, S. D. (2020). How Would Low-Income Communities Prioritize Medicaid Spending?. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-8161024

If given a voice, how would low-income communities allocate Medicaid funds? Through community deliberations, participants prioritized expanding coverage, mental health services, and coverge for medication and chronic illnesses. These results offer guidance for aligning Medicaid policy with community needs.

Goold, S. D., Danis, M., Abelson, J., Gornick, M., Szymecko, L., Myers, C. D., Rowe, Z., Kim, H. M., & Salman, C. (2019). Evaluating Community Deliberations about Health Research Priorities. Health Expectations. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.12931

Do community deliberations improve research priority-setting? This evaluation finds that structured dialogue boosts understanding and produces actionable, community-driven agendas for health research.

Myers, C. D. (2018). Political Deliberation, Interest Conflict, and the Common Knowledge Effect. Journal of Public Deliberation. https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.296

How does interest conflict affect the common knowledge effect in deliberation? This paper shows that conflict can reduce the tendency for widely shared information to dominate, allowing for more complet information discovery in small group deliberation.

Goold, S. D., Myers, C. D., Danis, M., Abelson, J., Barnett, S., Calhoun, K., Campbell, E. G., Lahahnn, L., Hammad, A., Pérez Rosenbaum, R., Kim, H. M., Salman, C., Szymecko, L., & Rowe, Z. E. (2018). Members of Minority and Underserved Communities Set Priorities for Health Research. Milbank Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12354

How can marginalized communities influence research agendas? This national project engaged minority and underserved groups in setting priorities, highlighting perspectives often absent from policy discussions.

Myers, C. D. (2017). Interests, Information, and Minority Influence in Deliberation. Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1086/690304

When can minority viewpoints shape group decisions? This study finds that deliberators who are in the minority in terms of their interests in the outcome of deliberaion face particular challenges sharing private information in group discussion.

Myers, C. D., Ritter, T., & Rockaway, A. (2017). Community Deliberation to Build Local Capacity for Climate Change Adaptation: The Rural Climate Dialogues Program. In W. Leal & J. Keenan (Eds.), Climate Change Adaptation in North America. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53742-9_2

How can rural communities prepare for climate change? This chapter documents a deliberation-based program that built local capacity and generated actionable adaptation strategies.

Goold, S. D., Myers, C. D., Szymecko, L., Collins, C., Martinez, S., Ledón, C., Campbell, T. R., Danis, M., Cargill, S., Kim, H. M., & Rowe, Z. (2017). Priorities for Patient Centered Outcomes Research: The Views of Minority and Underserved Communities. Health Service Research. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.12505

What health research matters most to underserved communities? Deliberations identified key priorities and approaches, offering insight for more inclusive patient-centered outcomes research.

Myers, C. D. (2016). Participation and Punishment. Journal of Theoretical Politics. https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629815586882

How do participation and punishment interact in collective decisions? This theoretical model links political engagement to the use of sanctions, with implications for cooperation and deterrence.

Myers, C. D., & Tingley, D. (2016). The Influence of Emotion on Trust. Political Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mpw026

Do emotions shape trust between individuals? And how can we measure the causal effect of emotions in experiments? This paper argues that causal mediation analysis is necessary for measuring the effect of discrete emotions when these emotions are induced using common experimental manipulations. Using this method, we show that feelings like anger and gratitude significantly change willingness to trust others.

Glick, D., & Myers, C. D. (2015). Learning from Others: An Experimental Test of Brownian Motion Uncertainty Models. Journal of Theoretical Politics. https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629814559723

How do people update beliefs based on the observed actions of others when the connection between actions and outcomes is characterized by complex forms of uncertainty? Experimental games test mathematical models and show that individuals only partially incorporate the nature of uncertainty when leaning from the actions of others.

Myers, C. D., & Mendelberg, T. (2013). Political Deliberation. In L. Huddy, D. Sears, & J. Levy (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199760107.013.0022

What is political deliberation and why does it matter? This chapter reviews research on how deliberation works, its effects, and the conditions under which it contributes to democratic governance.