David E. Broockman

Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing

Not just turnout, but turnaround matters In the last several U.S. presidential elections, the campaign mantra has focused on making sure that voters already aligned with ones candidate do get out to vote. There is a long history of unsuccessful efforts to change peoples attitudes. Nevertheless, Broockman and Kalla conducted a field experiment showing that Miami voters shifted their attitudes toward transgender individuals and maintained those changed positions for 3 months (see the Perspective by Paluck). Science, this issue p. 220; see also p. 147 Asking voters to see the world from other people’s eyes can alter their attitudes for quite a long time. [Also see Perspective by Paluck] Existing research depicts intergroup prejudices as deeply ingrained, requiring intense intervention to lastingly reduce. Here, we show that a single approximately 10-minute conversation encouraging actively taking the perspective of others can markedly reduce prejudice for at least 3 months. We illustrate this potential with a door-to-door canvassing intervention in South Florida targeting antitransgender prejudice. Despite declines in homophobia, transphobia remains pervasive. For the intervention, 56 canvassers went door to door encouraging active perspective-taking with 501 voters at voters’ doorsteps. A randomized trial found that these conversations substantially reduced transphobia, with decreases greater than Americans’ average decrease in homophobia from 1998 to 2012. These effects persisted for 3 months, and both transgender and nontransgender canvassers were effective. The intervention also increased support for a nondiscrimination law, even after exposing voters to counterarguments.

The Minimal Persuasive Effects of Campaign Contact in General Elections: Evidence from 49 Field Experiments

Significant theories of democratic accountability hinge on how political campaigns affect Americans’ candidate choices. We argue that the best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans’ candidates choices in general elections is zero. First, a systematic meta-analysis of 40 field experiments estimates an average effect of zero in general elections. Second, we present nine original field experiments that increase the statistical evidence in the literature about the persuasive effects of personal contact tenfold. These experiments’ average effect is also zero. In both existing and our original experiments, persuasive effects only appear to emerge in two rare circumstances. First, when candidates take unusually unpopular positions and campaigns invest unusually heavily in identifying persuadable voters. Second, when campaigns contact voters long before election day and measure effects immediately—although this early persuasion decays. These findings contribute to ongoing debates about how political elites influence citizens’ judgments.

The Delegate Paradox: Why Polarized Politicians Can Represent Citizens Best

Many advocate for political reforms intended to resolve apparent disjunctures between politicians’ ideologically polarized policy positions and citizens’ less polarized policy preferences. We show these apparent disjunctures can arise even when politicians represent their constituencies well and that resolving them would likely degrade representation. These counterintuitive results arise from a paradox whereby polarized politicians can best represent constituencies composed of citizens with idiosyncratic preferences. We document this paradox among US House members, often criticized for excessive polarization. We show that if House members represented their constituencies’ preferences as closely as possible, they would still appear polarized. Moreover, current members nearly always represent their constituencies better than counterfactual less polarized members. A series of experiments confirms that even “moderate” citizens usually prefer ostensibly polarized representatives to many less polarized alternatives.

The Design of Field Experiments With Survey Outcomes: A Framework for Selecting More Efficient, Robust, and Ethical Designs

Social scientists increasingly wish to use field experiments to test theories. However, common experimental designs for studying the effects of treatments delivered in the field on individuals’ attitudes are too expensive for most researchers and vulnerable to bias. We detail an alternative field experiment design exploiting multiple waves of panel surveys delivered online with multiple measures of outcomes and, if applicable, a placebo control. This design can make persuasion field experiments feasible by decreasing costs (often by nearly two orders of magnitude), allows experiments to test additional theories, and facilitates the evaluation of design assumptions. We then report an original application study, a field experiment implementing the design to evaluate a persuasive canvass targeting abortion attitudes. This study estimated a precise zero, suggesting the design can successfully evade demand effects. We conclude by discussing potential limitations and extensions.

Increasing Response Rates and Representativeness of Online Panels Recruited by Mail: Evidence from Experiments in 12 Original Surveys

Scholars have long noted the marked advantages of panel surveys for understanding the nature and causes of shifts in public opinion. Despite these advantages, existing panel survey approaches are often regarded as prohibitively costly or unrepresentative. In this paper, we present new evidence on best practices for an emerging panel survey approach: recruiting online panels by mail from defined sampling frames. We present results from 12 original such panel studies involving over 1 million individuals in total. Each of these panels contained randomized experiments on incentive levels, survey framing, and other features. These experiments allow us to present new recommendations about how to recruit panels using this mode that are more representative and more cost effective. We conclude by discussing limitations of our findings and their implications for other survey modes.

Bias in Perceptions of Public Opinion among Political Elites

The conservative asymmetry of elite polarization represents a significant puzzle. We argue that politicians can maintain systematic misperceptions of constituency opinion that may contribute to breakdowns in dyadic representation. We demonstrate this argument with original surveys of 3,765 politicians’ perceptions of constituency opinion on nine issues. In 2012 and 2014, state legislative politicians from both parties dramatically overestimated their constituents’ support for conservative policies on these issues, a pattern consistent across methods, districts, and states. Republicans drive much of this overestimation. Exploiting responses from politicians in the same district, we confirm these partisan differences within individual districts. Further evidence suggests that this overestimation may arise due to biases in who contacts politicians, as in recent years Republican citizens have been especially likely to contact legislators, especially fellow Republicans. Our findings suggest that a novel force can operate in elections and in legislatures: Politicians can systematically misperceive what their constituents want.

How Do Committee Assignments Facilitate Majority Party Power? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in the Arkansas State Legislature

We use a natural experiment in Arkansas’ state legislature to reexamine how the committee assignment process facilitates legislative party power. In contrast to the view that parties use committee assignments as significant carrots and sticks to enforce party discipline, we find that the rewards legislators reap from winning their preferred assignments appear meager and that party discipline prevails at typical levels in Arkansas despite that parties do not control assignments there. However, in contrast to other legislatures, disloyal legislators tend to fill powerful committees in Arkansas, suggesting that parties do stack powerful committees with loyalists in legislatures where they can.