Papers

The Effect of Occupational Status on Health: Putting the Social in Socioeconomic Status

In a paper published in Heliyon, we used a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of law enforcement officers to show that perceptions of the affective meanings of occupational identities are related to health and wellbeing. Specifically, officers who report seeing their occupational identities as more good, powerful, and active also report better outcomes across 11 of the 13 indices of physical and mental health we tested.

Aidan Combs, Robert E. Freeland, Katelin Alfaro Hudak, Elizabeth A. Mumford

Reducing Political Polarization with a Mobile Chat Platform

In a paper published in Nature Human Behavior, we found that chats between Democrats and Republicans on DiscussIt depolarized participants, regardless of whether we labeled their partisan affiliations accurately or inaccurately.

Aidan Combs, Graham Tierney, Brian Guay, Friedolin Merhout, Christopher A. Bail, D. Sunshine Hillygus, Alexander Volfovsky

Reducing Political Polarization with a Mobile Chat Platform

Perceived Gender and Political Persuasion: A Social Media Field Experiment during the 2020 US Democratic Presidential Primary Election

In a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, we found that manipulating gender labels in conversations between Democrats about the candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary affected participants’ influence. We found that mislabeling a woman’s gender decreased her influence and increased her propensity to be influenced, even though she did not know her gender was mislabeled–an indication of the complexity of the impacts of gender identity and expression on interaction.

Aidan Combs, Graham Tierney, Fatima Alqabandi, Devin Cornell, Gabriel Varela, Andrés Castro Araújo, Lisa Argyle, Alexander Volfovsky, Christopher A. Bail

Perceived Gender and Political Persuasion: A Social Media Field Experiment during the 2020 US Democratic Presidential Primary Election

Political Knowledge and Perceptions of Influence in Political Conversation

People are poor judges of both their own skills and the mental states of others. This creates important differences in perceptions of influence in conversations about politics. In this study, I explore how political knowledge and sociodemographic characteristics pattern perceptions of influence in political conversation.

Aidan Combs

Assessing the Impact of the Russian Internet Research Agency on the Political Attitudes and Behaviors of American Twitter Users in Late 2017

We do not find evidence that troll accounts operated by the Russian Internet Research Agency meaningfully impacted the political views of American Twitter users.

Christopher A. Bail, Brian Guay, Em Maloney, Aidan Combs, D. Sunshine Hillygus, Friedolin Merhout, Deen Freelon, Alexander Volfovsky

The Occupational Status of Law Enforcement Officers and Variation Across Sociodemographic Characteristics: Quantifying Self and Public Perceptions of Prestige

Perceptions of occupational prestige are commonly associated with job satisfaction and job turnover intentions, but little is known about law enforcement officers’ (LEOs) own views of the prestige of policing. The purpose of this study is to quantify how LEOs rate the prestige of their profession, how they think their communities view their profession, and whether these views vary by sociodemographic characteristics.

Katelin Alfaro Hudak, Aidan Combs, Robert E. Freeland, Elizabeth A. Mumford

'All Cops are Bastards?' The Effect of the Killing of George Floyd on Police Identity Meanings

Protests against police brutality, such as those that followed the murder of George Floyd in the spring of 2020, can affect public opinion of police. By acting as a form of identity threat, they may also affect police officers’ meanings of their own occupational identities.

Aidan Combs

Estimating Ambiguity in Cultural Meaning

Substantial research details individuals’ estimates of affective cultural meanings and how they vary along demographic and socioeconomic lines. However, much less is known about individuals’ levels of uncertainty about these meanings—what I refer to as ambiguity—or how ambiguity is patterned among respondents or concepts, though it is likely ambiguity has consequences for interaction and cultural change.

Aidan Combs